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veavo | 2 years ago

We already know the political slant of "experts". Making "experts" write the community notes would lead to them being as untrustworthy as "fact checkers".

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lkrubner|2 years ago

Painting all experts with such a broad brush leads to what is an epistemic waste land in which you are cut off from everyone else's knowledge, since you can dismiss any belief you dislike by simply declaring it expert knowledge.

soerxpso|2 years ago

I don't think he's painting a picture that all experts are automatically wrong about everything just because they're experts. Rather, that "experts" are as morally biased as any other person (it turns out that 8 years of university doesn't fundamentally change anything about the human condition), and that they shouldn't be granted unchecked epistemological authority over subjective matters. Someone who knows the truth and has a political agenda is not less likely to lie than someone who doesn't know the truth and has a political agenda, and that's even the case if you assume that all experts do magically know everything about their field.

gmerc|2 years ago

Great exhibition of terminal trust decline. “Expert” is a label, it means what people decide it means.

Ultimate societies have inability to foster trust will be terminal and unlike why the crypto bros think, technology will not safe us.

alkonaut|2 years ago

You mean that the more people know about something, the more they tend to have certain opinions? That's interesting.

I wonder if I myself should try to align my views with those who know more, rather than those who know less?

renewiltord|2 years ago

Often the problem is that the guy who has made something his career posts incorrect things more often than the guy who hasn't. Some of the reasons for these are:

- self-interest

  - intentionally since it protects their interests

  - accidental since they've spent so much time they need it to be meaningful

  - accidental since they want to please their fellow experts

  - intentionally since they want to go with the herd
- selection bias towards being someone who cares about this very much goes with lack of aptitude

- historical bias

  - most people are better equipped than experts to spot paradigm shifts because experts are over-indexed on the status quo
- no field expertise

Ultimately, it's up to you how you weight people's opinion, and may each person's epistemology serve them appropriately.

blfr|2 years ago

It's not the more they know, it's the more credentials they have. Which is not the same, often wildly so.

xvector|2 years ago

Unfortunately, the uneducated and uninformed tend to hold the strongest opinions.

tyre|2 years ago

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

blfr|2 years ago

Usually until someone bothers to check.

Like the field of psychology which surprisingly often produces results about very successful liberal-endorsed interventions (head start programs or growth mindset) that reliably return weaker results as they're tested more and finally stop reproducing altogether. These, sometimes massive, failures do impressively little to tame the smugness of their proponents.