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What is interesting is that a non expert in the field feels qualified to judge the motivations of the experts. Consider that your opinion is not all on the sam
by skh 8y ago
What is interesting is that a non expert in the field feels qualified to judge the motivations of the experts. Consider that your opinion is not all on the same level of credence as that of the experts and should not be given anywhere near the same level of consideration. Perhaps the phrasing has changed not because of some PR style salesmanship but rather because the people with expertise no longer have any doubts.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoI don't buy arguments from authority, sorry. You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too... Agreeing with me on the phrasing while simultaneously justifying it.
- skh 8y agoThe argumentative fallacy is called the fallacy of the false appeal to authority. For instance citing a person's Ph.D. in English literature as a reason to believe their statements on quantum mechanics is an example of fallacious reasoning. Referring to the statements about quantum mechanics of an expert in quantum mechanics is not fallacious reasoning. You do buy arguments from authority every time you listen to your doctor's advice regarding your health. It’s perfectly reasonable to listen to consensus expert opinions on climate change and if you think they have changed their phrasing over the years by assuming the sale it’s because they no longer have doubts about the cause of climate change.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoThe consensus of the Supreme Court of the United States was that Black people were not legally the same as Whites. Your argument about doctor's advice undermines your point: are eggs healthy to eat, or not? Should a good daily diet include 6 or more servings of wheat and carbs? In both cases the consensus was strongly expressed and later debunked...
- skh 8y agoYou appear to be deliberately misinterpreting the point I made. You made a claim to not buying arguments made from authority and I pointed out that you do buy some arguments made from authority. You do so every time you listen to your doctor's advice regarding your healh. Your claim about not buying arguments made from authority is false. Your understanding of the argumentative fallacy of the false appeal to authority is false. Furthermore your conclusion about the point I made is false. Consider this. Experts sometimes get things wrong. Their consensus opinions though are the best we can go by since they have, by definition, the most knowledge on a particular subject. So non experts are left with the cruel reality that even though expert opinions are the best available on a given subject that opinion could still be wrong. In any event it is not an argumentative fallacy to cite experts and that is what I said.
- DoctorOetker 8y agoso this is a flagged comment near the top, from the half I can read I can only assume I too would disagree with the poster, but is it really necessary to "protect" me from this information? To the extent that that it gets many downvotes (greyed out) it seems the audience does not need protection, so why censor? I probably would prefer the comment to just state "glagged" but in a way that I can click it to reveal the flagged message...
- eropple 8y agoYou can turn on showdead in your profile to see flagged posts. It's not a conspiracy.
- DoctorOetker 8y agothanks for pointing this out, this is not evident on its own... many discussion platforms have some form of censorship so it is not unnatural to assume an unclickable "flagged" to be censored.
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
- pokemongoaway 8y agoWhat's crazy is the censorship here on HN. You all think Dyson is a charlatan too? He doesn't believe the hype either... You could get a Nobel price scientist on here arguing a point and you would obviously still censor him because the admins have made up their minds to align themselves with leftism. Unfortunately I cannot reply to the OP because they killed his comment :(