Comment by maxehmookau

When the experts say that algebra should not be taught in 8th grade, and the experts say that guessing at words instead of sounding them out is a better way to learn to read, and the experts say that calc can be replaced with 'data science' which is actually just data literacy, and so on and so forth, I'm not really interested in how the precise definition of 'experts' actually refers to something about 'growing our collective knowledge'. I'm more interested in staying away from all that. It's a fun gotcha to say things like 'well evidence either is or isn't', but it doesn't change the material reality of who's doing what and what they're likely to be doing in the near future. Public schooling is fucked, the group of people saying 'listen to the experts' is the group of people making it worse, a lot of it is explicitly political, and your best options for guaranteeing that you avoid it are homeschooling or parochial school, regardless of what words and rhetoric can be said about it.

There is a very simple rebuttal to this: In almost every high $$ trial the defense and prosecution will both call expert witnesses. These experts will then directly contradict and disagree with each other. Which of these experts should be trusted? It was an expert who testified that cigarettes are good for you, an expert who testified that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and an expert who verified that Oxycontin is not addictive. Those are not the people you want to learn from, no.

We celebrate countless outsiders like Galileo and Darwin who have disrupted the consensus of "experts" and were considered highly political at the time. History simply does not defend the infallibility of "experts", and does support the idea that you should not blindly trust a person who claims expertise.

Everybody should look into the work of Philip Tetlock and consider reading his book Superforecasters. There is a mountain of scientific evidence to show that the more a person considers themselves an expert in a topic the more vulnerable they are to making assumptions and being proven wrong as time progresses.

I believe op meant conservative as in less radical and more willing to acknowledge that their ideas have flaws rather than the GOP.

Large groups of experts in a non-science can be wrong. Either the Vatican University theology department, or a Baptist theology department would be at least one example.

> I hate this. Where else do we get knowledge from if not experts and academics in their fields?

Knowledge is generated via examination of reality itself. "Experts" are merely people who have conducted the most thorough examination of reality. Relying on them is a convenience to speed up acquisition of useful knowledge, but not a necessity.

The world is full of people claiming to be experts, but who are, variously:

* charlatans or hucksters evoking the outward trappings of expertise but lacking genuine understanding;

* people who may have valid knowledge in one area pretending to expertise in other areas;

* people who may have valid knowledge, but whose motivations are primarily driven either ideological commitment, pecuniary interests, rent-seeking, or other perverse incentives;

* and people who may have valid knowledge, but mistakenly conflate empirical knowledge with normative authority, and believe that knowing what "is" entitles them to make "ought" decisions for others.

Genuine experts in empirical fields should be in the business of presenting evidence and arguments that stand on their own merits, and empowering others to make better-informed decisions. Reliance on experts should be based entirely on the quality of the information they bring to the table, and not on trust per se.

Anyone who cites their own putative expertise as a reason for why they should not have to explain themselves or justify their conclusions -- or, especially, who cites expertise as a basis for claiming authority over others -- absolutely should not be trusted.

The combination of is-ought conflation and the expertise-as-authority mindset is both incredibly dangerous and extremely prevalent in our society today. People with domain knowledge in a technical field often mistakenly think they are qualified to universalize value judgments about normative matters that relate their empirical field, and think they are entitled to use force to impose those value judgments onto others.

When confronted with this sort of hubris, it's entirely understandable why some people choose to eschew involvement with these putative experts even if it means potentially having less reliable empirical information to work with.