I weigh people's opinions differently if they're rooted in expertise than if they're random anonymous people on the internet. Do what you want with that information, and please forgive my hasty edits: sometimes when I read back what I wrote, I notice that I'm missing something. There's no bad faith there.
the exact opposite of your appeal is what teases out the known from the unknown, by triangulating from many arguments/opinions (the more, the better) whether they be 'expert' or not (the less correlated, the better).
I suspect that a small minority of Hacker News participants are biochemists/biologists/life scientists, so the default assumption when you read comments on these topics is that they probably come from smart non-experts. By adding this extra information, I wasn't making my argument any better: I was only providing the readers with extra meta-information.
I won't bother explaining the dangers of the appeal to authority, because I am persuaded that you are already familiar with the fallacy. However, I will say that not every form of "expertise signalling" is an appeal to authority, and it is usually a very good idea to defer to expertise.
I recommend this article on the subject, if you're interested in seeing where I'm coming from: https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/03/20/the-rules-of-logic-...
Edit: and I will happily and readily admit that I am not the "most expert" person on any subject, and I myself pretty much always defer to the expertise of those who are more expert than me.
this is exactly what i’m pointedly disagreeing with. expertise gives you no such esteem to have others defer to you by default. what it does confer is an expectation of novel (to the non-expert) information and perhaps reasoning, but explicitly not deference. we are all often wrong, especially in our areas of expertise because of the disproportionate amount of time we spend in that area. have some humility that you may bring a relatively unique or more considered perspective to the table, but not infallibility or almighty ‘truth’.
and earnest consideration of an ‘expert’ opinion is the best you should hope for. all the rest is by definition beyond the realm of science and into the realm of (small p) political. that is, expertise signalling is always an appeal to authority, no matter the magnitude or centrality of the claim. only the reasoning/evidence matters, not the titles of the person presenting them. you may expect some correlation there but should never assume it.
(note that i’ve also scienced in my past life, if that meta-information matters to you in the way you seem to believe it should.)
Actually, it does.
> claiming the nominative of 'expert' tends to negatively correlate with veracity. at best
Not in my experience.
> the exact opposite of your appeal is what teases out the known from the unknown, by triangulating from many arguments/opinions (the more, the better) whether they be 'expert' or not (the less correlated, the better).
So, by your reasoning we should all ask out bakers for information about software development because they definitely aren't experts and they certainly will have opinions about it.
This isn't a popularity contest, we're talking about actual knowledge here, and experts have usually spent a good chunk of their life acquiring it. You can't just toss that overboard in some kind of 'equal time' play (or in your case, even worse, a less than equal time) simply because everybody's opinions are equally valid. Expertise counts for something, no matter what the field.