I knew I should have added “Scientific consensus” because sure, if you follow the neighbour down the street into his or her conspiracy rabbit hole, you’ll end up believing that climate change is a hoax invented by “the Jews” to hide the “fact” that the earth is flat, and that we never went to the moon, and that Bush did 9/11.
If you don’t have knowledge, and don’t know where to start, then it’s not your place to convince someone else. All you can say is then “I don’t know either”, which is a full sentence.
I don’t think that changes anything. For example, I’m not a nutrition expert, but it’s an area I’m very interested in and I consider myself reasonably well read on the subject. I still have no idea what the scientific consensus is on anything in the field, especially when so many papers end with “we know jack shit about this, but at least this study moves us forward a little bit”.
If you don’t have knowledge, and don’t know where to start, then it’s not your place to convince someone else
I’m talking about areas in which I do have the knowledge. It’s not a reasonable expectation for someone else to go through the same process that I did to gain all that knowledge. I can scream “CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL BECAUSE LOOK AT THESE EXPERTS” as much as I want, but the other party will still have no way to verify my claims, or that these experts are actual experts and not some cherry-picked scientists.
I knew I should have added “Scientific consensus” because sure, if you follow the neighbour down the street into his or her conspiracy rabbit hole, you’ll end up believing that climate change is a hoax invented by “the Jews” to hide the “fact” that the earth is flat, and that we never went to the moon, and that Bush did 9/11.
If you don’t have knowledge, and don’t know where to start, then it’s not your place to convince someone else. All you can say is then “I don’t know either”, which is a full sentence.
I don’t think that changes anything. For example, I’m not a nutrition expert, but it’s an area I’m very interested in and I consider myself reasonably well read on the subject. I still have no idea what the scientific consensus is on anything in the field, especially when so many papers end with “we know jack shit about this, but at least this study moves us forward a little bit”.
I’m talking about areas in which I do have the knowledge. It’s not a reasonable expectation for someone else to go through the same process that I did to gain all that knowledge. I can scream “CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL BECAUSE LOOK AT THESE EXPERTS” as much as I want, but the other party will still have no way to verify my claims, or that these experts are actual experts and not some cherry-picked scientists.