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you're making a statement of faith, not science. you want to believe that the experts you have faith in are consistent truth-seekers and truth-tellers, but that

you're making a statement of faith, not science. you want to believe that the experts you have faith in are consistent truth-seekers and truth-tellers, but that's a (political) belief, not a (scientific) fact. you have no way of confirming even a single sliver of veracity that way, especially not through so-called 'expert concensus'. rather than contriving a simplistic strawman, to find truth and facts in a social system, you still must use your own little brain to discern sociopolitical machinations (on top of merely technical observations), rather than naively trying to offload it to others. our brains have evolved over millions of years to do exactly that.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I have faith that a bunch of self interested scientists will happily gleefully point out the flaws in other scientists arguments and shoot them down. And that doing so repeatedly with just one agreed rule - the rule is that experimental results are the only, final arbiter in the dispute. Experiment says your idea is wrong it's wrong. Of course scientists are not perfect truth seeking missiles - but the incentive structure i science and engineering (pace lysenko) is setup so that what works works abs everything else can take a hike. An "expert consensus" in scientific terms is for example evolution - a theory that the most intelligent argumentative minds of ten generations has been unable to tear down. Not every scientific or engineering axiom is so robust but hells bells that sort of thing is worth putting my "faith" into. Yes politics intrudes, but if the last two years has taught us anything it's that politicians standing against experimental outcomes are just like King Canute - the experimental results will simply overwhelm them. And I honestly have no faith that our brains have evolved to spot other apes lying to us sufficently well that people can do much better than chance even face to face in the same room. Thinking we can spot lies across billboards, tv ads, trade routes seems a bit much. We can however rationalise incentives - and I suspect you are thinking spotting other peoples incentives is spotting lies. it's usually correlated!

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

I have faith that a bunch of self interested scientists will happily gleefully point out the flaws in other scientists arguments and shoot them down. And that doing so repeatedly with just one agreed rule - the rule is that experimental results are the only, final arbiter in the dispute. Experiment says your idea is wrong it's wrong. Of course scientists are not perfect truth seeking missiles - but the incentive structure i science and engineering (pace lysenko) is setup so that what works works abs everything else can take a hike. An "expert consensus" in scientific terms is for example evolution - a theory that the most intelligent argumentative minds of ten generations has been unable to tear down. Not every scientific or engineering axiom is so robust but hells bells that sort of thing is worth putting my "faith" into. Yes politics intrudes, but if the last two years has taught us anything it's that politicians standing against experimental outcomes are just like King Canute - the experimental results will simply overwhelm them. And I honestly have no faith that our brains have evolved to spot other apes lying to us sufficently well that people can do much better than chance even face to face in the same room. Thinking we can spot lies across billboards, tv ads, trade routes seems a bit much. We can however rationalise incentives - and I suspect you are thinking spotting other peoples incentives is spotting lies. it's usually correlated!