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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

Most people still take them seriously. The fact that there are entire states that do not speaks more to the leadership of those states than to either the WHO or the CDC.

Between the two options, I would certainly trust an epidemiologist over an elected politician on the topic of epidemiology, and I have a hard time understanding the cognitive dissonance that allows people to get to a state of "we have to trust our governor because governments lie." It's not like the governor isn't part of the government.

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Do you ever eat meat that has not been cooked “well-done”? Do you ever go outside without wearing sunscreen? If you’re a woman of childbearing age, do you ever drink alcohol despite not being on hormonal birth control?

If so, then no, you don’t take the CDC seriously. You only take them seriously about Covid, probably because their advice on Covid matches your priors.

Actually, I follow CDC guidelines on all of those that apply to me.

You're not supposed to strictly follow CDC guidelines usually. That's why they recommend cooking food to degrees noone ever actually does.

Their job isn't to give you guidelines to strictly follow, it's to give a pessimistic take that someone else can use to plan tradeoffs.

Appeal to authority

Yeah so is listening to your dentist or any other educated person.

I eagerly await the time to say "I met the guy who proof'd a contradiction to logical fallacy"

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy simply because it observes that in a formal logical sense, the credentials of somebody making a claim are irrelevant.

But formal logic assumes absolute and understandable truth or falsehood of facts among all parties. In terms of data analysis and interpretation, especially when both involve parties that lack the skills or training to do these things, trusting authority is likelier to generate positive outcomes than trusting one's gut or one's untrained analysis in most circumstances.

Just in case you are arguing in good fait, appeal to authority is not generally considered a logical fallacy. This is the first sentence on wikipedia: "Historically, opinion on the appeal to authority has been divided: it is listed as a non-fallacious argument as often as a fallacious argument in various sources,[5] as some hold that it can be a strong or at least valid defeasible[6] argument[7][8][9][10] and others that it is weak or an outright fallacy."

In general sure scientists can be wrong, even in fields they are experts on. But overwhelmingly they are not.

Also as I mentioned, and you did not respond to, all of us use appeal to authority probably multiple times every day. One example is that most people go to experts to see help, for example lawyers, doctors, dentists etc. The other is that it is common at work to have an expert resolve an argument. It would of course be better to research 100% from first principles every time, but that is just not feasible to do all the time.

Hope that clears it up. Next time it would also be more constructive to bring your own arguments, not just say "appeal to authority". Logical fallacies are pretty often quite nuanced and it is very easy to use them incorrectly.

hard to say how many people still taking them seriously. Anyone who has been paying attention certainly does not. CDC flip-flopped many times, changed the definition of 'vaccine', admitted the 6 foot social distance number was arbitrary, etc.

Things change rapidly in a rapidly-moving pandemic. Best practices evolve as understanding increases.

We don't toss gravity out the window because Einstein refined Newton and found cases where Newton's laws give the wrong answer.

Wouldn't you trust a doctor, even if they make mistakes, when you are sick?

Not if it's been demonstrated, as it clearly has with the CDC, that the person's decisions have been arbitrary and capricious.

I, for one, have yet to see this proven. I have seen public guidance and the best practices modified as we came to understand more about the disease and its impact on the public.

Exactly.

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