I currently think we are in a world where a lot of discussion of near-guesses, mildly informed conjectures, probably-wrong speculation, and so forth is extremely helpful, at least in contexts where one is trying to discover new truths.
My primary solution to this has been (1) epistemic tagging, including coarse-grained/qualitative tags, plus (2) a study of what the different tags actually amount to empirically. So person X can say something and tag it as “probably wrong, just an idea”, and you can know that when person X uses that tag, the idea is, e.g., usually correct or usually very illuminating. Then over time you can try to get people to sync up on the use of tags and an understanding of what the tags mean.
In cases where it looks like people irrationally update on a proposition, even with appropriate tags, it might be better to not discuss that proposition (or discuss in a smaller, safer group) until it has achieved adequately good epistemic status.
I currently think we are in a world where a lot of discussion of near-guesses, mildly informed conjectures, probably-wrong speculation, and so forth is extremely helpful, at least in contexts where one is trying to discover new truths.
My primary solution to this has been (1) epistemic tagging, including coarse-grained/qualitative tags, plus (2) a study of what the different tags actually amount to empirically. So person X can say something and tag it as “probably wrong, just an idea”, and you can know that when person X uses that tag, the idea is, e.g., usually correct or usually very illuminating. Then over time you can try to get people to sync up on the use of tags and an understanding of what the tags mean.
In cases where it looks like people irrationally update on a proposition, even with appropriate tags, it might be better to not discuss that proposition (or discuss in a smaller, safer group) until it has achieved adequately good epistemic status.