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Exactly! Fuck those people who studied a topic for 40 years -- why would they know one iota more about it than I do, or the facebook group of my crazy uncle --

Exactly! Fuck those people who studied a topic for 40 years -- why would they know one iota more about it than I do, or the facebook group of my crazy uncle -- they all have access to Google, after all! I, for one, refuse to defer to the authority of so-called experts, 'so-called' merely because of decades of experience in the field. Pah. For questions about cancer treatment, I typically just ask someone else in the Walmart aisle standing in front of Sauerkraut; for investment advice I ask the feral cat outside, when my car makes funny noises, I just throw a dart at a printout of an amazon page after I searched for 'car funny noises'. Edit: Also, fuck pilots. Why do they think they can do anything better than I can? They hide behind their locked doors and just Google stuff, I just know it!

beckman466 5y ago
1.) What do you think has made people scientifically incompetent (not trusting experts)? 2.) What do you think the impact of our current economic system has been on science? About the way science has been commoditized and feedback loops of the collective learning of humanity have been enclosed/black-boxed and made artificially scarce (innovations in the forms of patents, and other commoditized knowledge)? [1] > Exactly! Fuck those people who studied a topic for 40 years -- why would they know one iota more about it than I do, or the facebook group of my crazy uncle -- they all have access to Google, after all! I'm glad to see you state that access to Google and the 'commercial' web (can't think of better word) is not a good benchmark for access to humanity's shared inheritance. I see that claim too often. [1] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-purge-elon-musk-just-another-hypocritical-tech-billionaire/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur...
- nautilius 5y ago
  Science is the process of gaining, evaluating, and revising knowledge and understanding, Science is not a body of knowledge. It's an algorithm, not data. So clearly, having access to the largest book ever written does not say anything about scientific literacy. Here's the thing: people love to trust experts and, also, love to not think for themselves. And they do trust experts, i.e. when it comes to having their cars repaired, getting medical treatment outside of COVID, etc. It's not like millions of people came up with using malaria medication and horse dewormer on their own after conducting studies in their basement. They are following other people, while, ironically, praising themselves for being independent and most certainly not sheep (it's horse dewormer, after all).
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > Science is the process of gaining, evaluating, and revising knowledge and understanding, Science is not a body of knowledge. It's an algorithm, not data. So clearly, having access to the largest book ever written does not say anything about scientific literacy. Great description, loved "It's an algorithm, not data." especially. > Here's the thing: people [...] love to not think for themselves. Wtf? I agree with what you write before, but then in this comment you're grossly generalizing and calling people dumb. Why? Does it make you feel better? Maybe you could try to dig into your judgement here and share what emerges? Why do people 'love not to think for themselves', and then why are you different? Or what makes you and a few others uniquely able to see this? I tried to honestly and state my personal state here if you're interested or need inspiration to describe your lens or your experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179
    - nautilius 5y ago
      You're reading a lot into my comment that isn't there. So in your experience, people don't read movie reviews, don't listen to sports commentaries, don't read amazon comments? People don't listen to TV personalities telling them that malaria medication is good against COVID? In your experience, people read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long, and discuss existentialism, rather than watching Netflix? Etc.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - beckman466 5y ago
        > So in your experience, people don't read movie reviews, don't listen to sports commentaries, don't read amazon comments? People don't listen to TV personalities telling them that malaria medication is good against COVID? In your experience, people read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long, and discuss existentialism, rather than watching Netflix? Etc. Your words, not mine. The question I'm trying to get your perspective on is: despite all this (movie review, amazon comments, TV personalities), why do people make bad decisions? You keep saying that they do (and I agree with you) and I'm asking you why you believe that this is the case. Why do they make bad decisions? And a follow up question: why aren't people more hungry to learn (e.g. reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long and discussing existentialism if they want to)? Why do they instead watch Netflix, etc.? Am I misunderstanding you somewhere? Please let me know.
Veen 5y ago
The problem is that the layperson sees experts being wrong all the time. From the doctor who misdiagnosed their cousin, to the epidemiological modelling that turned out incapable of making accurate predictions, to entire fields of apparent bullshit like social psychology. They also see credentialed experts vociferously disagreeing about the truth of important matters. They watch news reports that tell them meat causes cancer and that you should eat red meat to reduce your chances of getting cancer. They read news articles telling them cloth masks will save your life and that cloth masks are useless. People are bombarded with contradictory expert advice, so it's hardly surprising that they decide experts don't know what they hell they're talking about.
- beckman466 5y ago
  I see what you mean, and I think it's about expectations. 1.) Most of us are trained to have to expect to defer to authority, because that's what today's school teaches, due to the commodification and artificial scarcity of science, and to the division of labor of our profit-seeking economic system. 2.) They expect not to be able to understand things in depth, because capital controls the amount of knowledge workers that are 'allowed' to reach expert status, so as to control the labor supply of knowledge workers.
  - agsnu 5y ago
    I expect to have to defer to authority because I recognise that it's infeasible for me personally to accumulate the total sum of human knowledge and experience. It might have been different in Galileo's day.
- nautilius 5y ago
  But they do love to follow “experts“ who recommend malaria medication and horse dewormer as cure against COVID. At the same time, blindly following a different group of people is somehow branded as being “independent thinking” and “not being a sheep”. Brillant!
  - Veen 5y ago
ulucs 5y ago
> for investment advice I ask the feral cat outside You could do much worse, given monkeys throwing darts outperform average investors. Not trusting science by default is what makes science have to be trustworthy. Scientists don't "trust" scientists. That's why every paper goes through rigorous questioning before being published-and even then lots of bullshit results still get published. If anything we need to trust science less. Also, do you trust politicians even when they have over 40 years of experience?
- nautilius 5y ago
  Fair enough, with the investment advice. As I wrote somewhere else, Science is an algorithm, not data. That algorithm was honed over hundreds of years. That algorithm is the reason that the ideas of some patent clerk in Switzerland were able to dethrone the ideas of one Isaac Newton, who some consider the greatest genius who ever lived. It's not about trusting scientists at all (ideally). My whole spiel here is that you should ask experts in their field of expertise. Would I take medical advice from a career politician like Hillary Clinton or advice on climate change from Ted Cruz? Absolutely not. Would I take Obama's advice on how to raise money or negotiate a deal with Netflix? Maybe, he seems to be good at that. Edit: Haha, what's with the downvote? Hillary being worried that I negatively impact her side-career as a chiropractor?
angelzen 5y ago
Planes are simple, they almost always land. Medicine is complex, the track record is inherently muddier. That's why generally it's a good idea to get several independent opinions, for example about an expensive irreversible procedure. And then there are cases where medical experts do something else than what they recommend to their patients, e.g. end of life decisions. Then there are places like certain social sciences subfields, where there is no track record and is just a disgraceful naked politics fest parasitising the word 'Science' in order to gain unearned legitimacy. > Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su... > It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently. https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/ideas/nexus https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-di...
- nautilius 5y ago
  Sounds like you realize doctors do have some expert knowledge after all.

beckman466 5y ago

1.) What do you think has made people scientifically incompetent (not trusting experts)? 2.) What do you think the impact of our current economic system has been on science? About the way science has been commoditized and feedback loops of the collective learning of humanity have been enclosed/black-boxed and made artificially scarce (innovations in the forms of patents, and other commoditized knowledge)? [1] > Exactly! Fuck those people who studied a topic for 40 years -- why would they know one iota more about it than I do, or the facebook group of my crazy uncle -- they all have access to Google, after all! I'm glad to see you state that access to Google and the 'commercial' web (can't think of better word) is not a good benchmark for access to humanity's shared inheritance. I see that claim too often. [1] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-purge-elon-musk-just-another-hypocritical-tech-billionaire/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur...

nautilius 5y ago
Science is the process of gaining, evaluating, and revising knowledge and understanding, Science is not a body of knowledge. It's an algorithm, not data. So clearly, having access to the largest book ever written does not say anything about scientific literacy. Here's the thing: people love to trust experts and, also, love to not think for themselves. And they do trust experts, i.e. when it comes to having their cars repaired, getting medical treatment outside of COVID, etc. It's not like millions of people came up with using malaria medication and horse dewormer on their own after conducting studies in their basement. They are following other people, while, ironically, praising themselves for being independent and most certainly not sheep (it's horse dewormer, after all).
- beckman466 5y ago
  > Science is the process of gaining, evaluating, and revising knowledge and understanding, Science is not a body of knowledge. It's an algorithm, not data. So clearly, having access to the largest book ever written does not say anything about scientific literacy. Great description, loved "It's an algorithm, not data." especially. > Here's the thing: people [...] love to not think for themselves. Wtf? I agree with what you write before, but then in this comment you're grossly generalizing and calling people dumb. Why? Does it make you feel better? Maybe you could try to dig into your judgement here and share what emerges? Why do people 'love not to think for themselves', and then why are you different? Or what makes you and a few others uniquely able to see this? I tried to honestly and state my personal state here if you're interested or need inspiration to describe your lens or your experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179
  - nautilius 5y ago
    You're reading a lot into my comment that isn't there. So in your experience, people don't read movie reviews, don't listen to sports commentaries, don't read amazon comments? People don't listen to TV personalities telling them that malaria medication is good against COVID? In your experience, people read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long, and discuss existentialism, rather than watching Netflix? Etc.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - beckman466 5y ago
      > So in your experience, people don't read movie reviews, don't listen to sports commentaries, don't read amazon comments? People don't listen to TV personalities telling them that malaria medication is good against COVID? In your experience, people read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long, and discuss existentialism, rather than watching Netflix? Etc. Your words, not mine. The question I'm trying to get your perspective on is: despite all this (movie review, amazon comments, TV personalities), why do people make bad decisions? You keep saying that they do (and I agree with you) and I'm asking you why you believe that this is the case. Why do they make bad decisions? And a follow up question: why aren't people more hungry to learn (e.g. reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer all day long and discussing existentialism if they want to)? Why do they instead watch Netflix, etc.? Am I misunderstanding you somewhere? Please let me know.

Veen 5y ago

The problem is that the layperson sees experts being wrong all the time. From the doctor who misdiagnosed their cousin, to the epidemiological modelling that turned out incapable of making accurate predictions, to entire fields of apparent bullshit like social psychology. They also see credentialed experts vociferously disagreeing about the truth of important matters. They watch news reports that tell them meat causes cancer and that you should eat red meat to reduce your chances of getting cancer. They read news articles telling them cloth masks will save your life and that cloth masks are useless. People are bombarded with contradictory expert advice, so it's hardly surprising that they decide experts don't know what they hell they're talking about.

beckman466 5y ago
I see what you mean, and I think it's about expectations. 1.) Most of us are trained to have to expect to defer to authority, because that's what today's school teaches, due to the commodification and artificial scarcity of science, and to the division of labor of our profit-seeking economic system. 2.) They expect not to be able to understand things in depth, because capital controls the amount of knowledge workers that are 'allowed' to reach expert status, so as to control the labor supply of knowledge workers.
- agsnu 5y ago
  I expect to have to defer to authority because I recognise that it's infeasible for me personally to accumulate the total sum of human knowledge and experience. It might have been different in Galileo's day.
nautilius 5y ago
But they do love to follow “experts“ who recommend malaria medication and horse dewormer as cure against COVID. At the same time, blindly following a different group of people is somehow branded as being “independent thinking” and “not being a sheep”. Brillant!
- Veen 5y ago

ulucs 5y ago

> for investment advice I ask the feral cat outside You could do much worse, given monkeys throwing darts outperform average investors. Not trusting science by default is what makes science have to be trustworthy. Scientists don't "trust" scientists. That's why every paper goes through rigorous questioning before being published-and even then lots of bullshit results still get published. If anything we need to trust science less. Also, do you trust politicians even when they have over 40 years of experience?

nautilius 5y ago
Fair enough, with the investment advice. As I wrote somewhere else, Science is an algorithm, not data. That algorithm was honed over hundreds of years. That algorithm is the reason that the ideas of some patent clerk in Switzerland were able to dethrone the ideas of one Isaac Newton, who some consider the greatest genius who ever lived. It's not about trusting scientists at all (ideally). My whole spiel here is that you should ask experts in their field of expertise. Would I take medical advice from a career politician like Hillary Clinton or advice on climate change from Ted Cruz? Absolutely not. Would I take Obama's advice on how to raise money or negotiate a deal with Netflix? Maybe, he seems to be good at that. Edit: Haha, what's with the downvote? Hillary being worried that I negatively impact her side-career as a chiropractor?

angelzen 5y ago

Planes are simple, they almost always land. Medicine is complex, the track record is inherently muddier. That's why generally it's a good idea to get several independent opinions, for example about an expensive irreversible procedure. And then there are cases where medical experts do something else than what they recommend to their patients, e.g. end of life decisions. Then there are places like certain social sciences subfields, where there is no track record and is just a disgraceful naked politics fest parasitising the word 'Science' in order to gain unearned legitimacy. > Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su... > It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently. https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/ideas/nexus https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-di...

nautilius 5y ago
Sounds like you realize doctors do have some expert knowledge after all.