I’m not sure what general principles would result in our popularity-based heuristics excluding religious beliefs, but including popular scientific theories which we have not evaluated for ourselves. What do you guys think?
The strength of others’ beliefs as evidence depends on what you know about how they arrived at those beliefs. If you know that scientists have a general process for establishing accepted truths which involves repeated testing with attempts to falsify their hypotheses and find alternative explanations, then you can take established consensus as evidence proportional to your trust in that process. Likewise, if you know that people tend to come to religious consensuses due to early indoctrination and community reinforcement, you should take religious consensuses as evidence proportional to your confidence that those processes will tend to produce true beliefs.
Likewise, if you know that people tend to come to religious consensuses due to early indoctrination and community reinforcement, you should take religious consensuses as evidence proportional to your confidence that those processes will tend to produce true beliefs.
That’s how scientific beliefs become consensus too. It becomes a question of how the doctrine was originally chosen and on what criterion the culture most rewards oneupmanship attempts. ie. You can put more trust in science based indoctrination because you believe that if the powers that be were indoctrinating you with beliefs that can be contradicted via science rituals another power would have an excuse to ridicule them.
The strength of others’ beliefs as evidence depends on what you know about how they arrived at those beliefs. If you know that scientists have a general process for establishing accepted truths which involves repeated testing with attempts to falsify their hypotheses and find alternative explanations, then you can take established consensus as evidence proportional to your trust in that process. Likewise, if you know that people tend to come to religious consensuses due to early indoctrination and community reinforcement, you should take religious consensuses as evidence proportional to your confidence that those processes will tend to produce true beliefs.
That’s how scientific beliefs become consensus too. It becomes a question of how the doctrine was originally chosen and on what criterion the culture most rewards oneupmanship attempts. ie. You can put more trust in science based indoctrination because you believe that if the powers that be were indoctrinating you with beliefs that can be contradicted via science rituals another power would have an excuse to ridicule them.