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Comment by tux3 | Hacker News Reader

That's exactly what almost all knowledge is.

When was it that you last verified something by yourself, with an experiment?

You didn't test the things you know. You know things because you could see they were the consensus, and so you had no reason to challenge them.

If an idea is disputed, then you trust it less. If it comes from a small number of reputable sources, then you trust it more than a large numbers of unreliable people. So with the Wiki.

Human knowledge isn't from the platonic realm. Human knowledge isn't checked by a theorem prover. You get almost all of your knowledge from other people, and you have no choice but to trust them for almost all of it.

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>That's exactly what almost all knowledge is.

That's what almost all human assumption and belief system is, also ideology and religion, but knowledge is indeed something different, and not of a type that should rely on democratic consensus. It instead needs to be held up by material evidence that's always subject to retesting no matter how unpopular a new idea is. This is obvious.

The rest of what you say could just as easily be applied to the foolish social dogmas of nearly any past age in human history, dogmas that so often turned out to be wrong. A small number of reputable sources (for their time) upheld doctrines such as geocentrism, religious extremism, hatred for certain racial groups and numerous fervent beliefs in the right of certain people to dominate others. These are just a few examples.

A more material one would be the certainty among reputable sources that plate tectonics were nonsense, until of course they were shown not to be by what started as an argument by only a few people who were deemed very unreliable.

None of this is to give weight to every crackpot idea put forth, or claim that all opinions are equally valid until stated otherwise, but what makes the difference is evidence, not consensus.

If I'm interpreting your comment correctly, I don't think your presentation of the role of popular consensus on Wikipedia is accurate. Read this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus.

Wikipedia doesn't establish consensus by pure numbers or voting, although it is a contributing factor. In disputes, it has moderated discussions with verdicts given by elevated users, including admins. Things like statistics and even (perhaps especially) precedent all weigh in. Popularity of a side can be weighted, but ruling purely based on popularity is actively discouraged.

This can lead to scenarios where 90% of users want something, but the moderater rules along with the 10%. Often, this happens when the discussion was initially among a bunch of relatively new users who aren't aware of some policy, and a more experienced editor points that a dispute is clearly not in line with some policy. This happens very regularly and is often a source of drama with long discussions.

This process actually arguably works better on popular and contentious pages; you get eyes and discussions of substance on those. Most boring pages are virtually ghost towns and are counterintuitively more susceptable to popularity-based consensus. Whatever you put up will likely stick, so it's just a matter of how many people and who will protect the page for the longest.

Also read this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie....

The second page addresses your concern about not giving too much weight to fringe theories. It's not enforced as well as it could be in many places though; it can be hard to judge what's due or undue weight.

“That's exactly what almost all knowledge is.”

It’s worse than that. Much knowledge comes from authorities or peers. The sources could be unpopular or barely reviewed. Yet, people are likely to believe specific types of sources. It seems to be hardwired for some purpose.

When was it that you last verified something by yourself, with an experiment?

Just a few weeks ago. I did a simple experiment to check whether the Super-94 at my local Chevron is indeed ethanol-free. It wasn't.

Now imagine you were able to go and edit the sign that says it is ethanol free to add the details of your test and dispute the claim, that would improve the knowledge.

This is nice analogy, but a wrong analogy. Wikipedia specifically does not allow original research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

For that to make it into Wikipedia you'd have to first write an article in a reputable source.

Or rather, have a reputable source write an article about your work. If you write the news article about your own work and they publish it, the article is still a primary source (despite not being self-published)!

We trust the consensus of published, peer-reviewed experts. That's different than the kind of Demos that does things like declare war on Persia, kill Jesus and Socrates, or edit Wikipedia.

> If an idea is disputed, then you trust it less. If it comes from a small number of reputable sources, then you trust it more than a large numbers of unreliable people. So with the Wiki.

Right. That makes Wiki kind of unreliable. Not completely. And not to the point of uselessness, but you should trust it about as far as you can throw it.

> Human knowledge isn't from the platonic realm.

Citation needed ;)

>We trust the consensus of published, peer-reviewed experts. That's different than the kind of Demos that does things like declare war on Persia, kill Jesus and Socrates, or edit Wikipedia.

Ye of little faith! The Demos, after much bickering, have also decided to largely trust the consensus of published, peer-reviewed experts.

But what you really have to ask when you say you trust the consensus, is who forms the consensus of peer-reviewed experts?

It's rare to get an explicit consensus from an actual organization. When Cochrane does a large meta-analysis, and whisper "moderate evidence", I stop reading and immediately trust them with my life. Unfortunately, they very rarely have confidence in anything.

Most of the time, the consensus of published, peer-reviewed expert is also not something people form on their own. When has your neighbor last read and synthesized the literature to determine what the consensus is on hydroxyapatite in toothpaste, before going to the store?

Individual experts, I also trust only as far as I can throw them. The consensus of experts I'm happy to rely on. But that, very often, also comes from trusting the Demos, I'm afraid.

We humans also trust the consensus of non-peer reviewed truth all the time. Tell that group of children that the opposite sex doesn't have cooties, and there's a good chance they'll laugh at you. Look at any online community, and it's the same. We humans are great at it and do it all the time.

I thought knowledge, at least the best type comes from primary sources and from repeatable experiments with explicit premises as much as possible. This makes it sound like all knowledge is hearsay. If it is, what is the point of a place like Wikipedia or even an encyclopedia?

Indeed, the best type of knowledge comes from primary sources and original research. But those also produce an awful lot of not-knowledge.

Wikipedia's approach to sifting the knowledge from the not-knowledge is to prefer reliable secondary sources, i.e. sources deemed capable of telling the difference, mainly because they have a reputation for good editorial control. It's far from an ideal touchstone; but relying on "experts" is worse, because who's an expert? You need experts to identify experts, which is circular.

"Reliable secondary sources" doesn't amount to hearsay.

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