How “Gibson’s law” makes it hard to trust experts

[Gary C]

It's only a two page article but it might be useful.

Key Takeaways

• A little learning is a dangerous thing, and there is no one more confident than someone who has read just a little bit about a topic.
• Gibson's law states, "For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD." In other words, you can find an expert who will say just about anything.
• Not all disagreements are of equal weight. This is a key point that Pyrrho the Skeptic got wrong.

Source - https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/gibsons-law-hard-trust-experts/

 

[Mendel]

Source - https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/gibsons-law-hard-trust-experts/

There are superior and inferior people, and there are better or worse positions. The job of the critical mind is to identify which is which.

 

[John J.]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote something along the lines of, there probably are a small number of trained geologists who believe the Earth was created c. 6000 years ago, and these are the ones some minority religious groups will always quote, but he wouldn't advise investing in their prospecting companies.

 

[Mendel]

there probably are a small number of trained geologists who believe the Earth was created c. 6000 years ago,

I'm not going to believe there's a living person with a geology degree who believes in "flood geology" or anything similar, unless I see evidence.

 

[John J.]

I'm not going to believe there's a living person with a geology degree who believes in "flood geology" or anything similar, unless I see evidence.

Kurt Patrick Wise (born August 1, 1959) is an American geologist, paleontologist, and young Earth creationist who serves as the director of the Creation Research Center at Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, Georgia. He writes in support of creationism and contributed to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

...He attended the University of Chicago and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in geology. He then was educated at Harvard University, where he received a Master of Arts (M.A.) in geology and a Ph.D. in paleontology under the supervision of Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent opponent of creationism, in 1989.

Wikipedia, "Kurt Wise", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wise

Wise's employer, Truett McConnell University, claims

He received his Ph.D. in Geology from Harvard University. Dr. Wise is an American "Young Earth" creationist

https://truett.edu/news/archive/september-10-dr-kurt-wise/

The Wikipedia article quotes Wise as saying,

...that the rejection of evolution does not necessarily involve the rejection of all of science. In fact, I have come to learn that science owes its very existence and rationale to the claims of Scripture. On the other hand, I have also learned that evolution is not the only claim of modern science which must be rejected if Scripture is assumed to be true.

It further quotes Richard Dawkins, who is not a fan of Kurt Wise's beliefs.

Edited to add,
Steven A. Austin:
The Central Pennsylvania Creation Fellowship website, https://www.centralpacreationfellowship.org/about-dr-austin,

About Dr. Steve Austin
Dr. Steve Austin is a Penn State grad and well-known geologist who is also a dedicated beekeeper. He has plenty to share with us about the complexity of the "simple" honeybee.

As a geologist, Dr. Austin has studied the geology of Mount St. Helens over the last 40 years. He is the host in the video "Mount St. Helens – Modern-Day Evidence for the World-Wide Flood"...

(my emphasis);

Also see "Grand Canyon, Creation, and the Global Flood", Steven A. Austin,
featured in "Young Earth-Old Earth: Debating the Geological Evidence", Steve Austin, Gregg Davidson and Kenn Wolgemuth, Christian Research Institute website 16 April, 2018 updated 22 May 2025 https://www.equip.org/articles/young-earth-old-earth-debating-the-geological-evidence/

 

[MapperGuy]

Afraid I must reject Gibson's Law.
He is just looking for a justification to reject any opinion other than his own.

"Since there are people on both sides they must all be wrong, but I am right.'

Young Earth Creationist geologists, few and far between. And their beliefs are always based on the Bible being literal history.
Creationist botanists? Had one for a teacher once, he was quiet about it, but would end long evolution descriptions with an "or so they say" under his breath.

Don't mistake small numbers of contrarians for large numbers in hiding

 

[JMartJr]

Don't mistake small numbers of contrarians for large numbers in hiding

To which I'd add, "and don't assume large numbers of believers with being right." If our friends in the YEC vineyards were right, and could martial the evidence, then they'd be right no matter how many or few of them there were. As it is, the evidence is against them, unless you resort to massive applications of Handwavium to explain away stuff that doesn't work in their model -- such as "God made the Universe already old, with light on the way to us from distant stars, and fossils pre-aged and set into the rocks..." Which is totally untestable, and opens up "science" to any sort of speculation to prove anything you'd like proven. (Invisible World Turtles or "We are all in a dream or a simulation," anybody?)

Sadly, at the moment we seem to be living through a period where expertise (or even competence, I sometimes fear) is under attack, and we're being urged to believe, not the folks who know something, but the folks whose scary stories give us the biggest adrenaline or dopamine hit. While being wary of Argument From Authority, it remains true that some folks know more about a lot of stuff than I know -- and I'd rather listen to them than to some know-nothing who has an exciting scary story about immigrants or chemtrails or reptilians..

 

[Ann K]

I'm not going to believe there's a living person with a geology degree who believes in "flood geology" or anything similar, unless I see evidence.

The thing that should be in sarcasm quotes there should be the word "believes". It's sometimes hard to distinguish a person who actually believes something from a person who has convinced himself that taking a certain position is the wisest* thing for him to do.
* financially, or socially, or regarding his position in the power dynamic of his environs.

One such is Dr. Andrew Snelling, who has written scholarly (and uncontroversial) articles on his geological research as well as off-the-wall creationist articles, especially on the geology of the Grand Canyon. Steve Austin and Tim Clarey are others; all three are affiliated with "Answers in Genesis". I don't know how one could judge the sincerity of their beliefs. I know Dr. Georgia Purdom (of AiG, but her degree is in genetics) has been quoted as saying that she majored in the subject for the purpose of looking for loopholes. My daughter's geology students over the years have included several who entered the field with the intention of disproving it.

 

[Scaramanga]

It's only a two page article but it might be useful.

Key Takeaways

• A little learning is a dangerous thing, and there is no one more confident than someone who has read just a little bit about a topic.
• Gibson's law states, "For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD." In other words, you can find an expert who will say just about anything.
• Not all disagreements are of equal weight. This is a key point that Pyrrho the Skeptic got wrong.

Source - https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/gibsons-law-hard-trust-experts/

It's not just 'experts' but often the use of axiomatic reasoning used by many such that no-one ever questions. Many fundamental axioms of thinking are self-contradictory.

To give but one example....

Consider the statement that the existence of laws of nature means there's no need for a God. Seems a reasonable enough assumption. But hold on. Would one not equally assume there was no God if there were no laws of nature ?

Or philosophically logical arguments about the universe being absurd. Which is itself absurd as how does objective logic then arise if the universe itself has no logical basis ?

My point being that it is at this fundamental axiomatic level that science gets undermined...and not at the precise and concise level of empirical measurements. Look again at almost any example of pseudo-science and you'll find someone using the shaky foundations of axiomatic underpinning to insert an alternate reality.

 

[Ann K]

My point being that it is at this fundamental axiomatic level that science gets undermined...and not at the precise and concise level of empirical measurements. Look again at almost any example of pseudo-science and you'll find someone using the shaky foundations of axiomatic underpinning to insert an alternate reality.

Presuppositionalist arguments include blanket statements such as "God is the foundation of knowledge", "you can't have logic without god", etc. They are frustrating to listen to because, as has been said, "You can't reason someone out of a position they haven't been reasoned into".

 

[Ann K]

An interesting article on the question:

By the end of the nineteenth century, conservative Christians generally accepted that there was no geological support for reading Noah's Flood as a globe-wrecking deluge and that natural revelations established by science should guide biblical interpretation. Even the original fundamentalists accepted geologic evidence that contradicted the view of a six-day creation followed by Noah's Flood as all there was to earth history (Numbers, 1993). But the forerunners of modern creationists chose to defend their preferred literal reading of scripture no matter what the rocks revealed. Dismissing the findings of geologists, they rejected reason in the name of faith. In this sense, modern creationism evolved in response to geological discoveries.

https://rock.geosociety.org/net/gsatoday/archive/22/11/article/i1052-5173-22-11-4.htm

 

[Scaramanga]

Presuppositionalist arguments include blanket statements such as "God is the foundation of knowledge", "you can't have logic without god", etc. They are frustrating to listen to because, as has been said, "You can't reason someone out of a position they haven't been reasoned into".

Sure, but it actually works both ways...and many experts make statements that have just as little real logical underpinning. Which is precisely why I increasingly give up on philosophical 'rationality' and go for empirical evidence. If XYZ exists, lets see the evidence for it rather than debate the logic of whether it 'can' exist.

 

[Scaramanga]

An interesting article on the question:

By the end of the nineteenth century, conservative Christians generally accepted that there was no geological support for reading Noah's Flood as a globe-wrecking deluge and that natural revelations established by science should guide biblical interpretation. Even the original fundamentalists accepted geologic evidence that contradicted the view of a six-day creation followed by Noah's Flood as all there was to earth history (Numbers, 1993). But the forerunners of modern creationists chose to defend their preferred literal reading of scripture no matter what the rocks revealed. Dismissing the findings of geologists, they rejected reason in the name of faith. In this sense, modern creationism evolved in response to geological discoveries.

https://rock.geosociety.org/net/gsatoday/archive/22/11/article/i1052-5173-22-11-4.htm

True to some extent, but it just ends up being a bit of a straw man. Most Christians these days, myself included, see the Genesis story as entirely allegorical....especially as its never really made clear just how long a 'day' is to God, and one has the bizarre situation of the first four 'days' occurring before the Sun even existed yet the Sun's position is what defines a normal day. I don't quite understand how the literalists can have missed that one !

As for Noah...there are widespread myths of a great flood. To the extent that I think it highly likely that something happened. Bear in mind that at the end of the last ice age the sea level rose 300 feet, possibly in quite a short time.

Also, given the fact that much ancient language does not even have English word equivalents, or vice versa, expecting God to have created a book that is unerringly translatable into every language in the world is quite a stretch.

 

[elvenwear]

To your great annoyance, the entire first page of search results validate the expert.

If only.

In his 2014 book

I think I see the problem here.

 

[John J.]

As for Noah...there are widespread myths of a great flood. To the extent that I think it highly likely that something happened

Many (not all) ancient population centres were sited on, or very near to, rivers, lakes or coastal deltas.
Even what we might consider relatively minor floods would have inundated the fields on whose produce they depended, and perhaps spoiled grain stores.
The homes of many people- maybe not the few stone or brick edifices of the powerful- would be destroyed.

It wouldn't surprise me if tales of once-in-a-century flood events would persist from great-grandparents to great-grandchildren in these locations, sometimes surviving long enough to be written into the local mythos.

There is no archaeological evidence of a rapid, regional, catastrophic flood in the levant in the past few thousand years, and the large number of archaeological sites in the region- and evidence that the Jericho area, in a valley of the river Jordan, has been continuously inhabited since c. 9500 - 9000 BC- suggests that such a flood hasn't occurred since at least the development of agriculture.
Wikipedia, Jericho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho

 

[Mendel]

To your great annoyance, the entire first page of search results validate the expert.

If only.

In his 2014 book

I think I see the problem here.

yep, should've searched on youtube

the existence of filter bubbles/echo chambers means people can get exposed to biased data: if the majority of experts in your newsfeed confirm something, you're not going to realize they're a minority unless you do the work. And if you've the joined the cult who uses the abbreviation "MSM", you've cut yourself off from most sources that could penetrate that filter bubble.

 

[FatPhil]

Afraid I must reject Gibson's Law.
He is just looking for a justification to reject any opinion other than his own.

"Since there are people on both sides they must all be wrong, but I am right.'

Young Earth Creationist geologists, few and far between. And their beliefs are always based on the Bible being literal history.
Creationist botanists? Had one for a teacher once, he was quiet about it, but would end long evolution descriptions with an "or so they say" under his breath.

Don't mistake small numbers of contrarians for large numbers in hiding

I've known a physics Ph.D. working at NASA JPL on extraterrestrial rovers who was an ardent young earth creationist.
The ability to admit absurd ideas into your thought patterns doesn't seem that uncorrelated with the ability to put up baffles protecting the smart bit of your brain and the woo bit of your brain from each other.

 

[Gary C]

I can see Gibson's Law as applicable in settings where arguments are not settled by empirical evidence, reproduceable results, or theories that have proven to have reliable predictive value, i.e. Social Media, "Reality" TV, and most court rooms. Most of the public arguments I observe are decided by the most effective use of rhetoric, not the most rigorous logic.

 

[Ann K]

Afraid I must reject Gibson's Law.
He is just looking for a justification to reject any opinion other than his own.

I agree completely. "Gibson's Law" smacks unpleasantly of "both-siderism", an intellectually lazy inability (or a refusal) to engage one's critical thinking faculty to distinguish between opposing positions.

 

[JMartJr]

I suppose you could read it as "you can always find an 'expert' to say what you want, so eschew Argument From Authority and actually think about and understand stuff as you form opinions." Taking it that way, I'm dkwn with it...

 

[Mendel]

I suppose you could read it as "you can always find an 'expert' to say what you want, so eschew Argument From Authority and actually think about and understand stuff as you form opinions." Taking it that way, I'm dkwn with it...

"Understand the experts!" is better than "disregard the experts!".

 

[JMartJr]

Out of sincere curiosity, I'm not chapped or anything but would like to understand, so: @Mendel when you disagree with the post two above, are you disagreeing that it could be taken that way, or with being down with it IF taken that way, or some third option?

 

[Mendel]

Out of sincere curiosity, I'm not chapped or anything but would like to understand, so: @Mendel when you disagree with the post two above, are you disagreeing that it could be taken that way, or with being down with it IF taken that way, or some third option?

I think most people would understand the original (and maybe also your take) as "disregard the experts", and then go with what they feel or want. For example, they might say "every food is unhealthy in some way, might as well eat what I like".
And even your "think about it" just feels like "do your own research", which often ends up in the same place, because bias is human.

The point of the bigthink article is not to disregard authority, but to figure out which authorities are worth regarding.
Find out who's respected in their field, and go with that.

You can get to a situation where experts differ, and then that's tough, but when you get a lone crackpot, or maybe a forensic dentist doing paleobiology, and the actual experts are disagreeing, the smart choice is pretty obvious. You don't need to understand paleobiology yourself and become able to identify bones. Just go with what all the actual mummy experts say.

Because often, both sides are not equal, even if the side you like says they are.

So don't do your own research.
The experts have already done the research, all you need to do is understand it enough to see what makes the most sense.

 

[JMartJr]

The point of the bigthink article is not to disregard authority, but to figure out which authorities are worth regarding.
Find out who's respected in their field, and go with that.

I'd except that as sufficiently close to what I was trying to express to be completely acceptable on my end. Thanks for the reply!

You can get to a situation where experts differ, and then that's tough, but when you get a lone crackpot, or maybe a forensic dentist doing paleobiology, and the actual experts are disagreeing, the smart choice is pretty obvious. You don't need to understand paleobiology yourself and become able to identify bones. Just go with what all the actual mummy experts say.

Because often, both sides are not equal, even if the side you like says they are.

No objections from me on any of that!

 

[John J.]

Having belatedly read the article ("belatedly" as in a few minutes ago

) posted in the OP by @Gary C,
"How "Gibson's law" makes it hard to trust experts", https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/gibsons-law-hard-trust-experts/,
I don't think author Jonny Thomson is saying anything controversial, at least from the viewpoint of most sceptics or people who believe in gathering and assessing reliable evidence to determine objective facts (or likely explanations).

Thomson is not saying Gibson's law is a good thing, just that it describes the way things sometimes are
(and it clearly isn't an inviolable law of nature, more a semi-humorous aphorism with a hint of truth, a bit like Murphy's law or Parkinson's law).

In essence: If you find a suitably-qualified person who supports a specific view or finding based on evidence, someone will be able to find another (at least nominally) qualified person who holds an opposing view and/or doesn't accept that finding.

Thomson doesn't argue that the views of the "...equal and opposite PhD" are equally valid, and doesn't imply that Gibson's law says that. Thomson suggests that the "equal and opposite" viewpoint might be found by cherry-picking the published literature, and clearly has a negative view of this:

Let's say you meet an expert in some area, and they present a fact or argument that you simply cannot tolerate. Fuming, but unable to articulate your counterargument, you go home to Google the expert's position. To your great annoyance, the entire first page of search results validate the expert. You still hunt, determined to be right. Nestled in the forgotten abyss of Google's page 4, you find Dr. Clutching Straws. You drag out Dr. Straws whenever you can.

We've seen in earlier posts that there are people with PhDs in archaeology and palaeontology who believe in the literal truth of Noah's flood and the Earth being just a few thousand years old, who are happy with their views being publicised.
Garry Nolan has a professorship in pathology at Stanford University, which in terms of scientific credentials is impressive, and is often quoted / cited by those who believe, like him, that the Earth is being visited by extraterrestrials (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Nolan).

For the purposes of Gibson's law, Nolan might be taken as an "equal and opposite PhD" to sceptical interpreters of the UFO scene by many people- both UFO enthusiasts and people who haven't any great interest in, or knowledge, of the UFO phenomenon and its lack of evidence for ETI craft- because of his credentials.
If people without much knowledge of Ufology were asked to assess the likelihood of Earth being visited by ETI, Gibson's law might apply: For any likely sceptical viewpoint given, hypothetically Garry Nolan's views might be given equal weight- he's a respected scientist who firmly holds beliefs about ETI visitation.

I found a paper which quotes "For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD", and it is clear from the context that the authors don't believe the "opposite" PhDs in the field that they discuss (health historians documenting pathology in connection with tobacco products) have equally valid (or morally justifiable) beliefs:

There is a saying in American public-relations circles that for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD, but when big money is at stake, there appear to be asymmetries in what kind of expertise gets heard. The tobacco industry has usually been able to outspend its opponents, which can be seen even in the number of historians thus far arrayed in the tobacco trials. As of February, 2004, around 30 professional historians have testified for the defence [in support of tobacco companies, John J.] in such cases, whereas only two have appeared on the stand for the plaintiffs [people alleging they were harmed by smoking. John J.]

"Should medical historians be working for the tobacco industry?", Robert N. Proctor, 2005 The Lancet 363 (9416) link to Lancet webpage publishing details and part introduction only; full text viewable here, History News Network website https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/should-historians-be-working-for-the-tobacco-indus

 

[Mendel]

I'd except that as sufficiently close to what I was trying to express to be completely acceptable on my end. Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, it's really the "eschew argument from authority" that I disagreed with.
I really like to argue from authority, but sometimes you need to argue why that authority is worth listening to.
If you pick the right experts, I find I can usually out-argue the "independent thinker".

 

[JMartJr]

I really like to argue from authority,

Oh, Lord, you and me both !

but sometimes you need to argue why that authority is worth listening to.

Sure -- which is what I'd intend by "eschew Argument from Authority," beware the "authority" that ain't one, at least on the question under discussion. The point is not the sense of authority, the impressive degrees or irrelevent knowledge. rather it's whether they actually know what the &^$# they're authoritizing about!

 

[FatPhil]

"Understand the experts!" is better than "disregard the experts!".

@JMartJr put his "experts" in quotes - that's usually not a particularly positive imputation, the word shouldn't just be taken at face value. The difficulty is in understanding how much expertise those who have some justification to apply that label to themselves - be it thought academic, professional, or even hobbyist experience - actually have. "Has label" doesn't count, "has earnt label" does. The ones who have earnt the labels are the ones who are able to show the data and demonstrate the how the data supports their conclusions.

We're all basically circling the typical "appeal to authority discussion", we just seem to be out of phase. Even wikipedia can't get its story straight when it comes to that discussion.
Described this way:

An argument from authority[a] is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure (or figures) who lacks relevant expertise is used as evidence to support an argument.[1]

Yet with this as an exemplar:

Person(s) A claims that X is true.
Person(s) A is an expert in the field concerning X.
Therefore, X should be believed.[21]

Emfarsesis mine. I suspect you'll get nearly as many nuances about what the fallacy really is as there are "philosophers" to ponder the issue. >facepalm emoji<

 

[Mendel]

Article:

An argument from authority refers to two kinds of arguments:

1. A non-fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of one or more authoritative source(s), whose opinions are likely to be true on the relevant issue. Notably, insofar as the authorities in question are, indeed, experts on the issue in question, their opinion provides strong inductive support for the conclusion: It makes the conclusion likely to be true, not necessarily true. As such, an argument from authority can only strongly suggest what is true — not prove it.
2. A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative. Sources could be non-authoritative because of their disagreement with consensus on the issue, their non-expertise in the relevant issue, or a number of other issues.

Correct uses of argument from authority involve deferred justification: Insofar as your claim accords with what experts on the issue believe, then your claim is also supported by the evidence the experts are relying on, even if you may not yourself be aware of what that evidence in fact is.

In order to be fallacious, the argument must appeal to and treat as authoritative people who lack relevant qualifications or whose qualification is in an irrelevant field or a field that is irrelevant to the argument at hand.

Source: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

 

[elvenwear]

I agree completely.

But that just proves Gibson's theory.

 

[John J.]

But that just proves Gibson's theory.

I think Gibson's law is more of an adage, or a rule-of-thumb, than a 'real' law.

A bit like Murphy's law, "what can go wrong will go wrong". But when we knock a piece of buttered toast off the edge of the table, it doesn't always land butter-side down on the carpet (it just seems like it does).

The statement that "for each [opinion held by a person with a] PhD there is an equal and opposite [opinion etc.] PhD" doesn't hold true if "equal and opposite" is interpreted as "equally valid" or "equally likely to be right".
I think this is what Jonny Thomson was saying in the Big Think article that started this discussion.
One of his key takeaways is

Not all disagreements are of equal weight. This is a key point that Pyrrho the Skeptic got wrong.

As far as I understand, Pyrrho, a Greek philosopher c. 360-270 BC, taught that where an issue couldn't be resolved, the wise person should gather opinions from all sides but remain in a state of non-judgemental indecisiveness*, as it's not possible to determine which argument is right:

Writing over 550 years later, Eusebius quoted a quote of Pyrrho saying

The things themselves are equally indifferent, and unstable, and indeterminate, and therefore neither our senses nor our opinions are either true or false. For this reason then we must not trust them, but be without opinions, and without bias, and without wavering, saying of every single thing that it no more is than is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not.

Wikipedia, Pyrrho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho, which also says

One method Pyrrhonists use to suspend judgment is to gather arguments on both sides of the disputed issue, continuing to gather arguments such that the arguments have the property of isostheneia (equal strength). This leads the Pyrrhonist to the conclusion that there is an unresolvable disagreement on the topic, and so the appropriate reaction is to suspend judgement.

But, as others have said elsewhere on this forum, lots of dubious evidence doesn't add up to strong evidence. You can keep collecting cowpats, but they all remain cowpats. Pyrrho's approach to scientific disagreements would be something like "all those views are equally valid"; in the real world this gets us nowhere.

Taken absolutely literally, Gibson's law might be seen as supporting Pyrrho's teaching, but I don't think it was meant to be understood in that way: It's just an aphorism that cautions, "For every person who puts forward a rational theory or explanation based on evidence, you'll be able to find someone, ostensibly equally qualified, who disagrees".

Gibson's law doesn't (I think) imply two conflicting views are equally valid, just that, faced with two different interpretations of evidence from "authoritative" sources, many people might view them as equally valid.

In public relations, and in the practice of law, Gibson's law holds that "For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD." The term specifically refers to the conflict between testimony of expert witnesses called by opposing parties in a trial under an adversarial system of justice.

"Gibson's law", Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson's_law

Suppose there's a trial of someone accused of poisoning "A". "A" was found to have a certain level of toxin "X" in their blood. An expert witness for the defence says, citing research, this isn't an unusual level of toxin "X" to be found in the bloodstream of someone with "A"'s background and lifestyle. The prosecution's expert witness, also citing the literature, claims that the levels of "X" can only be explained by deliberate poisoning.
The jurors, none of whom are scientists or have medical training, have two conflicting accounts that seem equally valid.

This would be an illustration of Gibson's law- but Gibson's law isn't saying both experts are equally right.

___________________________________________________________________________
* The phrase "blissful ignorance" came to mind while I was typing this.

 

[Mendel]

Taken absolutely literally, Gibson's law might be seen as supporting Pyrrho's teaching, but I don't think it was meant to be understood in that way: It's just an aphorism that cautions, "For every person who puts forward a rational theory or explanation based on evidence, you'll be able to find someone, ostensibly equally qualified, who disagrees".

I think that's a good way to look at it.
Because that means you can find a disagreement even on clear-cut, one-sided issues. It means we shouldn't be surprised there's an expert who says the Earth is flat. Any issue can be painted as two-sided, even if it's really not.

 

[Ann K]

It's just an aphorism that cautions, "For every person who puts forward a rational theory or explanation based on evidence, you'll be able to find someone, ostensibly equally qualified, who disagrees".

But the moment that other person pulls out a known falsehood and presents it as evidence, that's time to scratch him off your list of "equally qualified" experts.

 

[elvenwear]

I think Gibson's law is more of an adage, or a rule-of-thumb, than a 'real' law.

I was joking. I think Gibson's law can easily be an ally of circular reasoning.

But the moment that other person pulls out a known falsehood and presents it as evidence, that's time to scratch him off your list of "equally qualified" experts.

Gibson should have worded this more carefully, but I think he was writing for a pre-modern algorithm era. He appears to have been writing about google in 2014, not Facebook of 2015-2016 or Musk's Twitter. In order to be published in 2014, he would have had to conceive of, sell to a publisher and write his book quite a while before 2014.

If he'd written the same thing now, he would have written probably more about how modern social media algorithms are heavily biased to assist confirmation bias right up front, rather than writing about people needing to go through four pages to find confirmation. The book was probably out of date before it was printed.

 

[taurusclover21]

Presuppositionalist arguments include blanket statements such as "God is the foundation of knowledge", "you can't have logic without god", etc. They are frustrating to listen to because, as has been said, "You can't reason someone out of a position they haven't been reasoned into".

Post #331797 in "Pro News Camera Man Captures Orb in Sky in Mendham, New Jersey (Out of Focus Point of Light)"

What's not created with reason can't be defeated with reason.

 

[Gary C]

... Suppose there's a trial of someone accused of poisoning "A". "A" was found to have a certain level of toxin "X" in their blood. An expert witness for the defence says, citing research, this isn't an unusual level of toxin "X" to be found in the bloodstream of someone with "A"'s background and lifestyle. The prosecution's expert witness, also citing the literature, claims that the levels of "X" can only be explained by deliberate poisoning.
The jurors, none of whom are scientists or have medical training, have two conflicting accounts that seem equally valid....

That's pretty much were I was going with this topic.

In 1825 I would most likely have been a farmer. A jury of my peers would have been composed primarily of farmers. The judge and mostly likely both attorneys could be expected to have litigated many cases involving farmers, farm land, live stock, and commodities. Any witness called to give expert testimony in a case related to farming had better have his ducks in order.

In 2025 I'm a retired analyst living outside Washington, DC. A jury is now likely to be composed of retail workers, contractors, bureaucrats, software engineers, biochemists, etc. ... The case before us could involve anything from running an illegal pet store to selling biological weapons.

I suspect Gibson's Law explains more that a few of the idiosyncrasies of modern western society.