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Person wilfully chooses germs and hearing loss and tooth decay. Not they want to do the good thing but fail somewhere, they just want the bad thing. Maybe they

by sqeaky 2y ago

Person wilfully chooses germs and hearing loss and tooth decay. Not they want to do the good thing but fail somewhere, they just want the bad thing. Maybe they are just too dumb to value their opinion. Ignoring the computers is reasonable, but why ignore experts in well understood noncontroversial fields?

tpmoney 2y ago
> Ignoring the computers is reasonable, but why ignore experts in well understood noncontroversial fields? I would argue because there is no such thing. Human knowledge is ever changing, and experts have more incentives than just "convey the right information". Perhaps the most famous current example being masks at the beginning of COVID [1]. Why did the experts in the (up until that point, largely non-controversial) field of disease prevention tell people to not do the very obvious thing that they eventually told everyone to do? Either they were wrong, in which case one must ask how can they know when an expert is right; or the experts incentives were not in the direction of conveying the most correct answer to you, in which case one must ask how they can know if the expert is incentivized to help you or not. Someone being an "expert" in their specific narrow field should absolutely bias you towards their opinion when seeking an answer but one must always be aware of what question the expert is actually answering. My GPS will happily tell me directions to my friend's house that requires a short 100 foot drive on a cut-through street. The problem is said cut-through is horribly maintained, with potholes deep enough to bottom out most cars, and blow tires if you manage to not bottom out. If one continues further up the road, and takes a switchback turn, they add about 1 minute to the drive time, which absolutely makes the cut-through route the objectively, expertly correct route ... if the answer you're seeking is "what is the shortest route, ignoring all other factors". And most of the time when I'm getting directions from the GPS, that happens to be the answer I want, and so listening to the expert is the correct move. But in this specific scenario, the shortest route is also likely to cause significant damage to my car. The expert does not know of other extenuating factors, and therefore can not give the actual correct answer to the real question which is "what is the best route" [1]: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
- sqeaky 2y ago
  No one is claiming expertise is permanent. But some people know more things than others in select topics. And no one is perfect but someone who has more knowledge and has spent more time studying a thing is more likely to get it right. You can cherry pick examples and misuse tools or you can look at the very basic facts that the people who study things for a long time no more about those things. For example, asking a doctor for health advice is more reasonable than asking random people for health advice.

by sqeaky 2y ago

tpmoney 2y ago

> Ignoring the computers is reasonable, but why ignore experts in well understood noncontroversial fields? I would argue because there is no such thing. Human knowledge is ever changing, and experts have more incentives than just "convey the right information". Perhaps the most famous current example being masks at the beginning of COVID [1]. Why did the experts in the (up until that point, largely non-controversial) field of disease prevention tell people to not do the very obvious thing that they eventually told everyone to do? Either they were wrong, in which case one must ask how can they know when an expert is right; or the experts incentives were not in the direction of conveying the most correct answer to you, in which case one must ask how they can know if the expert is incentivized to help you or not. Someone being an "expert" in their specific narrow field should absolutely bias you towards their opinion when seeking an answer but one must always be aware of what question the expert is actually answering. My GPS will happily tell me directions to my friend's house that requires a short 100 foot drive on a cut-through street. The problem is said cut-through is horribly maintained, with potholes deep enough to bottom out most cars, and blow tires if you manage to not bottom out. If one continues further up the road, and takes a switchback turn, they add about 1 minute to the drive time, which absolutely makes the cut-through route the objectively, expertly correct route ... if the answer you're seeking is "what is the shortest route, ignoring all other factors". And most of the time when I'm getting directions from the GPS, that happens to be the answer I want, and so listening to the expert is the correct move. But in this specific scenario, the shortest route is also likely to cause significant damage to my car. The expert does not know of other extenuating factors, and therefore can not give the actual correct answer to the real question which is "what is the best route" [1]: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...

sqeaky 2y ago
No one is claiming expertise is permanent. But some people know more things than others in select topics. And no one is perfect but someone who has more knowledge and has spent more time studying a thing is more likely to get it right. You can cherry pick examples and misuse tools or you can look at the very basic facts that the people who study things for a long time no more about those things. For example, asking a doctor for health advice is more reasonable than asking random people for health advice.