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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Apparently acknowledging that one is unqualified to judge the veracity of almost all scientific claims is now unscientific. TIL.

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Blindly trusting someone because they're "experts" is no different from worship.

Healthy skepticism is the root of all things science, if you forfeit that for any reason you are anything but being scientific.

I'm guessing that you don't spend your entire life personally checking that all Previous science was done properly. At some point you have to trust your fellow human beings.

not the guy you were replying to, but sure, but I don't recite ritualistic dogmatic incantations reaffirming my deference to renowned experts. surely it is possible to naturally, organically defer to experts on things while still perceiving the societal harm of institutionalizing ritualistic reaffirmations of deference?

I am 100% behind this affirmation, we have been historically bitten times and times again by blind trust in "renowed experts", and while I trust most of them om their fields of expertise, saying we should ritualistically let them be up and front on any societal issue by "trusting the science" is very naive. Case in point: no more public debate on energy policies, because experts have made it a battlefield.

It's unfortunate. This would be so easy to fix, too, just tax carbon as it comes out of the ground and let the market sort out the rest. Let the best technologies win.

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