Belief polarization, misinformation, and distrust in scientific expertise are on the rise in democracies across the globe. These worrying trends have been accompanied by some new, or at least newly appropriated, phrases to describe them. The spread of misinformation is… Read More ›
I appreciate the opportunity to continue this conversation on how non-experts might identify and, thereby, come to trust experts. While so much of contemporary philosophical discussion might be called destructive—attempts to defeat an “opponent’s” claims through counterexample—this forum has been… Read More ›
In their responses to my article “Epistemically Pernicious Groups and the Groupstrapping Problem” (Boyd 2018), Bert Baumgaertner (“Groupstrapping, Boostrapping, and Oops-strapping: A Reply to Boyd”) and C. Thi Nguyen (“Group-strapping, Bubble, or Echo Chamber?”) have raised interesting questions and opened… Read More ›
Here’s what we’re all desperately trying to explain: certain groups seem to have a wildly over-inflated devotion to their beliefs. Such groups seem to flourish online. Their members seem to resist very good contrary evidence, and to slowly become more… Read More ›