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> authoritative bodies can be wrong / misled as well, and shouldn't be the only arbiters of truth I agree, but with a very large caveat - the human brain is no
by Shish2k 6y ago
> authoritative bodies can be wrong / misled as well, and shouldn't be the only arbiters of truth
I agree, but with a very large caveat - the human brain is not good at probabilities, it basically only recognises “outcome A is guaranteed” and “outcomes A and B are equally likely”. So how much credit should we give to an authority who is correct 90% of the time?
90% isn’t great when it comes to life-or-death matters, so it’s dangerous to recommend “always trust them”. But recommending “don’t always trust them” results in people thinking that the authorites and the crackpots are 50/50 correct, which results in even more people dying :(
- xupybd 6y agoYes but this has been politicised so heavily even the truth is normally garnished with a partizan message. It's hard to believe YouTube will be even remotely competent when it comes to filtering fact from fiction in this case.
- konjin 6y agoThere's a difference between being wrong about "put a band aid on a cut" and "aids is transmitted by having sex with Puerto Ricans". Health authorities are good at the first, and very bad at the second.
- raxxorrax 6y agoI think there is merit to the argument that if you cannot guarantee 100% correctness, that you cannot strip people of their ability to form their opinion themselves. And that requires access to different perspectives.