Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagAMISTAD lab (Harvey Mudd)

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Circle of people. Teamwork. Business meeting. Negotiations, reaching consensus in disagreements. Joint problem solving. Conflict resolution through dialogue. Compromise. Cooperation and collaboration

Consensus Gives Us Information Only If We Are Free to Doubt

There are so many credentialed people on the internet with sufficiently differing views that it sometimes seems as if we could find an expert somewhere to support almost any harebrained idea. So how does a non-expert figure out the truth? Most of us lack the time, training, and inclination to investigate most subjects sufficiently so we are often urged to adopt the consensus opinion. While an individual expert may have wild and crazy ideas, the consensus will most likely be an average informed view. But it’s not that simple. Most of the time it is impossible for the public to determine the consensus opinion. What is usually labeled as consensus opinion is what media believe it to be. And the Read More ›