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Conversely, outright ignoring recommendations about COVID or climate or something similar, simply because "science isn't always right" or because you "aren't a

Conversely, outright ignoring recommendations about COVID or climate or something similar, simply because "science isn't always right" or because you "aren't a scientist" is a different thing altogether. Isn't that a strawman though? How many people actually give an answer like "science isn't always right" when choosing to ignore recommendations about COVID? Perhaps it's the circles I move in, but most people who think COVID recommendations are junk (which doesn't mean they don't follow them) can give far more reasoned and deep explanations for their views than the people they disagree with. Absolutely standard to get an answer like "because I trust the experts" (i.e. "I have no idea") from people who are the most passionately in favour of masks, lockdowns etc. You don't see that in reverse, because people disagreeing with authority by definition can't make an appeal to authority.

Tainnor 6y ago
This is not my experience at all. I've seen many people opposing masks and lockdowns due to dangerous half-knowledge and appealing to "that one doctor is also saying that the recommendations are junk (but they are shunned by the mainstream press)". Of course, we usually find our own reasoning valid and logical and tend to think that the other side can't give "reasoned and deep explanations". I can't claim to be unbiased here. I'll just note that, from a Bayesian perspective, "trusting experts" is usually not the worst idea and something we're basically forced to do every day anyway. I listen to quite a lot of what some of the experts way, but of course, I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I think they're just using a different definition of "expert" to you. Your reply alludes to this; your definition of an expert involves whether journalists say they're experts. How would journalists know? Trusting experts is definitely a good policy from a Bayesian perspective given the dictionary definition of expert, i.e. "a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area" to quote Google's top result for the definition. The problem we have with COVID is the people journalists present to us as experts (invariably academics) keep saying incredibly dumb stuff that's totally wrong, and by now many of us have concluded these "experts" don't actually know any more about disease than the man on the street does. This is an inevitable problem with how academia is structured. Academics aren't financially rewarded for being correct, like private sector experts are. They're rewarded for writing things their peers find interesting. That's a totally different thing. We hope that being interesting and being correct are strongly correlated, but the replication crisis and general low standards observable in research papers are strong evidence they actually aren't. I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible. The people you're disagreeing with also disagree about this. I've read a lot of epidemiology papers this year. The field is a joke: epidemiology is a piece of piss. The Gender Studies of medicine. It's just stats and some basic programming. I've not once had to look up any biology when reading these papers (microbiology being a genuinely hard field) because none of them use any. It's absolutely straightforward to find major, severe defects in these papers without decades of experience in this field. There's definitely a huge gulf in how difficult and deep different fields are, certainly, not all scientific endeavours are the same.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    > The problem we have with COVID is the people journalists present to us as experts (invariably academics) keep saying incredibly dumb stuff that's totally wrong, and by now many of us have concluded these "experts" don't actually know any more about disease than the man on the street does. It's not "what journalists say". Those people usually have valid credentials, e.g. when they are the people that developed the first PCR test for the new Coronavirus. I trust such people much more than random people on the street (or on the internet). > The people you're disagreeing with also disagree about this. I've read a lot of epidemiology papers this year. Forgive me if I don't find it terribly convincing that someone over the internet is trying to sell me something like this. Many fields of study are really hard to understand without a lot of context. There might be implicit things you might not be aware of. The internet is full of people who think they have found "flaws" in mathematical proofs or have discovered why FLT is true. But you're also claiming that all the "experts" and all the relevant papers are from epidemiology whereas we also have a lot of contributions from other fields, such as virology or vaccinology.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      I don't think virologists have contributed much so far, at least not to government policy. That's driven almost entirely by modellers. I'm not asking you to blindly trust me on this. By no means. Go read some of the papers yourself if you like. The value of academic credentials in the field of epidemiology is zero. These people just constantly make basic errors in their papers and standards are so systematically low across the board nobody notices or cares. I've posted here a list of just some of the problems I've noticed whilst reading these papers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25202182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25202182 By all means, have blind faith in the credentialed classes. Just remember these are the same people who came up with critical race theory, every replication failure in the field of psychology, the decades of 180 degree turns in nutrition, etc. This article is a good (albeit slightly technical) introduction to some of the problems outsiders find when they sit down and actually read academic output: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with-social-science-and-how-to-fix-it/ https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with... It's useful because it has some meta-scientific analysis of quality problems in scientific papers.

Tainnor 6y ago

This is not my experience at all. I've seen many people opposing masks and lockdowns due to dangerous half-knowledge and appealing to "that one doctor is also saying that the recommendations are junk (but they are shunned by the mainstream press)". Of course, we usually find our own reasoning valid and logical and tend to think that the other side can't give "reasoned and deep explanations". I can't claim to be unbiased here. I'll just note that, from a Bayesian perspective, "trusting experts" is usually not the worst idea and something we're basically forced to do every day anyway. I listen to quite a lot of what some of the experts way, but of course, I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible.

thu2111 6y ago
I think they're just using a different definition of "expert" to you. Your reply alludes to this; your definition of an expert involves whether journalists say they're experts. How would journalists know? Trusting experts is definitely a good policy from a Bayesian perspective given the dictionary definition of expert, i.e. "a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area" to quote Google's top result for the definition. The problem we have with COVID is the people journalists present to us as experts (invariably academics) keep saying incredibly dumb stuff that's totally wrong, and by now many of us have concluded these "experts" don't actually know any more about disease than the man on the street does. This is an inevitable problem with how academia is structured. Academics aren't financially rewarded for being correct, like private sector experts are. They're rewarded for writing things their peers find interesting. That's a totally different thing. We hope that being interesting and being correct are strongly correlated, but the replication crisis and general low standards observable in research papers are strong evidence they actually aren't. I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible. The people you're disagreeing with also disagree about this. I've read a lot of epidemiology papers this year. The field is a joke: epidemiology is a piece of piss. The Gender Studies of medicine. It's just stats and some basic programming. I've not once had to look up any biology when reading these papers (microbiology being a genuinely hard field) because none of them use any. It's absolutely straightforward to find major, severe defects in these papers without decades of experience in this field. There's definitely a huge gulf in how difficult and deep different fields are, certainly, not all scientific endeavours are the same.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  > The problem we have with COVID is the people journalists present to us as experts (invariably academics) keep saying incredibly dumb stuff that's totally wrong, and by now many of us have concluded these "experts" don't actually know any more about disease than the man on the street does. It's not "what journalists say". Those people usually have valid credentials, e.g. when they are the people that developed the first PCR test for the new Coronavirus. I trust such people much more than random people on the street (or on the internet). > The people you're disagreeing with also disagree about this. I've read a lot of epidemiology papers this year. Forgive me if I don't find it terribly convincing that someone over the internet is trying to sell me something like this. Many fields of study are really hard to understand without a lot of context. There might be implicit things you might not be aware of. The internet is full of people who think they have found "flaws" in mathematical proofs or have discovered why FLT is true. But you're also claiming that all the "experts" and all the relevant papers are from epidemiology whereas we also have a lot of contributions from other fields, such as virology or vaccinology.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I don't think virologists have contributed much so far, at least not to government policy. That's driven almost entirely by modellers. I'm not asking you to blindly trust me on this. By no means. Go read some of the papers yourself if you like. The value of academic credentials in the field of epidemiology is zero. These people just constantly make basic errors in their papers and standards are so systematically low across the board nobody notices or cares. I've posted here a list of just some of the problems I've noticed whilst reading these papers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25202182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25202182 By all means, have blind faith in the credentialed classes. Just remember these are the same people who came up with critical race theory, every replication failure in the field of psychology, the decades of 180 degree turns in nutrition, etc. This article is a good (albeit slightly technical) introduction to some of the problems outsiders find when they sit down and actually read academic output: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with-social-science-and-how-to-fix-it/ https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/09/11/whats-wrong-with... It's useful because it has some meta-scientific analysis of quality problems in scientific papers.