When experts disagree

[tomdemaine]

I saw this post on another forum. I'm interested in this boards view.

"If two highly intelligent people who are experts in their field wildly disagree on a particular issue then the truth is more likely to lie somewhere in the middle than at one of the two extremes assuming that both are telling the truth about their opinions"

Agree or disagree and why?

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
I saw this post on another forum. I'm interested in this boards view.

"If two highly intelligent people who are experts in their field wildly disagree on a particular issue then the truth is more likely to lie somewhere in the middle than at one of the two extremes assuming that both are telling the truth about their opinions"

Agree or disagree and why?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is clearly nonsense. Often there will be no meaningful concept of in "truth ... [lying] somewhere in the middle".

[vhawk01]

If DS thinks he is getting 5:1 on a call, and Malmuth think he is getting 3:1 on a call, obviously they are really getting 4:1.

[Skoob]

The issue at hand would have to be some sort of unproven hypothesis. This doesn't work with odds in a HE game.

And then, there would have to be a large amount of subjectivity to the issue for "experts" to be so polarized.

I think we need an example of a "particular issue" to weigh in on this one.

[arahant]

depends on the number of variables in the decision. For a question with a small number of binary variables, the result is likely to be closer to one end or the other. For complex decisions where there is disagreement on a number of underlying assumptions, the true answer is likelier to fall in between.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
I saw this post on another forum. I'm interested in this boards view.

"If two highly intelligent people who are experts in their field wildly disagree on a particular issue then the truth is more likely to lie somewhere in the middle than at one of the two extremes assuming that both are telling the truth about their opinions"

Agree or disagree and why?

[/ QUOTE ]

Disagree. In fact, when there are competing hypotheses typically one ends up being "more correct" than the others. A lot of what we consider common knowledge now was once fringe stuff about which experts wildly disagreed.

In the cases where no hypotheses are valid, I think it's more likely that the truth will come from way out of left field than that it will lie between them all.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
I saw this post on another forum. I'm interested in this boards view.

"If two highly intelligent people who are experts in their field wildly disagree on a particular issue then the truth is more likely to lie somewhere in the middle than at one of the two extremes assuming that both are telling the truth about their opinions"

Agree or disagree and why?

[/ QUOTE ]

Disagree. 'Experts' that far apart must be in a fair amount of uncharted territory and there is no reason the truth can't be solely with one of them or with neither of them but in the latter case it could be in any area - including far outside their spread. The least likely place would be in the middle ( for a few reasons ... some obvious).

luckyme

[DougShrapnel]

I've been saying this for a long time. I'am fairly suprised that no one seems to agree with it. I don't mean in cases where the middle is excluded from the nature of the problem, but in complex issues, say of nature v nuture, captilism vs socialism, pro-life v pro-choice. The reason is that 2 experts shouldn't come to different conclusions, so there is more to the problem then they each are using. If they are intelligent and experts in there feild under discussion, I assume an obvious error isn't being made, there is very little room for 1 of them to be utterly wrong.

Also any particular movement is reactionary to the one before it. And because of that reactionary aspect it typically overstears the "correct" solution.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't mean in cases where the middle is excluded from the nature of the problem, but in complex issues, say of nature v nuture, captilism vs socialism, pro-life v pro-choice.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haven't you stumbled into examples where the answer will have to be in the middle or there is no 'the' answer? But, where are there two 'experts in the field' in those topics? Perhaps in nature-nuture, but that's one where the middle is the only other option unless we accept "the debil made me do it".

Einstein vs Bohr ... what was the middle ground the answer turned out to be in? Or geologists in the plate tectonics debate?

The great debates often occur at a paradigm shift. Perhaps string theory is a current one .

luckyme

[MaxWeiss]

[ QUOTE ]
depends on the number of variables in the decision. For a question with a small number of binary variables, the result is likely to be closer to one end or the other. For complex decisions where there is disagreement on a number of underlying assumptions, the true answer is likelier to fall in between.

[/ QUOTE ]