Thread by @SamoBurja

Grounding intellectual trust remains an unsolved problem.

1/10

As individuals we cannot perform all the experiments or check all the mathematical proofs ourselves. We neither have time nor is it economically or socially viable.

2/10

If we rely on institutions to preform experiments or check proofs for us, this scarcity of time is reduced to a problem to one of collaborative commons. But managing collaborative commons is an unsolved problem as well!

3/10

How do you successfully evaluate the quality of epistemic commons without resorting to asking the epistemic commons?

4/10

Social rewards such as prestige and material rewards such as funding don't flow to institutions for their truth seeking. When this happens it seems at best a happy coincidence rather than a natural affinity.

5/10

Yet in practice airplanes do fly (technology demonstrates at least practical if not theoretical knowledge beyond refutation. And wars are fought, and sometimes won, this demonstrates the ability to coordinate people towards outcomes.

6/10

And in so far as I have delved into physics I was able to perform some of the experiments myself.

7/10

All these things constitute a clear floor on the epistemic commons in particular domains. There must be drivers of epistemic health in them at least. It is not however clear we understand these drivers very well.

8/10

Investigating the philosophy of science, or even the social science of science shows a landscape that has not yet clustered on a clear validated paradigm.

9/10

A new field is needed: Institutional epistemology

10/10