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This is essentially the argument I make to friends whenever someone brings up some homeopathic remedy. Most of us are not smart enough or well educated enough t

This is essentially the argument I make to friends whenever someone brings up some homeopathic remedy. Most of us are not smart enough or well educated enough to really sift through this stuff and sniff out fact from fiction. Lucky for us there is a whole field of trained professionals who (hopefully) are. At the same time though, I think it's worth remembering that the placebo effect is real and measurable so if someone claims X, Y or Z cures their headaches maybe they're not lying :-)

Gibbon1 7y ago
> smart enough or well educated enough A really good consideration is experience and observability. Those trump smart and well educated most of the time. It's the difference between seeing something and inferring it or simply repeating orthodoxy. The Observability test is good when dealing with putative authority. Instead of asking if they are right you first ask, is this something they can observe. If not their opinion means a lot less. A good modern example is climate change. Almost no one has the training, experience and familiarity with actual data to have form a reliable opinion. Without all three a persons opinion isn't worth much.