There is a hidden object which is either green, red or blue. Three people have conflicting opinions about its colour, based on different pieces of reasoning. If you are the one who believes it is green, you have to add up the opponents who say not-green, despite the fact that there is no single not-green position (think of the symmetry—otherwise everyone could have too great confidence). The same holds true if these are expert opinions.
The above example is basically as general as possible, so in order for your argument to work it will need to add specifics of some sort.
Also, the Koran/Bible case doesn’t work. By symmetry, the Koran readers can say that they don’t need to add up the Bible readers and the atheists, since they are heterogeneous, so they can keep their belief in the Koran...
In practice all arguments will share some premises and some conclusions, in messy asymmetrical ways.
If the not-greens share a a consistent rationale about why the object cannot be green, then I need to take that into account.
If the red supporter contends that all green and blue objects were lost in the color wars, while the blue supporter contends that all objects are fundamentally blue and besides the color wars never happened, then their opinions roughly cancel each other out. (Barring other reasons for me to view one as more rational than the other.)
I suspect that there are things to be said about islam that both atheists and christians would agree on. That’s a block that a rational muslim should take into account. Our disagreeing conclusions about god are secondary.
If I’m going to update my position because 56% of experts agree on something, then I want to know what I’m going to update to.
BTW, I wish there is a way to upgrade a comment into a post and automatically move all the discussions under the new post as well.
The only reason I can think of to upgrade a comment to a post is to draw attention to it, whether google attention, naturality of external linking, or the attention of the regular readers. In all these cases, it seems to me that it is the duty of the author, who is demanding time from many readers, to spend time summarizing the old discussion and making it easy for new readers to join.
This certainly doesn’t work in all cases:
There is a hidden object which is either green, red or blue. Three people have conflicting opinions about its colour, based on different pieces of reasoning. If you are the one who believes it is green, you have to add up the opponents who say not-green, despite the fact that there is no single not-green position (think of the symmetry—otherwise everyone could have too great confidence). The same holds true if these are expert opinions.
The above example is basically as general as possible, so in order for your argument to work it will need to add specifics of some sort.
Also, the Koran/Bible case doesn’t work. By symmetry, the Koran readers can say that they don’t need to add up the Bible readers and the atheists, since they are heterogeneous, so they can keep their belief in the Koran...
In practice all arguments will share some premises and some conclusions, in messy asymmetrical ways.
If the not-greens share a a consistent rationale about why the object cannot be green, then I need to take that into account.
If the red supporter contends that all green and blue objects were lost in the color wars, while the blue supporter contends that all objects are fundamentally blue and besides the color wars never happened, then their opinions roughly cancel each other out. (Barring other reasons for me to view one as more rational than the other.)
I suspect that there are things to be said about islam that both atheists and christians would agree on. That’s a block that a rational muslim should take into account. Our disagreeing conclusions about god are secondary.
If I’m going to update my position because 56% of experts agree on something, then I want to know what I’m going to update to.
This discussion continues here.
BTW, I wish there is a way to upgrade a comment into a post and automatically move all the discussions under the new post as well.
The only reason I can think of to upgrade a comment to a post is to draw attention to it, whether google attention, naturality of external linking, or the attention of the regular readers. In all these cases, it seems to me that it is the duty of the author, who is demanding time from many readers, to spend time summarizing the old discussion and making it easy for new readers to join.