Though, what if I consider the fact that many people have independently reached a certain belief to itself be evidence that that belief might be true?
that is a form of evidence. if people’s beliefs all had some truly-independent probability of being correct, then in a large society it would become extreme evidence for any belief that >50% of people have, but it’s not actually true that people’s beliefs are independent.
human minds are similar, and human cultural environments are similar. often people’s conclusions aren’t actually independent, and often they’re not actually conclusions but are unquestioned beliefs internalized from their environment (parents, peers, etc). often people make the same logical mistakes, because they are similar entities (humans).
you still have to reason about that premise, “peoples conclusions about <subject> are independent”, as you would any other belief.
and there are known ways large groups of humans can internalize the same beliefs, with detectable signs like ‘becoming angry when the idea is questioned’.
(maybe usually humans will be right, because most beliefs are about low level mundane things like ‘it will be day tomorrow’. but the cases where we’d like to have such a prior are exactly those non-mundane special cases where human consensus can easily be wrong.)
that is a form of evidence. if people’s beliefs all had some truly-independent probability of being correct, then in a large society it would become extreme evidence for any belief that >50% of people have, but it’s not actually true that people’s beliefs are independent.
human minds are similar, and human cultural environments are similar. often people’s conclusions aren’t actually independent, and often they’re not actually conclusions but are unquestioned beliefs internalized from their environment (parents, peers, etc). often people make the same logical mistakes, because they are similar entities (humans).
you still have to reason about that premise, “peoples conclusions about <subject> are independent”, as you would any other belief.
and there are known ways large groups of humans can internalize the same beliefs, with detectable signs like ‘becoming angry when the idea is questioned’.
(maybe usually humans will be right, because most beliefs are about low level mundane things like ‘it will be day tomorrow’. but the cases where we’d like to have such a prior are exactly those non-mundane special cases where human consensus can easily be wrong.)