Consilience

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What is consilience?

Consilience is the concept that evidence from independent and uncorrelated sources can converge to create stronger conclusions.  It’s commonly described as requiring independent methods of measurement.  A simple example is the difference between measuring the distance between two objects with a laser and a tape measure.  If the two measurements are the same you can have a higher degree of confidence the measurement is correct.  If they are not in agreement, the average of the two is your best best.  Adding additional forms of measurement would further increase confidence in the accuracy.

This example is simple enough and probably sounds like overkill.  Why would you measure the living room with more than one form of measurement?  The facts are you wouldn’t.  Units of measure are standardized and reliable which creates a high degree of certainty in your result.  But there’s more to the story.

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