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Often it comes down to trust, whether that's rational or not. Take climate change. The topic is too involved for most non-scientists to absorb enough to come to
by tabtab 8y ago
Often it comes down to trust, whether that's rational or not. Take climate change. The topic is too involved for most non-scientists to absorb enough to come to an informed decision on their own. Therefore, unless one invests boatloads of time, they must rely on expert opinion for much of their conclusion.
Therefore, climate-change deniers ask if one should trust scientists over their favorite political pundits or favorite CEO's. There are enough incidents of scientists being biased based on funding source to have some skepticism.
When I reply, "Don't pundits and CEO's have similar financial biases"?
Deniers typically respond something like, "Sure, so I have to rely on my gut, and my gut gives them more credit than it gives to scientists. Most scientists come from liberal-leaning universities."
- parsnips 8y agoAt a way to fully illustrate the OP's point.
- tabtab 8y agoThe title is misleading then. Ultimately complex topics probably require trust regardless, unless one can spend a lot of time on them. I once debated about whether one can clearly determine the Earth is not flat without relying on experts. I found alternative models for just about every home-spun experiment. Maybe with really good weather and carefully crafted survey tools one could rule out the alternative models, but again that's a lot of time (at least for the middle-ages; which is where we set our thought experiment. No Amazon.com back then).
- thethirdone 8y ago> I found alternative models for just about every home-spun experiment. I have put thought into how to prove a round earth and all the models of a flat earth I have seen cannot stand up to basic observations of the sun, moon and stars (over the course of one year from a single location). I would be very interested to in an alternative model that can account for astronomical phenomena that are easily perceived with the unaided eye.
- tabtab 8y agoI think one is biased by knowing the answer ahead of time. Pick one of your favorite "home proofs" and we can play around with that one.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago> without relying on experts This does not fly with most complex disciplines where it takes decades to become proficient. But relying VS not-relying on experts is a false dichotomy. You can choose experts to trust, as rationally as possible.
- tabtab 8y agoI'll reword it this way: the more you know, the less you have to rely on experts, or at least the degree decreases. But the practical angle of this is that one will still have to heavily rely on experts until they reach a non-trivial point in their education/study of the topic. It's not realistic that the average person master every controversial topic in order to vote fully informed.
- oldprogrammer2 8y agoIn the spirit of making the best argument for an opposing viewpoint, I think the better argument that would be made is that climate science is the only scientific discipline that seems predisposed to a certain, predicted outcome. The argument is made that facts are selected or engineered to support a negative outcome because those producing the science already deeply believe in a particular truth and inject that bias into their work. Any scientist seeking to prove otherwise is silenced or ridiculed by the majority, who happen to be true believers. It only takes a few dissenting voices or a few cases of statistics being "manipulated" to add credibility to it. The conspiratorial nature of it makes it even more compelling to untrusting, unsophisticated outsiders. I'm also suddenly reminded of Umberto Eco's book 'Foucault's Pendulum', which deals with belief and conspiracy. While a fun, satirical work of fiction, I found it to be very constructive in understanding how people can come to believe things that are completely wrong.