Opening page…
Knowledge
When your equal disagrees
Someone as informed, careful, and honest as you sees the same evidence and reaches the opposite conclusion. How much confidence should you lose?
Disagreement can be evidence about your own fallibility. Decide when standing your ground is reasonable and when it becomes special pleading.
Your answer
Nearby questions5
- You glance at a clock that stopped yesterday. By luck, it shows the correct time now. You believe it—and you are right. Do you know the time?
- How can you search for something if you don't already know what it is — and if you do know, what is left to find?
- You can sound exactly like you understand something without understanding it — and now the sounding is free while the understanding stays expensive. If no one can tell them apart, which one survives?
- When should you trust an answer you cannot check yourself — from an expert, a book or a machine?
- What could convince you that you are awake rather than dreaming? Could that same evidence appear inside a dream?