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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

> Typically experts are people who have spent far more time than other people doing exactly what you're describing: slowly sifting through and cross-referencing data, asking questions, digging up resources, and testing hypothesis.

One thing to note though is that the less mature a field is, the more gaps there will be an expert's knowledge/models. Doctors in the 1940s were regarded as medical experts, and yet many were actively promoting cigarettes. History is littered with "experts" whose expertise was outrageously wrong or misguided in hindsight.

So I say people should judge experts by the maturity of their field and in the context they are providing expertise on.

A civil engineer is giving expertise on whether a building will collapse or not? You'll likely get extremely reliable expertise you can count on.

A doctor is promoting a glass of wine a day for health reasons? Take it with a grain of salt.

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One issue is the undisclosed interests. Something tells me that doctors who were promoting cigarettes were paid to do so. Just like we've seen experts saying that oil /CO2 has nothing to do with climate change or health issues. This kind of collusion should bring criminal charges both to the experts and to the ultimate party that funded the misleading research.

The other issue is the lack of education and basic critical thinking among a high proportion of population so you find yourself in a world full of conspiracy theories and fake information. For some reasons I thought this issue can be found only in 3rd world countries but covid openned my eyes...

'field maturity' could perhaps say something about the likeliness of trustworthy information/advice overall, but says nothing about the trustworthiness of the expert themselves.

in fact, the nominative 'expert' is a political injection, practically begging for appeal to authority to shut down critical thinking. expertise has little correlation to trustworthiness, given that it typically gets overwhelmed by the politically-interwined 'esteem'.

there is no shortcut to doing the hard work of triangulating the best information out of many biased opinions, including so-called 'experts'[0]. this is true of news, reviews, and commentary of all sorts.

[0]: similarly noted in a different context here, along with it's grandparent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29678221

Be careful: that salt will give you high blood pressure! Or not, depending on which medical "expert" turns out to be correct.

I had a discussion about this with a doctor. I asked them for their opinions on sodium to potassium ratios by age group and sodium loss through sweat. I got blank stares and the subject changed. I've had far more fascinating and informative discussions with nutritionists and fitness coaches, not to suggest they are a definitive source of knowledge. I find it ultimately best to research things on my own and take all scientific papers with a skeptical grain of salt.

A physician probably learns the physiology of sweat glands, mechanisms for how the human body regulates sodium and potassium, and diseases caused by regulatory mechanisms not working. Unless they had an interest or read a study, I’m not sure I would expect a physician to know that, and in my experience a lot of physicians are reluctant to speculate.

Nutritionists and fitness coaches are much more willing to speculate in my experience, with the caveat that they may not have the same education as a scientist as a physician does.

To be fair, an expert not answering a question that they don't know the answer to is a good outcome. The real expert for your question would be a researcher in the specific field, or perhaps the rare doctor who has taken an interest in following such research.

I had been cutting caffeine out of my life for awhile. Ended on ER where they stuck an actual bag of caffeine to my IV. Felt like I was in a comic.

Also that much caffeine really sucks.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find an actual expert who would make the general claim that salt consumption will cause high blood pressure, as opposed to a claim that some people are salt-sensitive, or that high salt diets are positively correlated with high blood pressure, or something else.

Part of the problem is that non-experts tend to summarize expert information in ways that alter or omit crucial points, and then people are disappointed when the crib notes version tends to be inaccurate.

Yes I was being somewhat flippant. Besides genetic susceptibility, the current research indicates that the issue with salt is more due to osmolality than quantity.

https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson/

And yet the medical experts still get it wrong by oversimplifying the issue and making dietary recommendations based on quantity.

https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/high-blood-pressure/c...

Are you implying that salt does not raise blood pressure? Because I am pretty sure you are wrong. But be free to share RCT's showing it is indeed a false association.

Your surety is misplaced and unfortunately you're not even asking the right question. The relationship between salt and blood pressure is a complex, multi-factorial issue which can't be adequately summarized in a comment here. The best explanation I've heard is this interview with Rick Johnson, MD who is one of the most prominent researchers in that field. It's long but worth a listen.

https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson/

I don't really care how complex it is. Split people between two groups, offer food with half the salt to one group and see what happens. No need to overcomplicate.

So, here's the challenge.

A doctor is promoting vaccinating your child from COVID?. Should that also be taken with a grain of salt?

What about measles?

How do you draw the line?

How do you help others - suspicious of authority, and being actively manipulated in a culture war to distrust anything a "progressive" tells them - to draw the line?

I think it's impossible. The only way is to say that "Doctors are experts. They have been wrong before and they will be wrong again. Experts doesn't mean getting things 100% right. But it definitely means getting things more right than you, most of the time. So trust them, even if as new information develops, the advice will shift".

By the way both sides in the culture war believe this. FOX News finds their own experts. They find the 0.1% scientists that don't believe in climate change and give them 60% of the airtime. But they still appeal to experts.

> being actively manipulated in a culture war

People you disagree with aren't the only ones being manipulated.

Not every subject needs to be "both sided". In the modern progressive/conservative divide, there is no pure synchronicity between how people of different political persuasions approach their support of ideas. Namely: One group stays pretty consistent with their preferences; The other shifts position depending on who's proposing it.

The Data: https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7hjdap/the_last_pr...

> How do you draw the line?

Again, maturity of the thing the expertise revolves around is important here.

Since covid has been around less than 2 years and child-approved covid vaccines have been around for less than 1 year, I'd take a recommendation to vaccinate my kid against covid with a grain of salt. Especially since covid itself does not appear to impact children the same way it does adults (<0.03% of covid deaths have been children, etc.). Since covid is a highly politicized topic at the moment it's hard to tell if the doctor is recommending the vaccine because he actually feels it's beneficial vs. recommending the vaccine because despite feeling like it's not terribly beneficial, he's feeling pressure from governments to push the vaccine because they want to get kids back into schools.

Measles vaccines have been around over 50 years, have a proven utility and track record, and are not currently politicized. Plus measles is way more deadly to kids than covid, so in that case it's more cut and dry.

So my philosophy is to take covid-related advice with a grain of salt until the expertise around it is more mature. I think in 5 years we will have a much better idea of how necessary child covid vaccines really are (as well as how necessary cloth masks really are, etc.).

By the way, when I say "take with a grain of salt", I don't mean "don't give your kid the covid vaccine". I mean "Probably still give the kid covid vaccine but reserve the right to harbor doubts that it's actually necessary and quietly suspect the current political climate is putting pressure on hospitals to push the vaccine regardless of the actual merits of the vaccine"

> But it definitely means getting things more right than you, most of the time. So trust them, even if as new information develops, the advice will shift

You're advocating giving up all agency and placing 100% trust in a person. There are endless examples in human history as to why this is dangerous. There are very few as to why this is good. "Just trust me" is generally regarded as something said by a person you should not trust, and for good reason.

> How do you draw the line?

You do your best to evaluate the information on your own and find sources you trust. The latter is nearly impossible when an issue becomes political.

> You're advocating giving up all agency and placing 100% trust in a person.

Not at all. Placing provisional trust in am expert about a specific opinion you are aware may change in the future is completely different from "giving up all agency" or "placing 100% trust in a person. Nothing in that advice tells you not to check the opinions of a few different experts to be sure you aren't being misled.

> The latter is nearly impossible when an issue becomes political.

It's not that hard. You find experts who seem to do a good job of acknowledging nuance and don't seem to be trying to make their facts fit a narrative.

What you don't do is trust someone because what they say on completely different topics matches what you believe or trust someone because they consistently give you the answers you want to hear. Doing either of those is worse than just blindly trusting experts.

> find sources you trust

And those sources will consist of...who? Perhaps, people who have spent time and effort learning about the topic, a.k.a. "the experts"?

Spending a lot of time on one thing does not inherently make you trustworthy. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

It makes you knowledgeable. You should pick knowledgeble people to trust on complicated topics and you shouldn't base that trust on if those people tell you what you want yo hear but on their ability to acknowledge nuance and change their minds when they see new data.

You’re starting to get it with your last points. There’s a lot of factors that go in to determining trustworthiness. Being knowledgeable is a prerequisite for trusting somebody.

but that the best advice we can get now

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