The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. It seems precarious to apply different levels of scrutiny to claims based on such a basis.
> The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions.
That is what extraordinary means: that it violates our previous experiences, that it is "out of the ordinary". Human beings navigate reality based on previous experience, and most of the time it serves us really well.
Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist, for example. That doesn't make it true, but it's a reasonable assumption to start at, because the vast majority of human beings (not all) have not had an experience involving extraterrestrials, nor do they trust another human being who has (i.e. secondary confirmation): so when a third party claims that this has happened to them, it's hard to take in, because it's "extraordinary".
The statement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is nothing but an acknowledgement of the fact that human beings work this way, and that even though it's not a fail-safe way to reason, chances are that you'll end up with a correct conclusion more often than if you simply start every reasoning with "we have no idea what is true".
Primary confirmation of something you can observe or reproduce, or secondary confirmation of the same via someone you trust, are the two primary ways we reason about what we believe, because we are social creatures. In my opinion, when you go down the path of equating all secondary confirmations with each-other, disregarding expertise, consensus, or anything else that might give weight to that secondary opinion because "you can't trust anything anyway", I believe that you are walking down a dangerous and anti-intellectual route, and that this is the reason behind many of the things that are dividing societies worldwide today.
Obviously I'm not saying an expert is correct by definition, nor am I saying that the majority is always right, but both of those statements are more true than false: no wonder that when you flip those statements around, you end up with some "kooky" conclusions.
> Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist
See, the problem is that you could easily be wrong about what the majority of others believe. And in fact you are wrong on this point (at least for Americans) [1].
It's very easy to get the wrong idea about what the majority believes, due to something called the majority illusion [2]. A broadcast vocal minority can drown out the true majority.
Supposing you could identify the majority opinion, it certainly does not make it the truth, and counter claims are not by definition "extraordinarily" simply because they are the minority opinion. Science and truth are not determined by vote. 81% of Americans believe in god [3]. Does that make it an extraordinary claim that god does not exist?
> That is what extraordinary means: that it violates our previous experiences, that it is "out of the ordinary". Human beings navigate reality based on previous experience, and most of the time it serves us really well.
Hence, two opposing claims are both necessarily extraordinary when both parts disagree, or when each claim violates the other part experiences.
If your thought example is that only two human beings exist in the world, then yes, both claims are equally extraordinary.
But since the world is not composed of two people, if one person fervently believes that the moon is made out of cheese and the rest of humanity does not, the anti-cheesers are not extraordinary, and the singular cheeser would likely be classified as mentally ill.
Have people who have been factually correct historically been classified as mentally ill, heretics and the like? Yes. But that doesn’t mean you should visit a mental institution to get the “truth” behind the invasion of Ukraine.
> But since the world is not composed of two people, if one person fervently believes that the moon is made out of cheese and the rest of humanity does not, the anti-cheesers are not extraordinary, and the singular cheeser would likely be classified as mentally ill.
> Yes. But that doesn’t mean you should visit a mental institution to get the “truth” behind the invasion of Ukraine.
Good, then if the majority is right we just have to ask what the world thinks about the situation in Ukraine. Currently the large majority of the world disagrees with the western point of view. India is not siding with the west, neither does China, neither does Africa or South America.
What you're saying sounds completely uncontroversial[1] to me, but there are several claims in here that are impossible or really difficult to validate. I see claims like this a lot, and they are often of the shape "most people x" or "the vast majority of x y".
The only time that these claims can be anything other than gut feelings is the case where the speaker is somehow aware of all of the events in the set. Something like "I took 100 samples and 99 of them met the conditions".
This is going to seem pedantic, and I think you'll get a pass from people with the same preconceptions who don't habitually ask "do I really know this?".
> Most people have a preconception that aliens do not exist, for example.
Testable hypothesis, and one I might assume myself. Is it true? Realistically, I have no clue, and I have no reasonable way to judge whether you do either.
> the vast majority of human beings (not all) have not had an experience involving extraterrestrials, nor do they trust another human being who has
Same as above. I think it's incredibly difficult to know much of anything specific about "the vast majority of human beings". And then the ambiguity on what constitutes "the vast majority" makes it more of a quagmire. There are billions of us. A fraction of a percent is vast. The vast majority might as well be infinity when it comes to our ability to know things about it.
Would you agree? I think these claims would be much more robust if you put some constraints on them: ie the vast majority of people in my social circles/media consumption that I trust to have shown me what they really believe. But you'd sound a little kooky if you said that, and it wouldn't be that powerful of a statement.
All that said, I believe your conclusions. I just have a fascination with picking at people's (and my own) confidence in uncontroversial claims that are hard to substantiate.
[1] My favorite types of things to poke at, which probably does make me a bit of a kook.
Edit: I have tried to eliminate "most people x" and "the vast majority of x y" from most of what I write for these reasons. It still comes out inadvertently sometimes.
Edit2:I missed one: "most of the time it serves us really well". Same comment.
The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. It seems precarious to apply different levels of scrutiny to claims based on such a basis.