Although it’s interesting to ask whether talking in a group about something you read in a possibly-wrong article doesn’t provide opportunities for people with more expertise than you to disseminate their knowledge. And for people with worse epistemologies to insist that they have more expertise than you and are disseminating their knowledge.
Certainly I find out a lot more about all the things I classify as “probably true” by talking to other people who have a different set of “probably trues” on the topic than I do by looking up as much information as I can find about each possibly-true. Do you gain more (or contribute more to the world) by classifying everything as “unknown” unless you have investigated it sufficiently and therefore not speaking on it, or by treating your knowledge as something worthy of conversation—with caveats, like “I read it in so-and-so, and they’ve been known to sensationalize or get science wrong, but...” or “I haven’t followed up on this in a couple of years, but I heard there was a promising claim...” Then this may spur someone who knows more (or less) to speak up and may cause some further search for the truth later.
It seems to me that the main problem arises when someone bickers bitterly for a fact they’ve accepted to be recognized as true even when they shouldn’t feel that certain. Of course, there is damage done in miscommunication, as when someone gets the impression (we’ll say it’s nobody’s fault) that your pure speculation or dubious source is solid fact. And the best defense against that is knowledge of how much social wisdom is BS.
Perhaps it would be better to recognize that you have another class of filing information—”I’ve heard no contradictory evidence, it’s useful to think about, but I wouldn’t build a bridge on its blueprints.” Going beyond that on a few statements may very well be quite a good thing, but I doubt it will eliminate altogether your tendency to remember and mention dubious facts.
Although it’s interesting to ask whether talking in a group about something you read in a possibly-wrong article doesn’t provide opportunities for people with more expertise than you to disseminate their knowledge. And for people with worse epistemologies to insist that they have more expertise than you and are disseminating their knowledge.
Certainly I find out a lot more about all the things I classify as “probably true” by talking to other people who have a different set of “probably trues” on the topic than I do by looking up as much information as I can find about each possibly-true. Do you gain more (or contribute more to the world) by classifying everything as “unknown” unless you have investigated it sufficiently and therefore not speaking on it, or by treating your knowledge as something worthy of conversation—with caveats, like “I read it in so-and-so, and they’ve been known to sensationalize or get science wrong, but...” or “I haven’t followed up on this in a couple of years, but I heard there was a promising claim...” Then this may spur someone who knows more (or less) to speak up and may cause some further search for the truth later.
It seems to me that the main problem arises when someone bickers bitterly for a fact they’ve accepted to be recognized as true even when they shouldn’t feel that certain. Of course, there is damage done in miscommunication, as when someone gets the impression (we’ll say it’s nobody’s fault) that your pure speculation or dubious source is solid fact. And the best defense against that is knowledge of how much social wisdom is BS.
Perhaps it would be better to recognize that you have another class of filing information—”I’ve heard no contradictory evidence, it’s useful to think about, but I wouldn’t build a bridge on its blueprints.” Going beyond that on a few statements may very well be quite a good thing, but I doubt it will eliminate altogether your tendency to remember and mention dubious facts.