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'Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say i

by yters 6y ago

'Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.' It'd be interesting to see what is left after applying this consistently to scientific announcements. E.g. much of the pro climate change arguments I see are: all the scientists think it is happening, so it must be happening. Not saying they are wrong, but why should only science get a pass when it comes to argument from authority? Science is not the only field with experts, and it's hard to argue that only scientific expertise is real expertise without going in circles (which requires an expert in philosophy to avoid ;).

swayvil 6y ago
We put our faith in the scientific institution. (And if we are religious, political or etc, we put our faith in the appropriate institution for that too.) Fact is, virtually all knowledge about what lies beyond our personal sight and understanding is authority-based. Maybe that's unavoidable. The key feature of science could be said to be the institution of the rule that, to be considered truly high-quality, a model must have a strong experimental reference. Or you could say that the key feature of science is that we get such high-quality models that experimental reference is unnecessary. Which is a little scary. It's like we're just creating a more-airtight dogma. (Wow, they're actually downvoting you.)
- foobarian 6y ago
  A hugely influential 'experimental reference' throughout history were wars. Don't believe oxygen exists? Think explosions are magical voodoo? Think you get sick from bad air? Good luck when the musketeers come knocking bearing blankets. Executed your best mathematicians for proposing heretical models of the universe? Will have a hard time getting your artillery to be as accurate as your foe's. I think this kind of natural selection on a societal scale begrudgingly kept people believing in science and engineering, but now that progress has kind of leveled off and/or migrated into realms which don't have direct consequences the rest of society is sadly unbound.
  - mellow2020 6y ago
    > Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. George Orwell
- grawprog 6y ago
  I've noticed a fairly big distinction in what I learned as science and the philosophy of science as it was practiced up until around the last 20 years or so and now. Science was based on rigorous falsification. Scientists actively tried to prove themselves and other scientists wrong. Science has always been more about, 'well we know it's not all of these things, so it's probably that until we prove that wrong too'. Sometime in the last couple decades, it's stopped being like that. Instead it's, 'my models and data say this, so it is this and everything else is wrong'. Science at this point is really only authority driven because journals and even governments charge exorbitant prices for access to them, cutting out a vast majority of the population from actually partaking in any part of the scientific process. When all you get is contradictory news reports on a handful of selected research from journalists that barely understand what they're reading, you're going to be stuck with an elitist authority driven system. There's zero reason for this in todays world other than control and profit. Even within the scientific community, there's 'caste' systems, financial guardianship and other such barriers, keeping again, many people from learning and partaking. Science isn't hard, it isn't magic, it's a systematic way of looking at the world through observation and falsification. That is all science is. Anyone can do science. I've taken groups of kids, volunteers and many people and in short time, taught them to do science. It's just people don't really get taught to do this. It's easier to control a population that's trickled information through 'authoritative' sources than it is one that's educated and capable of thinking for themselves. This is stuff I was literally taught in school, by other scientists. Like, we were actually taught that most people need to be given only the information they need to know, because essentially they're too dumb to understand and scientists should just run things in the world. I'm not making this up, we were actually told this by several of our professors.
  - rovolo 6y ago
    I have two comments on your takeaways: > Science isn't hard, it isn't magic, it's a systematic way of looking at the world through observation and falsification. That is all science is. Science is also being open to critique from others, and listening to what others have found. If you only focus on your own observations, you can test Newton's and Maxwell's laws, but you'll be hard pressed to discover relativity or quantum mechanics. Some discoveries are hard because they require foundational knowledge and equipment and insight. > We were actually taught that most people need to be given only the information they need to know, because essentially they're too dumb to understand and scientists should just run things in the world. A more charitable explanation is that it takes time to learn things, and we can't know everything. For example, you don't need to know the experimental design to use the results from an experiment, but you would if you're evaluating the experiment. It takes time and effort to do peer review. You're delegating effort to scientists so that you can use the results of multiple experiments without a large investment of time. I totally agree with teaching everyone the tools of science though. I just think you're overestimating how well those tools will protect people against charlatans. Some claims take expertise to debunk.
skuthus 6y ago
If an expert in say, economics is telling me the the climate crisis is exaggerated, and an expert in climate science is saying that it isnt - I will tend to believe the expert in the most relevant field.
- yters 6y ago
  What if the relevant expertise is evaluating the veracity of statistical models?
  - skuthus 6y ago
    That's significant, of course. However one statistical expert isnt going to outweigh a whole body of scientific findings
    - yters 6y ago
      What if most of the finds are results of statistical models?
      - stochtastic 6y ago
        If you're implying that most of climate science is statistical modeling, please be specific and say so. While there is plenty of statistics in the field[1], the majority is basic physical science and dynamical modeling. Equivocation between statistical and dynamical models is surprisingly common on HN and leads me to suspect that a person hasn't taken much time to learn about climate science. [1] Calling it a single field isn't really fair. It's the nexus of many specialized fields, most of which are purely physical sciences.
        yters 6y ago
        It looks like the output is a statistic. I.e. a trend line with error bars based on fitting prior historical data. Additionally, the processing of said historical data also seems to be statistical in nature, since there is a lot of missing data once we go past a few decades, data is from a disparate variety of sources, most are proxies for temperature and CO2, etc. So, it isn't obvious to me they are 'purely physical' as in there is some kind of direct reading off of physical facts. Instead, it appears most are a lot of inferences derived by fitting models to bodies of data, which entails a certain amount of uncertainty and a statistical nature.
skuthus 6y ago
Also to follow up - I do feel they selectively ignored some of Sagan's larger point about authority. An 'Authority' figure is not in and of itself a trustworthy source. The head of the EPA is not necessarily the top Environmental scientist in the country. He is warning that we must be wary of accepting that because someone is in charge, they know what they are saying - not that we have the ability to pick and choose our preferred outcomes over scientific consensus
- yters 6y ago
  So Sagan thinks appealing to authority of consensus is fine, but not authority of someone in charge? It's still not clear to me exactly what sorts of authorities we can and cannot appeal to, and why one sort is fine and another sort is not. And what about authority of a cop (i.e. someone in charge)? If the cop tries to pull me over, am I free to ignore him because he's not a scientific expert, thus he cannot appeal to his own authority?
  - swayvil 6y ago
    Much online argument seems to focus on which authority you choose.
  - skuthus 6y ago
    The authority of an entire field of experts vs. the single representative of said experts is a good distinction. Good evidence can be reviewed and confirmed easily. Bad actors will try to obfuscate their information
edoceo 6y ago
The science expert and demonstrate using scientific method? Repeatable models? Scientific don't "think" it, the theory it. Then show you their work. Makes it more trustworthy.
aperrien 6y ago
It might be helpful to think about this situation this way: What is your evidence that oxygen exists? How would you test that? What tools would you need to test that? How do you know those tools work the way that you expect?
- jbay808 6y ago
  (I think the above comment is rhetorical, but if anyone wants to actually see what a serious answer to those questions might look like, I strongly recommend Michael Faraday's "the chemical history of a candle".)
- swayvil 6y ago
  Such a line of investigation would establish strong empirical grounding for any models you might come up with. But you'd have to really care about the quality of your model to do all that work. Models derived from authority may lack such grounding but they are way more convenient. And convenience is king.
api 6y ago
I never found that argument convincing either. What I do find convincing are the basic physics (CO2 absorbs more UV) coupled with actual physical evidence of effects in the real world.
- yters 6y ago
  In which case, scientists should focus on making the science abundantly clear, as well as addressing the numerous objections people have at the science level. It seems like they want to avoid the hard work of following Sagan's advice, and would rather appeal to authority.
  - jbay808 6y ago
    Aren't there now a large number of people who have invested tons of time doing exactly that? For example the people who run realclimate.org?
  - api 6y ago
    I sort of agree. In my experience scientists who are also good communicators are rare. Sometimes it's a personality thing but it's also a time thing. Most scientists don't have time to talk about science. They're too busy doing it (and grant writing, and grant writing, and grant writing, and teaching, and grant writing, and grant writing, and ...).
yongjik 6y ago
I looked at the submission title and I knew a comment like this would be here. I guess I'm spending too much time on HN, it's getting predictable. Anyway, in the immortal words of Carl Sagan: > But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- the_af 6y ago
  Agreed. In other words, it's true there are some famous cases of eccentric people who at first were laughed at but later turned out to be right. From this one absolutely cannot conclude eccentrics are often right. In fact, they are most often wrong.
foogazi 6y ago
> much of the pro climate change arguments I see are: all the scientists think it is happening It’s not if they think it is happening or not - it’s the data they are looking at and the hypothesis being drawn from the observations What they “think” is the hypothesis. Anyone can look at the same data and come up with a hypothesis. The important piece is engaging in the scientific method.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
The answer is already there is the quote, if you charitably read it, and ponder on the meaning of the word "expert". You have a scientific question [1] (like "is climate changed caused by human activities?") that you want answered. There is no authority that can/should dictate an answer. There can exist experts that spend a lot of time investigating the question and come up with their answer. You don't have to believe any of them them. In fact, science has often advanced by people not believing in the experts. BUT if you want to answer a sufficiently complex question, you have two smart options: (a) either believe in one of the experts [2] (b) spend sufficient time investigating the question yourself and figuring out the answer. A third option (c) believe in the opinions of a non-expert, is very stupid. In general, you can check yourself over your lifetime, that (c) results, with high frequency, in you being wrong. This answers goes for non-scientific things also. If you haven't spent adequate time investigating the question yourself, it is generally smart to defer to someone who has. [1] A scientific question is one whose answer, in principle, can be refuted by empirical investigations. [2] Some scientific fields are highly political, where sometimes, experts have agendas beside the truth. I am not getting into the separate question of how to determine if someone is an actual unbiased expert.
- yters 6y ago
  Let's take the Galileo case. There were a consensus of experts on Aristotelian cosmology, the best rational worldview of that day, and Galileo's model did not match observations at that point. So, his proposal was rejected. Obviously, Galileo was right to not listen to the consensus of experts in that case. So, what makes current scientific consensus different than the Aristotelian consensus of Galileo's day? Why are dissidents wrong to question modern scientific consensus (of which climate change is only one controversial element), but right to question the medieval consensus? In both cases, the consensus meets the then current standard for rational worldview, so we can't use hindsight.
  - vaidhy 6y ago
    The answer is in the second part.. Galileo was willing to go deep to find the answers. It is perfectly fine to challenge the status quo and the experts, but do so only if you have spent the time to do the research and have facts to back up your claims (or invalidate theirs)

by yters 6y ago

swayvil 6y ago

We put our faith in the scientific institution. (And if we are religious, political or etc, we put our faith in the appropriate institution for that too.) Fact is, virtually all knowledge about what lies beyond our personal sight and understanding is authority-based. Maybe that's unavoidable. The key feature of science could be said to be the institution of the rule that, to be considered truly high-quality, a model must have a strong experimental reference. Or you could say that the key feature of science is that we get such high-quality models that experimental reference is unnecessary. Which is a little scary. It's like we're just creating a more-airtight dogma. (Wow, they're actually downvoting you.)

foobarian 6y ago
A hugely influential 'experimental reference' throughout history were wars. Don't believe oxygen exists? Think explosions are magical voodoo? Think you get sick from bad air? Good luck when the musketeers come knocking bearing blankets. Executed your best mathematicians for proposing heretical models of the universe? Will have a hard time getting your artillery to be as accurate as your foe's. I think this kind of natural selection on a societal scale begrudgingly kept people believing in science and engineering, but now that progress has kind of leveled off and/or migrated into realms which don't have direct consequences the rest of society is sadly unbound.
- mellow2020 6y ago
  > Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. George Orwell
grawprog 6y ago
I've noticed a fairly big distinction in what I learned as science and the philosophy of science as it was practiced up until around the last 20 years or so and now. Science was based on rigorous falsification. Scientists actively tried to prove themselves and other scientists wrong. Science has always been more about, 'well we know it's not all of these things, so it's probably that until we prove that wrong too'. Sometime in the last couple decades, it's stopped being like that. Instead it's, 'my models and data say this, so it is this and everything else is wrong'. Science at this point is really only authority driven because journals and even governments charge exorbitant prices for access to them, cutting out a vast majority of the population from actually partaking in any part of the scientific process. When all you get is contradictory news reports on a handful of selected research from journalists that barely understand what they're reading, you're going to be stuck with an elitist authority driven system. There's zero reason for this in todays world other than control and profit. Even within the scientific community, there's 'caste' systems, financial guardianship and other such barriers, keeping again, many people from learning and partaking. Science isn't hard, it isn't magic, it's a systematic way of looking at the world through observation and falsification. That is all science is. Anyone can do science. I've taken groups of kids, volunteers and many people and in short time, taught them to do science. It's just people don't really get taught to do this. It's easier to control a population that's trickled information through 'authoritative' sources than it is one that's educated and capable of thinking for themselves. This is stuff I was literally taught in school, by other scientists. Like, we were actually taught that most people need to be given only the information they need to know, because essentially they're too dumb to understand and scientists should just run things in the world. I'm not making this up, we were actually told this by several of our professors.
- rovolo 6y ago
  I have two comments on your takeaways: > Science isn't hard, it isn't magic, it's a systematic way of looking at the world through observation and falsification. That is all science is. Science is also being open to critique from others, and listening to what others have found. If you only focus on your own observations, you can test Newton's and Maxwell's laws, but you'll be hard pressed to discover relativity or quantum mechanics. Some discoveries are hard because they require foundational knowledge and equipment and insight. > We were actually taught that most people need to be given only the information they need to know, because essentially they're too dumb to understand and scientists should just run things in the world. A more charitable explanation is that it takes time to learn things, and we can't know everything. For example, you don't need to know the experimental design to use the results from an experiment, but you would if you're evaluating the experiment. It takes time and effort to do peer review. You're delegating effort to scientists so that you can use the results of multiple experiments without a large investment of time. I totally agree with teaching everyone the tools of science though. I just think you're overestimating how well those tools will protect people against charlatans. Some claims take expertise to debunk.

skuthus 6y ago

If an expert in say, economics is telling me the the climate crisis is exaggerated, and an expert in climate science is saying that it isnt - I will tend to believe the expert in the most relevant field.

yters 6y ago
What if the relevant expertise is evaluating the veracity of statistical models?
- skuthus 6y ago
  That's significant, of course. However one statistical expert isnt going to outweigh a whole body of scientific findings
  - yters 6y ago
    What if most of the finds are results of statistical models?
    - stochtastic 6y ago
      If you're implying that most of climate science is statistical modeling, please be specific and say so. While there is plenty of statistics in the field[1], the majority is basic physical science and dynamical modeling. Equivocation between statistical and dynamical models is surprisingly common on HN and leads me to suspect that a person hasn't taken much time to learn about climate science. [1] Calling it a single field isn't really fair. It's the nexus of many specialized fields, most of which are purely physical sciences.
      - yters 6y ago
        It looks like the output is a statistic. I.e. a trend line with error bars based on fitting prior historical data. Additionally, the processing of said historical data also seems to be statistical in nature, since there is a lot of missing data once we go past a few decades, data is from a disparate variety of sources, most are proxies for temperature and CO2, etc. So, it isn't obvious to me they are 'purely physical' as in there is some kind of direct reading off of physical facts. Instead, it appears most are a lot of inferences derived by fitting models to bodies of data, which entails a certain amount of uncertainty and a statistical nature.

skuthus 6y ago

Also to follow up - I do feel they selectively ignored some of Sagan's larger point about authority. An 'Authority' figure is not in and of itself a trustworthy source. The head of the EPA is not necessarily the top Environmental scientist in the country. He is warning that we must be wary of accepting that because someone is in charge, they know what they are saying - not that we have the ability to pick and choose our preferred outcomes over scientific consensus

yters 6y ago
So Sagan thinks appealing to authority of consensus is fine, but not authority of someone in charge? It's still not clear to me exactly what sorts of authorities we can and cannot appeal to, and why one sort is fine and another sort is not. And what about authority of a cop (i.e. someone in charge)? If the cop tries to pull me over, am I free to ignore him because he's not a scientific expert, thus he cannot appeal to his own authority?
- swayvil 6y ago
  Much online argument seems to focus on which authority you choose.
- skuthus 6y ago
  The authority of an entire field of experts vs. the single representative of said experts is a good distinction. Good evidence can be reviewed and confirmed easily. Bad actors will try to obfuscate their information

edoceo 6y ago

The science expert and demonstrate using scientific method? Repeatable models? Scientific don't "think" it, the theory it. Then show you their work. Makes it more trustworthy.

aperrien 6y ago

It might be helpful to think about this situation this way: What is your evidence that oxygen exists? How would you test that? What tools would you need to test that? How do you know those tools work the way that you expect?

jbay808 6y ago
(I think the above comment is rhetorical, but if anyone wants to actually see what a serious answer to those questions might look like, I strongly recommend Michael Faraday's "the chemical history of a candle".)
swayvil 6y ago
Such a line of investigation would establish strong empirical grounding for any models you might come up with. But you'd have to really care about the quality of your model to do all that work. Models derived from authority may lack such grounding but they are way more convenient. And convenience is king.

api 6y ago

I never found that argument convincing either. What I do find convincing are the basic physics (CO2 absorbs more UV) coupled with actual physical evidence of effects in the real world.

yters 6y ago
In which case, scientists should focus on making the science abundantly clear, as well as addressing the numerous objections people have at the science level. It seems like they want to avoid the hard work of following Sagan's advice, and would rather appeal to authority.
- jbay808 6y ago
  Aren't there now a large number of people who have invested tons of time doing exactly that? For example the people who run realclimate.org?
- api 6y ago
  I sort of agree. In my experience scientists who are also good communicators are rare. Sometimes it's a personality thing but it's also a time thing. Most scientists don't have time to talk about science. They're too busy doing it (and grant writing, and grant writing, and grant writing, and teaching, and grant writing, and grant writing, and ...).

yongjik 6y ago

I looked at the submission title and I knew a comment like this would be here. I guess I'm spending too much time on HN, it's getting predictable. Anyway, in the immortal words of Carl Sagan: > But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

the_af 6y ago
Agreed. In other words, it's true there are some famous cases of eccentric people who at first were laughed at but later turned out to be right. From this one absolutely cannot conclude eccentrics are often right. In fact, they are most often wrong.

foogazi 6y ago

> much of the pro climate change arguments I see are: all the scientists think it is happening It’s not if they think it is happening or not - it’s the data they are looking at and the hypothesis being drawn from the observations What they “think” is the hypothesis. Anyone can look at the same data and come up with a hypothesis. The important piece is engaging in the scientific method.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

The answer is already there is the quote, if you charitably read it, and ponder on the meaning of the word "expert". You have a scientific question [1] (like "is climate changed caused by human activities?") that you want answered. There is no authority that can/should dictate an answer. There can exist experts that spend a lot of time investigating the question and come up with their answer. You don't have to believe any of them them. In fact, science has often advanced by people not believing in the experts. BUT if you want to answer a sufficiently complex question, you have two smart options: (a) either believe in one of the experts [2] (b) spend sufficient time investigating the question yourself and figuring out the answer. A third option (c) believe in the opinions of a non-expert, is very stupid. In general, you can check yourself over your lifetime, that (c) results, with high frequency, in you being wrong. This answers goes for non-scientific things also. If you haven't spent adequate time investigating the question yourself, it is generally smart to defer to someone who has. [1] A scientific question is one whose answer, in principle, can be refuted by empirical investigations. [2] Some scientific fields are highly political, where sometimes, experts have agendas beside the truth. I am not getting into the separate question of how to determine if someone is an actual unbiased expert.

yters 6y ago
Let's take the Galileo case. There were a consensus of experts on Aristotelian cosmology, the best rational worldview of that day, and Galileo's model did not match observations at that point. So, his proposal was rejected. Obviously, Galileo was right to not listen to the consensus of experts in that case. So, what makes current scientific consensus different than the Aristotelian consensus of Galileo's day? Why are dissidents wrong to question modern scientific consensus (of which climate change is only one controversial element), but right to question the medieval consensus? In both cases, the consensus meets the then current standard for rational worldview, so we can't use hindsight.
- vaidhy 6y ago
  The answer is in the second part.. Galileo was willing to go deep to find the answers. It is perfectly fine to challenge the status quo and the experts, but do so only if you have spent the time to do the research and have facts to back up your claims (or invalidate theirs)