> If the person proposing the idea is reasonable, then they know how implausible it sounds. And yet they're proposing it anyway. That suggests they know something you don't. And if they have deep domain expertise, that's probably the source of it.
If a domain expert suggests a radical idea, by mere statistics, I should treat that radical suggestion with higher confidence than if a non-expert suggested the same idea. For example, a theoretical physicist talking about a flat earth in the context of 2D quantum gravity compared to a fanatic talking about how the earth is flat on YouTube. Of course, I'm not going to immediately dismiss Lee Smolin, but I might dismiss a random YouTuber talking about it because they are not a domain expert. This, I believe is at least somewhat related to Gell-Mann Amnesia, no?
I am not an expert, but this sounds related to Gell-Mann Amnesia. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
If a domain expert suggests a radical idea, by mere statistics, I should treat that radical suggestion with higher confidence than if a non-expert suggested the same idea. For example, a theoretical physicist talking about a flat earth in the context of 2D quantum gravity compared to a fanatic talking about how the earth is flat on YouTube. Of course, I'm not going to immediately dismiss Lee Smolin, but I might dismiss a random YouTuber talking about it because they are not a domain expert. This, I believe is at least somewhat related to Gell-Mann Amnesia, no?