Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryze | Hacker News Reader

Along the same vein: "The proposed speaker works for a university and/or has a phD or other bona fide high level scientific qualification". Many of the points they list are valid, but this conspicuous appeal to authority makes me much less inclined to watch the talks.

View on HN

The TED folks are definitely not making an argument from authority; if they were they would say: all things said by people with scientific bona fides are true and you can't question them.

Instead, they're correctly observing that there's a correlation between scientific bona fides and scientifically accurate speakers. And that organizers will be better off if they use that as one rule of thumb in evaluating speakers, which is also true.

You only see an argument from authority because you've reduced their argument to a straw man. The purpose of TEDx isn't to be a final arbiter of all things true; it's just to surface things that are true and interesting.

Well argued, by far the clearest rebuttal I've read so far and I concede. I just hope that the rules of thumb they listed for "good science" are prioritized as listed, because I really believe content should be the key consideration.

If they are having a problem with perpetual-motion trolls and people speaking well outside their field of expertise then it is a valid reaction. If you are speaking on an academic subject then the default should be that there be some reason to believe you are credible on that subject.

To clarify. The bullet points are listed under "Marks of Good Science". Holding a degree does not mean your publications or claims are good science. It's fine if Ted wants to only have degree holders as speakers, but they should be clear that it's a bias they've chosen, not "good science".

They're organizers of a conference, not academics. If you require them to replicate the experiment to prove it's good science, you're crippling them. It's perfectly appropriate for them to apply conservative heuristics to make their editorial load manageable, and a good heuristic is "has the appropriate academic credentials."

They're popularizers, not the cutting edge.

An appeal to an authority who is an expert in the field is not a logical fallacy. It makes complete sense to want to hear about global warming from a climate scientist.

Yes it does, but that doesn't make their arguments valid. My whole point is not to keep experts out, but to judge the content on its scientific merit alone.

> but this conspicuous appeal to authority makes me much less inclined to watch the talks.

You prefer non-authoritative information?

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

So you do prefer non-authoritative information?

Appealing to an authority is not a fallacy unless it's misapplied. Saying "I'd rather learn about X from an expert in X" is completely legitimate; it's common sense, really.

From your link:

>Although certain classes of argument from authority can constitute strong inductive arguments, the appeal to authority is often applied fallaciously: either the authority is not a subject-matter expert, or there is no consensus among experts in the subject matter, or both

Reply on news.ycombinator.com