Comment by spookthesunset | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spookthesunset | Hacker News Reader

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I find it quite remarkable how virtually everything about the last 3 years has been built up using appeals to authority such as yours.

It’s kind of funny how so many supposedly open minded people who thrive on questioning authority seem to all just fall into line when it comes to Covid.

I really wish the “are you an expert? No? I well than shut up and fall in line” argument would die in a fire. It is essential to be intellectually curious. It’s essential to question authority. In fact, it is vital to for both to be encouraged. Both science and democracy depend on it.

The more people say “shut up and listen to ‘the experts’” the more I get skeptical. True experts don’t derive their powers through appeals to authority. They get their powers by being humble and knowing they barely know anything. The science is never settled. Question everything.

The appeals to authority are a response to the flood of online discussions by people that are confused by what “doing research” means and suffer from Dunning-Kruger. I don’t want to read any “just asking questions” comments about COVID or the vaccines unless the people have years of experience working in the field prior to the pandemic, because it filters out the armchair experts that we have so many of.

What’s funny to me is that not everything evokes this much scrutiny as vaccines. Why do relatively few people care about what they’re putting into their bodies via the products they find at the grocery store vs a jab in their arms?

Products at the grocery store typically aren't novel.

When they are (GMOs, Beyond Meat) you do see a similar reaction.

They’re not novel in as in a box of cookies is a box of cookies, but you bet your ass that the manufacturers are constantly innovating new ingredients and processes to make their products ever more shelf stable and inexpensive. Same goes for cleaning supplies and similar things you can find in the grocery store.

“Appealing to authority” when it comes to deeply technical topics is the only sane approach because otherwise the zone is just flooded with morons who don’t understand the first thing about the topic promoting ivermectin or other random snake oils.

Do you think there’s some forum deep in the bowels of academia where immunologist and virologists are neck-deep in discussions about cryptographic hash functions?

I’m sure these threads have a huge selection bias because they become so toxic so quickly, but the quality of discussion on HN for anything Covid is one of the most confidently wrong places on the internet.

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