3 ms·

He is taking his current understanding and coming to the conclusion that the mechanism by which soap renders viruses inactive is 'actually' because it destroys

He is taking his current understanding and coming to the conclusion that the mechanism by which soap renders viruses inactive is 'actually' because it destroys proteins. I am pointing out that this exercise is futile and does not result in useful knowledge. If a domain expert says something that does not make sense to you, there is a small chance that the domain expert is wrong, but it is more likely that what the domain expert is saying is correct and your own knowledge is incomplete.

sizzle 7y ago
Maybe lay people might also share this person's misconceptions/concerns, so it's in the interest of the common person for a subject matter expert to provide them with some citations or supplementary reading (where to go to learn more on your own time). Critical thinking and asking questions should be welcome and reinforced in the public sphere to improve our collective intelligence and buy-in for hand washing, proper respiratory etiquette, etc. towards containing and eradicating this pandemic, among a multitude of many other greater societal good reasons.
- escape_goat 7y ago
  Sure. You will notice that I was not criticizing anyone for thinking critically or asking questions. I was pointing out something that I still believe to be a failure of critical thinking, and that we could know a priori that this was a bad way of reasoning about things without reference to prior knowledge. I notice that my opinion is unpopular with people interested in this topic, and I'm certainly familiar with being wrong about things, but in my opinion going from "an expert told me that envelope viruses are deactivated when soap destroys the envelope" to "the real reason that soap deactivates viruses is because it destroys proteins" on the basis of the semantics of a line from a Wikipedia entry is categorically problematic on the face of it. Most of us here are in the habit of relying on our ability to discover knowledge by reasoning about limited information. It is how one solves puzzles. It is not how one learns things about the world. Believing that we know something which we don't know is dangerous in this situation. Convincing others that we know something we don't know is also dangerous. What I am doing right here is exactly attempting to improve our collective intelligence. I am certainly not dissuading anyone from washing their hands. I am encouraging people to second-guess themselves before they second-guess others.

sizzle 7y ago

Maybe lay people might also share this person's misconceptions/concerns, so it's in the interest of the common person for a subject matter expert to provide them with some citations or supplementary reading (where to go to learn more on your own time). Critical thinking and asking questions should be welcome and reinforced in the public sphere to improve our collective intelligence and buy-in for hand washing, proper respiratory etiquette, etc. towards containing and eradicating this pandemic, among a multitude of many other greater societal good reasons.

escape_goat 7y ago
Sure. You will notice that I was not criticizing anyone for thinking critically or asking questions. I was pointing out something that I still believe to be a failure of critical thinking, and that we could know a priori that this was a bad way of reasoning about things without reference to prior knowledge. I notice that my opinion is unpopular with people interested in this topic, and I'm certainly familiar with being wrong about things, but in my opinion going from "an expert told me that envelope viruses are deactivated when soap destroys the envelope" to "the real reason that soap deactivates viruses is because it destroys proteins" on the basis of the semantics of a line from a Wikipedia entry is categorically problematic on the face of it. Most of us here are in the habit of relying on our ability to discover knowledge by reasoning about limited information. It is how one solves puzzles. It is not how one learns things about the world. Believing that we know something which we don't know is dangerous in this situation. Convincing others that we know something we don't know is also dangerous. What I am doing right here is exactly attempting to improve our collective intelligence. I am certainly not dissuading anyone from washing their hands. I am encouraging people to second-guess themselves before they second-guess others.