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Comment by iguy | Hacker News Reader

But in mathematics the experts really do know what they are talking about, for the most part. Many things aren't like this.

Just today there was a thread on mental illness, and the crazy grab-bag of ideas which passes for expert consensus:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19198396

And if that's not crazy enough, look up what they believed 60 years ago. Should those have been locked in, by government force? Or should we be free to mock the shrinks for their delusions of understanding, if we wish?

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In an area as concrete and black/white as mathematics it’s still hard to convince some non experts that we really do know what we are talking about. Imagine how much harder it is in trying to convince anti vaxers to vaccinate. When society makes policy it’s best not to treat everyone’s opinion as equal. We are not able to always correctly deduce what is the best course of action on our own when it’s an area we have no expertise in.

I used be a fundamentalist, right wing Christian. Absolutely convinced that evolution was wrong. Eventually I was able to take the blinders off and ask myself, “Why is it that the overwhelming majority of people who study biology at the advanced level agree with evolution?”. It takes a great deal of arrogance to dismiss a conclusion that the overwhelming majority of the experts in a given area agree upon. Of course people get it wrong sometimes but we have to navigate life with imperfect information/knowledge. Who else do we rely upon? Keep in mind I’m not saying believe whatever an expert says. I’m saying that if the overwhelming majority of experts in a given area agree on something then that carries a tremendous amount of weight.

My wife is a psychiatrist. betulaq’s comment in the link you provided is one worth looking at.

But which year's crop of psychiatrist ideas should we enshrine in law? In 1950 there were rebels who didn't buy the consensus, and their ideas won, things improved. Why wouldn't this change have been prevented?

Or worse, how do you know that the evolution side would win the battle to be selected as the official experts on this matter? We have these fights over school boards right now, and sometimes the biblical literalists have more votes. Who gets to decide the how the head-count of experts is to be conducted? I think it pays to imagine these weapons being used by our enemies.

I don't know the solution to the anti-vax madness, but I think censorship is a much bigger battle.

I’ve only been talking about topics in which the overwhelming majority of experts in that area agree upon. If each year’s class of residency graduates in psychiatry all have different opinions on a given topic then this clearly is not in the scope of my comments. Also, I acknowledged that sometimes experts get it wrong. My point is that this fact ought not disuade someone from relying upon consensus expert opinion. Few people have expertise in an area of science and very few have expertise in more than one area of science. We need to rely on what others tell us to be true. I don’t know anyone who has personally run the Michelson-Morley experiment but I know the overwhelming majority of physicists agree the results of the experiment. I’m not arrogant enough to think they are wrong.

If 99% of oncologists think you have cancer then I hope you get treatment for cancer. And if 99% of them think option A is your best hope then I suggest you take their advice. You don’t have to. They may be wrong but in this world of uncertainty and imperfect information it’s the best option.

And the expert opinion is as usual: more studies need to be funded.

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