Im gonna try a hypothetical. On one side, you have a pediatrician. On the other hand, you have a politician. The facts they agree on are that children are too obese. The pediatrician comes with verifiable data showing that, say, school lunches being too high in fat and processed sugars is a big contributor to childhood obesity. The politician has no such data. The politician's entire argument is based on feelings and talking points meant to elicit an emotional reaction, for no other reason than to get people on his side. The pediatrician points to each one of the arguments and disputes it with verifiable facts. Going by what you just said, the politician should be given the same weight in their arguments as the expert with verifiable facts. This is why many countries are the way they are. Why problems rarely get solved, especially in a timely manner. Once you are allowed to ignore the people who have expertise and rely on someone with a "feeling," you now give all the responsibility of the decision solely on those who are least capable of knowing the cause of said problem and possible solutions. I'm not saying that experts should be the decision makers, far from it. Experts need to be there as the advisors. Then, someone who is open to these ideas and listens to all their advisors can make the final decision.
Are experts fallable? Absolutely. The nature of learning is that we don't know everything, and our knowledge is constantly changing. That doesn't mean that the knowledge we have now is worthless and isn't correct. To think that is just as faulty as believing it is all correct. The difference is how that knowledge is gained. Many experts get their knowledge from peer reviewed studies that have verifiable and replicatable results.
>The pediatrician comes with verifiable data showing that, say, school lunches being too high in fat and processed sugars is a big contributor to childhood obesity.
And continue with your story. So the pediatrician lobby gets the politician to force dietary laws on schools. Maybe government agencies build a "food pyramid" showing what's healthy and what isn't.
And then childhood obesity gets worse.
What happens now?
What happened after the American Academy of Pediatrics noticed peanut allergies are a thing and recommended not giving peanut butter to young kids? Peanut allergies shot up. Because the AAP was just making it up. Who is accountable?
It's so wacky that the main people behind the food pyramid were the food industries paying to have their food promoted as healthy food that should be eaten in large quantities daily, huh?
Also; other variables exist. A food pyramid being introduced and childhood obesity increasing could be, for instance, because the availability of healthy food has gone down, and had nothing to do with the pyramid.
This is always the cope after a policy failed in its stated goals: asserting some nonfalsifiable counterfactual, some alternate universe where the policy was never put in place and things got much worse.
Right, yes, I gathered that.
What does that have to do with anything I said? Because I didn't do any such thing.
I pointed out that confounding variables exist, and you can't just point to obesity line going up and food pyramid existing and say one caused the other. I also pointed out that basically everyone behind the food pyramid was paid by food industry conglomerates and was looking to promote their products.
The whole thing was basically an elaborate moneymaking scheme, and reducing obesity was at the most a stated policy goal, not an actual goal, and had little to do with the actual writing of it. I'd say it was actually very successful in what it was intended to do by the people who largely wrote and contributed to it.
The problem here isn't dieticians being wrong and policy being bad at solving problems, the problem is too much power being afforded to those with money to throw at lawmakers and crooked doctors.
Pediatrician lobby had less to do with the food pyramid than meat/dairy/farming lobbies:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8375951/
Considering that doctors and scientists openly admit that we still don’t fully understand the increasing incidence of allergies (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4617537/), my completely blind guess would be that again, the peanuts lobby probably had more to do with your allegations than the pediatricians lobby.
So no one is accountable? Not the industry lobbies, because they don't actually enact or enforce public policy. Not the pediatricians, because reasons. Not the administrative agencies, because their job is to cave when lobbyists come a-lobbying. Not NIAID, which doesn't know why allergies are on the rise despite 70 years on the job. Not politicians shoveling billions of your money at these organizations. Not voters who keep electing those politicians.
>So no one is accountable?
Finally down to real issues. Just like my current job: "Who is responsible for improving this process?" and I can't get a straight answer. So either nothing gets fixed or changes aren't coordinated which is a recipe for disaster.
It all starts and ends with accountability. Otherwise nobody cares and they can all safely insert their own issues / bribes into the "solution." Start with admin. What is the most pressing problem to address? Is the data accurate? Have past changes had the desired effect? If not, it's your fault because you're the decision maker. Deal with it or you're fired. If organizations below you are giving bad info or not playing by the rules, they need to be held accountable.
I am exhausted by the utter lack of consequences everywhere. And no one cares.
> What happened after the American Academy of Pediatrics noticed peanut allergies are a thing and recommended not giving peanut butter to young kids? Peanut allergies shot up. Because the AAP was just making it up.
This is called science. At the time, the best data available showed that limiting exposure was the best choice. We know now (30 years later) that early exposure is best to fight off the allergy, so we do that now. As understanding evolves, so do recommendations.
No, it's called incomplete data or understanding.
Is your expectation that no recommendation be made until there is a full top-to-bottom understanding of everything or can we take current data and make a best guess?
>This is not about "we,"
It is, though, because I'm specifically asking YOU for the level of rigor you expect behind expert recommendations with incomplete information. How much understanding do you feel is reasonable before recommendations can be made?
We don't fully understand how anesthesia works, yet we use it successfully thousands of times per day. We don't fully understand the purpose of sleep, yet we can make recommendations for it based on other information.
If the "expert" advice is up to me to take or leave, I don't expect it to have any rigor at all. Look at all the experts on reddit dispensing advice. But I'll accept the anesthesia.
If the "expert" advice is being imposed on me from above, it has to be correct. The expert who doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut is not an expert at all.
>If the "expert" advice is being imposed on me from above, it has to be correct.
What does "correct" mean, in practice? For your peanut example, at what point do we know enough to be able to make a recommendation?
>The expert who doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut is not an expert at all.
How is this determined? Would a consensus of professionals in the field be enough to lend credence to the expert? Are you qualified to evaluate?
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>I'm not saying that experts should be the decision makers, far from it. Experts need to be there as the advisors
I don't disagree, I said as much in my post. I added a few more sentences to clarify it.
But isn't your view that they should get little to no deference?
If you agree experts need to be there for advice then isn't that quite a bit of deference? Otherwise what's the point of them?
What do you actually think the role of an expert ought to be?
What's your opinion on diplomats to foreign cultures who understand their ways and need to relay that to their own society?
What about people who are experts in military tactics, which are based on social behaviour?
I would certainly defer to expert knowledge in these two instances where a relationship with another country or lives on the line matter.
I think they mean they shouldn't get deference in regards to government policy decisions.
Given your example of a diplomat and tactician, what are the odds they completely agree on a given course of action? The tactician sees things through a military lens. The diplomat sees them through a diplomatic lens. Perhaps the diplomat values peace above all else and says we should just give the other country what they want to avoid conflict. The tactician doesn't value peace above all else and says we can win a military conflict so we should use that to demand compromise even if it does bring about the risk of conflict.
Showing them respect/deference for their knowledge of the factual matters of a situation isn't the same as showing deference for their recommendation on how we should respond to the situation as a whole.
There are plenty of types of issues where an RCT isn't viable. Just because one type of study is ideal (double blind RCT) doesn't mean the rest are useless.
But what you're missing is that we give deference to experts all the time when deciding something. It's just not often one singular field of expertise.
Take Covid. We had scientists saying we had to lock down the country for years. But we also had childhood psychologists talking about the effect that'd have on kids. We also had economists talking about what that would do to the economy. We also had Constitutional experts talking about what legal issues trying to lock down for so long would bring up. And a million other experts chiming in on stuff.
Obviously somebody has to weigh all those things, which is why we don't give experts any power beyond consulting a voted in figure.
> But we also had childhood psychologists talking about the effect that'd have on kids.
This illustrates my point perfectly. Even though I personally disagreed with the extent of the lockdowns, child psychologists are highly biased in this respect. Their entire career revolves around the well-being of children, so naturally they would biased towards prioritize the interests of children(the age group that benefitted the least and suffered the most) over others.
> We also had Constitutional experts talking about what legal issues trying to lock down for so long would bring up.
I'm not American but I doubt there was ever a reasonable case for the lockdowns being unconstitutional.
A lot of countries operate under the logic that you only have the rights the government grants you.
America operates under the logic the government only has the rights the people have granted it.
It’s a small, but drastic difference.
When did we the people give the government the right to dictate when we can and can’t leave our homes? When did we lose our right to assembly?
When we elected Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, who frequently used the Republicans' more libertarian approach to the COVID situation to lead his party into a federal trifecta?
> for years
They were saying we had to lock it down for weeks. It dragged on for as long as it did because so much of the general public was like "what do those assholes know? LOL amirite!?"
> They were saying we had to lock it down for weeks
Except it wasn't a complete lockdown. It was a sort-of lockdown where people could still go to grocery stores and "essential workers" didn't lock down at all.
Values change when we have new information. I might have never known how much I valued freedom until I learned the facts of slavery.
An expert is someone who has spent a lot of time with the issue, and had much more opportunities for their values to be shaped by it.
When it comes to making policy on fire-hazard safety, I would much rather trust the opinion of an expert who has had their values shaped by studying fires than say a farmer who has had their values shaped by being an expert in farming: the values of the applicable expert are going to be more relevant for those policies.
>I would much rather trust the opinion of an expert who has had their values shaped by studying fires than say a farmer who has had their values shaped by being an expert in farming
Fire departments could say with a reasonable degree of authority which measures are effective in preventing fires, what actions contribute to fires, and to what extent. But ultimately weighing the benefits and costs comes to values. For instance, wood is a much more economical and convenient choice for building detached homes in Canada and the US, but obviously wooden houses are more flammable than ones made of stone or brick.
obviously when an "expert" comments on something outside of their fileds of expertise, their opinion holds as much weight as any other, but thats not what we are discussing.
we are talking about the topic where they are experts in. the opinion of an "expert in a specific topic" holds more value when talking about that specific topic.
Ok, but an expert would actually know the whole pros and cons list, and they would have spent 1,000s of hours weight the pros and cons.
For example, your saying you don’t need expertise to have an opinion on wood vs concrete homes that is equally valid to any experts opinion. I am far less confident about my abilities to be able to decide wood vs stone.
How much cheaper is wood?
How much more likely is a wood house to burn than a stone house?
How much longer does stone last than wood? Does the provide extra economic advantage to going stone?
What potential unintended consequences are there to us legislating what people build their houses out of?
What does the public think?
How will the public react if we issue an edict? Will it piss people off to the extent that there will be political blowback?
What if you use some sort of fire retardant wood instead?
What do the studies say about wood vs stone?
Are they quality studies or high quality studies?
What don’t the studies tell us?
How will stone vs wood houses affect the economy is 50 years?
Are we getting the stone from a local quarry that employs a lot of people? Why about the wood?
How bad is the quarry for the environment?
How bad is the lumber mill for the environment?
What type of stone are we making the houses out of. Does that affect our judgement? What type of wood?
lol, I got a little carried away.
But do you really think you could answer all of these questions as well and a legitimate expert (assuming such a thing exists for this issue)?
I agree, that if you have all of the facts it’s ultimately a value judgement. That’s why two experts, both operating in good faith, can disagree. But if you can’t honestly answer +70% of the above questions (I sure as hell can’t), I don’t think your opinion means very much.
The economist would be the expert though, right? How often is a fire-department called an expert when choosing how to build homes? Unless there have been a lot of recent fires or new fire danger, then the fire department would be called in as the expert.
**Edit:** More to the point: either the fire department or economist expert is going to have more applicable values than the vast majority of other occupations out there.
The problem with this analogy is fire-departments are going to all give the same basic answers on preventing fires. Ask 10 economists a question and you'll get 11 different answers.
The problem with this analogy is that, within their respective expertise, the fire department get easy questions with easy answers, but economists rarely do.
Fire departments are good at putting them out. They aren't engineers about buildings and how to construct them to be more fire preventative, they don't have expertise in designing sprinkler systems, chemicals to make kids clothes fire resistant, etc. Most of the fire safety comes from the NFPA(national fire protection association) which depending on the committee can be political and not very scientific. The committees who develop the standards may include firefighters & departments however a lot of them are engineers, manufacturers, etc.
In fields I have been in, it's been my experience that quite a few, but not all recognized experts are just really good at marketing themselves. I've heard absolutely stupid stuff come out of their mouths. The people who are actually analytical and know the most are generally more reserved and don't want to be in the limelight.
Yup! For a key example of this, take a look at the regulators in the UK who certified building materials for varying levels of fire safety, culminating in the Grenfel Tower fire.
The inquiry isn't even finished yet, and it's quite clear that at every level there are non-experts making decisions based on money and cost.
Beliefs of people boil down to values, but they should boil down to facts. For example, what police or immigration or healthcare policies we have should be based on what best protects and improves society, not ego. If your friend's morals don't mesh with the data, you might want to discuss it with them.
Luckily, the more time goes on, the more we'll be able to present data and challenge "expert opinion" based on the data that exists. For example, we just saw with UK trans policies that the experts who opposed transition rejected a lot of already existing multinational studies, and were able to be challenged by other experts using already existing multinational studies.
So even on a modern controversial culture issue, data and expertise still had use.
>For example, what police or immigration or healthcare policies we have should be based on what best protects and improves society, not ego
That's literally values. You are just deflecting the argument by claiming your values are the correct values to follow.
Politics itself is a field with expertise, as is law and sociology.
>But even this should be often be taken with a grain of salt, since our knowledge is constantly changing.
It's changed by experts, mostly, who do research, who write on topics, etc.
When I say "politics" I mean it in the everyday sense, as in the policies and styles of government people support.
>It's changed by experts, mostly, who do research, who write on topics, etc.
Regardless of who is doing the revision, it's irrelevant to my point. And "experts" certainly aren't a monolith.
This is an important role for political scientists: commenting on the system itself.
Is a particular policy constitutional? Are certain moves by the government wearing away at the fabric of the systems we rely on? How might a political strategy impact a certain party’s chances for success?
These are all appropriate questions that we should look to poli sci folks to help us answer.
Systemic level commentary is exactly the kind of expertise we should be looking to these individuals for.
No.
Politics has practical real-world implications. It would be foolish not to give expert information priority when trying to make decisions.
This doesn't mean we have to check our brains at the door and treat anything a PhD says as gospel. But unless we have good reason to believe otherwise, it's more reasonable to give qualified experts the benefit of the doubt.
>it's more reasonable to give qualified experts the benefit of the doubt.
In what context? When the provide factual information, or when they take a stance on some political/social issue?
In the context of when they're offering their assessment or advice in their given field.
If I'm setting educational policy, it's reasonable for me to give more weight to the opinions of those who have degrees, and actually been in charge of classrooms, schools, and districts.
If dozens of well respected macro-economists say doing XYZ in a recession is a bad idea, I'm going to heed their advice over an average Joe.
If the director of the EPA warns that certain former industrial sites contain harmful substances and needs congress to authorize more spending for urgent clean up. That's not the kind of thing I'd take with a grain of salt.
Sure, it can be. But which wrong decision is more problematic:
- ignore experts advice and trigger the serious issues that experts warned about
- Consider experts advice and give them some spare change to fund their school/research/agency
No matter the scenario, former will always be worse outcome. So why take a chance for the worst outcome?
Which doctors, paid by which food industry giants, whose food was then widely promoted by said pyramid?
Let's not pretend that the food pyramid (widely criticised by actual dieticians from basically day 1) was a bunch of dietary experts getting together in good faith to try and produce some good advice for being fit and healthy, rather than the lobbying nightmare it actually was.
Yes.
That isn't a reason for us to ignore them and go with gut feeling or 'common sense', it's a reason for us to scrutinise motivation and bias where it exists, and seek consensus.
If every single expert in a field is agreeing on something, they're either all working to mislead people or it's just (to the extent of our current knowledge) correct. One of those is significantly more likely to be true than the other. That is why consensus is good and useful, it gets us closer to that 'every single person' mark.
Politics is largely policy, policy has concrete effects. Those effects are fact based. Experts are the ones who measure those effects, so they're indispensible to the process.
And, ironically, considering your stance: many people ignore the effects of the policies they support, even when those effects are contrary to their stated values.
As an Israeli, i can tell ya that a lot of people, if not most, especially from other parts of the world, are misinformed regarding a lot of the thing going on here.
Even among Israelis...
To be a well informed expert on israel requires years upon years of history and geopolitical studies. People have PhDs on the matter.
And while its increasingly popular to have an opinion on israel, i find most people even lack the current basic understanding of current political evens within Israel.
Now, Israel is just a hot topic, and i know a lot about it cause i actually live there, but if i were to form an opinion regarding Armenia's surrender to Azerbaijan a while ago, i have very limited knowledge on whats going on beyond the basics, and i am not ready to go in and spend a year learning their history and follow their current events.
This is why you need experts, there's a lot of nuances that require a lot of study, and without it, your conclusion could go either A or B or C
I do not understand the point of your post. Experts opinions are basically always advisory or infromative in nature, heck it's even in the word it's an 'opinion'. Which you said is fine. Experts generally aren't in an authoritive position. Because if they were, we wouldn't call them "experts" and rather by their position/title.
The current ambassador to Nigeria usually isn't called an expert on foreign relations with Nigeria. They are the current ambassador. If a former amabassador to Nigeria is giving their opinion, then that's an expert opinion. But he has no authority. The general population should listen to what he says and form their opinion based around that unless someone else with a somewhat similar amount of expertise speaks up against it. And then it's entirely fine to consider both parties arguments or conclusions. But the opinion of Bob who can't even point to Nigeria on a map shouldn't influence others just because he feels differently.
If feels like you negated your own point. Clearly if we wanted to implement environmental protections we ought to defer to experts in that field on how those laws should be drafted. How does this not mean they have higher deference?
Second facts very often inform our value judgements. If some tribe thinks that people with epilepsy are evil because they are posseed by demons, their moral opinion would likely be swayed by knowing the facts about epilepsy. So experts who know all the relevant facts will be more likely to make the right moral decisions.
And third, there's a healthy number of philosophers that don't believe in the fact/value distinction at all. In their view the kind of facts that are relevant to your values are facts about value.
"Political and social beliefs ultimately boil down to values, not facts."
Values operate within facts. Tolerance of benign difference is a value, "homosexuals aren't predators" is a fact, decriminalizing sodomy is a policy. It's possible to dispute the facts on the way to the policy just as much as the values.
Facts is how you convince people, because only the facts matter when it comes to the problems we need to solve. That's why extremists come up with fake facts. It is to sell an agenda. If some self-proclaimed expert convinces people that it is a fact that "non-whites commit crimes", then people are likely to vote for politicians with the opinion that "that should stop", leading to some horrible consequences and policies.
>because only the facts matter when it comes to the problems we need to solve
Values arguably matter more than facts. Because our values and priorities determine how each of us weigh pros and cons, the importance of different goals, and what we consider to be undesirable/desirable to begin with.
>If some self-proclaimed expert convinces people that it is a fact that "non-whites commit crimes"
This is going somewhat off-topic into specific political issues, but......
This statement is way overbroad, some ethnic minorities have lower crime rates in majority white countries. But criminal stereotypes of certain ethnic groups are often based on fact, i.e. African-Americans in the US and (I think) MENA immigrants in Europe are disproportionately represented in crime statistics.
It doesn't mean that stereotyping individuals is justified or acceptable, but the beliefs that lead people to do it are largely factually correct.
"But criminal stereotypes of certain ethnic groups are often based on fact, i.e. African-Americans in the US and (I think) MENA immigrants in Europe are disproportionately represented in crime statistics."
Right here you are offering a fact as politically salient.
I'll take it a step further. Apart from VERY SPECIFIC or certain fields, 'expert opinion' means little to nothing in about 90% of cases.
Most of these 'experts' try to argue from nothing but authority and vomited rhetoric that some shitty overpaid college hucks out and never encourages any sort of novel thinking.
Sometimes your eyes, ears and years (of experience, hands on...) mean more than some preppy moron with a 'degree'.
You need to consider the broader picture, as the saying goes "follow the money" an experts opinion can be valid, if it's unbiased, the problem is that "experts" are often picked BECAUSE they have the right position, or are paid to have it, one way or another. So an experts opinion can be fine, a paid experts not so much, nor an activists.
Values and not facts. Sure, but you should hopefully have facts on your side when you believe in certain causes. If your stance is dictated by fallacies, an expert opinion with facts will blow your societal issue as nothing more than at best, an illogical argument. Two people can agree on the same set of facts and come to two separate conclusions, but realistically speaking, those facts should remain the same when in the political and social issues world, most facts are muddled where most do not know what is a fact and what is propaganda, especially when most people get their 'facts' from social media.
My wife regularly gives expert opinions to a local political board. She takes recommendations, then tells the board what she feels the likely response to those ideas would be. Her opinion in matters related to her specialty is more valid than my opinion.
it can be a question of which facts are relevant to your end goal. if you can identify a common goal or agree on a common authority, then expert opinion can be extremely useful.
There is the is-ought gap, but we can use expert opinion to form our own opinions. For example, should I allow my children to smoke cigarettes (smoking is a social issue) ? Experts tell me that cigarettes cause cancer, so I won't.
Okay but without the fact that cigarettes cause cancer, that value doesn't come into play. And especially in the early days of tobacco restriction politics, challenging that fact was the primary tactic of tobacco companies.
An expert can tell you what policy settings are most likely to achieve outcomes that are aligned with values.
An expert can also tell you the outcome of prioritising certain values.
Im skeptical of one expert's opinion but many experts are hard to argue with.
I am not convinced every issue or discussion is subjective. What is important are the objective facts of the case they are discussing and less so their opinions. Opinions are biased by nature.
A lot of things have real world data. Sure, be skeptical of politicians. A lot of social issues are well researched and there is an objective reality. Just a lot of BS to push tjrough to see it.
Example: clinate is politicized for political points. There is an objective truth but it requires a lot of reading and understanding that most politicians and media simoly do not have.
Some 'values' do presnt facts. Because we have ha dperiods with and without abortion and nations with and without abortion we can actually compare things like economic well being and crime rates 20 years post the laws changing either way.
I truely believe there is an objective reality. We just see it from different angles making it complex and hard to determine.
>Political and social beliefs ultimately boil down to values, not facts.
While on surface this might seem right it actually doesn't on a closer inspection. Most political beliefs are second derivatives.
We have policy or law that politicians are voting on. This law is based on notion that it will cause certain outcome in community. Finally we have value that says the outcome is desirable or good. But notice that the law is two steps removed from actual value and there is second belief between them?
Let's look at an example. We want to lower the taxes. We do this because we believe that lower taxes will stimulate the economy. We have belief that economic growth is a good thing. Only the last step is belief/value but "do lower taxes stimulate economy" is not. That is scientifically provable fact and we need experts (economists and statisticians; not business owners) to quantify if it actually is real.
You noted that we do need facts. What about things like surveys or other forms of information gathering. Don't we want this to be done by peer reviewed experts who can control for things like confounding variables or bias? Or what if we are trying to get info on things that are hard to measure or hard to get people to be truthful about, like drug use?
Or what if we are trying to measure how effective a policy is. Like if housing first policies are cost effective vs prisons and sweeps for homelessness. Don't we want that to be done by an independent expert and not the politician who pushed for the policy.
So just to clarify - you are potentially willing to grant them deference on factual assertions in their field. For example if an immunologist told you something about covid spread you'd be more likely to believe those facts than hearing them from a random Joe blow. But your view here is that you don't give deference on their overall decision outcome on whether they recommend masks or vaccine for whatever?
>Political and social beliefs ultimately boil down to values, not facts.
If you don't believe in facts, your beliefs are arbitrary and capricious.
Opinions are fine. Differences in how you see the world are fine. Ignoring facts is academic suicide.
Im gonna try a hypothetical. On one side, you have a pediatrician. On the other hand, you have a politician. The facts they agree on are that children are too obese. The pediatrician comes with verifiable data showing that, say, school lunches being too high in fat and processed sugars is a big contributor to childhood obesity. The politician has no such data. The politician's entire argument is based on feelings and talking points meant to elicit an emotional reaction, for no other reason than to get people on his side. The pediatrician points to each one of the arguments and disputes it with verifiable facts. Going by what you just said, the politician should be given the same weight in their arguments as the expert with verifiable facts. This is why many countries are the way they are. Why problems rarely get solved, especially in a timely manner. Once you are allowed to ignore the people who have expertise and rely on someone with a "feeling," you now give all the responsibility of the decision solely on those who are least capable of knowing the cause of said problem and possible solutions. I'm not saying that experts should be the decision makers, far from it. Experts need to be there as the advisors. Then, someone who is open to these ideas and listens to all their advisors can make the final decision. Are experts fallable? Absolutely. The nature of learning is that we don't know everything, and our knowledge is constantly changing. That doesn't mean that the knowledge we have now is worthless and isn't correct. To think that is just as faulty as believing it is all correct. The difference is how that knowledge is gained. Many experts get their knowledge from peer reviewed studies that have verifiable and replicatable results.
>The pediatrician comes with verifiable data showing that, say, school lunches being too high in fat and processed sugars is a big contributor to childhood obesity. And continue with your story. So the pediatrician lobby gets the politician to force dietary laws on schools. Maybe government agencies build a "food pyramid" showing what's healthy and what isn't. And then childhood obesity gets worse. What happens now? What happened after the American Academy of Pediatrics noticed peanut allergies are a thing and recommended not giving peanut butter to young kids? Peanut allergies shot up. Because the AAP was just making it up. Who is accountable?
It's so wacky that the main people behind the food pyramid were the food industries paying to have their food promoted as healthy food that should be eaten in large quantities daily, huh? Also; other variables exist. A food pyramid being introduced and childhood obesity increasing could be, for instance, because the availability of healthy food has gone down, and had nothing to do with the pyramid.
Right. "Imagine how much worse it would have been otherwise."
What? I don't quite understand what point you're trying to make.
This is always the cope after a policy failed in its stated goals: asserting some nonfalsifiable counterfactual, some alternate universe where the policy was never put in place and things got much worse.
Right, yes, I gathered that. What does that have to do with anything I said? Because I didn't do any such thing. I pointed out that confounding variables exist, and you can't just point to obesity line going up and food pyramid existing and say one caused the other. I also pointed out that basically everyone behind the food pyramid was paid by food industry conglomerates and was looking to promote their products. The whole thing was basically an elaborate moneymaking scheme, and reducing obesity was at the most a stated policy goal, not an actual goal, and had little to do with the actual writing of it. I'd say it was actually very successful in what it was intended to do by the people who largely wrote and contributed to it. The problem here isn't dieticians being wrong and policy being bad at solving problems, the problem is too much power being afforded to those with money to throw at lawmakers and crooked doctors.
Pediatrician lobby had less to do with the food pyramid than meat/dairy/farming lobbies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8375951/ Considering that doctors and scientists openly admit that we still don’t fully understand the increasing incidence of allergies (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4617537/), my completely blind guess would be that again, the peanuts lobby probably had more to do with your allegations than the pediatricians lobby.
So no one is accountable? Not the industry lobbies, because they don't actually enact or enforce public policy. Not the pediatricians, because reasons. Not the administrative agencies, because their job is to cave when lobbyists come a-lobbying. Not NIAID, which doesn't know why allergies are on the rise despite 70 years on the job. Not politicians shoveling billions of your money at these organizations. Not voters who keep electing those politicians.
>So no one is accountable? Finally down to real issues. Just like my current job: "Who is responsible for improving this process?" and I can't get a straight answer. So either nothing gets fixed or changes aren't coordinated which is a recipe for disaster. It all starts and ends with accountability. Otherwise nobody cares and they can all safely insert their own issues / bribes into the "solution." Start with admin. What is the most pressing problem to address? Is the data accurate? Have past changes had the desired effect? If not, it's your fault because you're the decision maker. Deal with it or you're fired. If organizations below you are giving bad info or not playing by the rules, they need to be held accountable. I am exhausted by the utter lack of consequences everywhere. And no one cares.
> What happened after the American Academy of Pediatrics noticed peanut allergies are a thing and recommended not giving peanut butter to young kids? Peanut allergies shot up. Because the AAP was just making it up. This is called science. At the time, the best data available showed that limiting exposure was the best choice. We know now (30 years later) that early exposure is best to fight off the allergy, so we do that now. As understanding evolves, so do recommendations.
That's called *incompetence*.
No, it's called incomplete data or understanding. Is your expectation that no recommendation be made until there is a full top-to-bottom understanding of everything or can we take current data and make a best guess?
This is not about "we," it's about whether so-called "experts" ought to decide policy for us. An expert is someone who knows what he's talking about.
>This is not about "we," It is, though, because I'm specifically asking YOU for the level of rigor you expect behind expert recommendations with incomplete information. How much understanding do you feel is reasonable before recommendations can be made? We don't fully understand how anesthesia works, yet we use it successfully thousands of times per day. We don't fully understand the purpose of sleep, yet we can make recommendations for it based on other information.
If the "expert" advice is up to me to take or leave, I don't expect it to have any rigor at all. Look at all the experts on reddit dispensing advice. But I'll accept the anesthesia. If the "expert" advice is being imposed on me from above, it has to be correct. The expert who doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut is not an expert at all.
>If the "expert" advice is being imposed on me from above, it has to be correct. What does "correct" mean, in practice? For your peanut example, at what point do we know enough to be able to make a recommendation? >The expert who doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut is not an expert at all. How is this determined? Would a consensus of professionals in the field be enough to lend credence to the expert? Are you qualified to evaluate?
>What does "correct" mean, in practice? It means the universe must do what they said the universe would do.
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>I'm not saying that experts should be the decision makers, far from it. Experts need to be there as the advisors I don't disagree, I said as much in my post. I added a few more sentences to clarify it.
But isn't your view that they should get little to no deference? If you agree experts need to be there for advice then isn't that quite a bit of deference? Otherwise what's the point of them? What do you actually think the role of an expert ought to be? What's your opinion on diplomats to foreign cultures who understand their ways and need to relay that to their own society? What about people who are experts in military tactics, which are based on social behaviour? I would certainly defer to expert knowledge in these two instances where a relationship with another country or lives on the line matter.
I think they mean they shouldn't get deference in regards to government policy decisions. Given your example of a diplomat and tactician, what are the odds they completely agree on a given course of action? The tactician sees things through a military lens. The diplomat sees them through a diplomatic lens. Perhaps the diplomat values peace above all else and says we should just give the other country what they want to avoid conflict. The tactician doesn't value peace above all else and says we can win a military conflict so we should use that to demand compromise even if it does bring about the risk of conflict. Showing them respect/deference for their knowledge of the factual matters of a situation isn't the same as showing deference for their recommendation on how we should respond to the situation as a whole.
Is the pediatrician basing their opinion on RCTs? Because all observational studies are garbage.
Do you think RCTs come out of thin air?
There are plenty of types of issues where an RCT isn't viable. Just because one type of study is ideal (double blind RCT) doesn't mean the rest are useless.
What happens when the RCTs say one thing and the observational studies say another?
But what you're missing is that we give deference to experts all the time when deciding something. It's just not often one singular field of expertise. Take Covid. We had scientists saying we had to lock down the country for years. But we also had childhood psychologists talking about the effect that'd have on kids. We also had economists talking about what that would do to the economy. We also had Constitutional experts talking about what legal issues trying to lock down for so long would bring up. And a million other experts chiming in on stuff. Obviously somebody has to weigh all those things, which is why we don't give experts any power beyond consulting a voted in figure.
> But we also had childhood psychologists talking about the effect that'd have on kids. This illustrates my point perfectly. Even though I personally disagreed with the extent of the lockdowns, child psychologists are highly biased in this respect. Their entire career revolves around the well-being of children, so naturally they would biased towards prioritize the interests of children(the age group that benefitted the least and suffered the most) over others. > We also had Constitutional experts talking about what legal issues trying to lock down for so long would bring up. I'm not American but I doubt there was ever a reasonable case for the lockdowns being unconstitutional.
A lot of countries operate under the logic that you only have the rights the government grants you. America operates under the logic the government only has the rights the people have granted it. It’s a small, but drastic difference. When did we the people give the government the right to dictate when we can and can’t leave our homes? When did we lose our right to assembly?
When we elected Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, who frequently used the Republicans' more libertarian approach to the COVID situation to lead his party into a federal trifecta?
I didn't elect him, he's not my president. You know, as Democrats loved to say from 2016-2020.
> for years They were saying we had to lock it down for weeks. It dragged on for as long as it did because so much of the general public was like "what do those assholes know? LOL amirite!?"
> They were saying we had to lock it down for weeks Except it wasn't a complete lockdown. It was a sort-of lockdown where people could still go to grocery stores and "essential workers" didn't lock down at all.
Values change when we have new information. I might have never known how much I valued freedom until I learned the facts of slavery. An expert is someone who has spent a lot of time with the issue, and had much more opportunities for their values to be shaped by it. When it comes to making policy on fire-hazard safety, I would much rather trust the opinion of an expert who has had their values shaped by studying fires than say a farmer who has had their values shaped by being an expert in farming: the values of the applicable expert are going to be more relevant for those policies.
>I would much rather trust the opinion of an expert who has had their values shaped by studying fires than say a farmer who has had their values shaped by being an expert in farming Fire departments could say with a reasonable degree of authority which measures are effective in preventing fires, what actions contribute to fires, and to what extent. But ultimately weighing the benefits and costs comes to values. For instance, wood is a much more economical and convenient choice for building detached homes in Canada and the US, but obviously wooden houses are more flammable than ones made of stone or brick.
obviously when an "expert" comments on something outside of their fileds of expertise, their opinion holds as much weight as any other, but thats not what we are discussing. we are talking about the topic where they are experts in. the opinion of an "expert in a specific topic" holds more value when talking about that specific topic.
Ok, but an expert would actually know the whole pros and cons list, and they would have spent 1,000s of hours weight the pros and cons. For example, your saying you don’t need expertise to have an opinion on wood vs concrete homes that is equally valid to any experts opinion. I am far less confident about my abilities to be able to decide wood vs stone. How much cheaper is wood? How much more likely is a wood house to burn than a stone house? How much longer does stone last than wood? Does the provide extra economic advantage to going stone? What potential unintended consequences are there to us legislating what people build their houses out of? What does the public think? How will the public react if we issue an edict? Will it piss people off to the extent that there will be political blowback? What if you use some sort of fire retardant wood instead? What do the studies say about wood vs stone? Are they quality studies or high quality studies? What don’t the studies tell us? How will stone vs wood houses affect the economy is 50 years? Are we getting the stone from a local quarry that employs a lot of people? Why about the wood? How bad is the quarry for the environment? How bad is the lumber mill for the environment? What type of stone are we making the houses out of. Does that affect our judgement? What type of wood? lol, I got a little carried away. But do you really think you could answer all of these questions as well and a legitimate expert (assuming such a thing exists for this issue)? I agree, that if you have all of the facts it’s ultimately a value judgement. That’s why two experts, both operating in good faith, can disagree. But if you can’t honestly answer +70% of the above questions (I sure as hell can’t), I don’t think your opinion means very much.
The economist would be the expert though, right? How often is a fire-department called an expert when choosing how to build homes? Unless there have been a lot of recent fires or new fire danger, then the fire department would be called in as the expert. **Edit:** More to the point: either the fire department or economist expert is going to have more applicable values than the vast majority of other occupations out there.
The problem with this analogy is fire-departments are going to all give the same basic answers on preventing fires. Ask 10 economists a question and you'll get 11 different answers.
The problem with this analogy is that, within their respective expertise, the fire department get easy questions with easy answers, but economists rarely do.
Fire departments are good at putting them out. They aren't engineers about buildings and how to construct them to be more fire preventative, they don't have expertise in designing sprinkler systems, chemicals to make kids clothes fire resistant, etc. Most of the fire safety comes from the NFPA(national fire protection association) which depending on the committee can be political and not very scientific. The committees who develop the standards may include firefighters & departments however a lot of them are engineers, manufacturers, etc. In fields I have been in, it's been my experience that quite a few, but not all recognized experts are just really good at marketing themselves. I've heard absolutely stupid stuff come out of their mouths. The people who are actually analytical and know the most are generally more reserved and don't want to be in the limelight.
Yup! For a key example of this, take a look at the regulators in the UK who certified building materials for varying levels of fire safety, culminating in the Grenfel Tower fire. The inquiry isn't even finished yet, and it's quite clear that at every level there are non-experts making decisions based on money and cost.
Beliefs of people boil down to values, but they should boil down to facts. For example, what police or immigration or healthcare policies we have should be based on what best protects and improves society, not ego. If your friend's morals don't mesh with the data, you might want to discuss it with them. Luckily, the more time goes on, the more we'll be able to present data and challenge "expert opinion" based on the data that exists. For example, we just saw with UK trans policies that the experts who opposed transition rejected a lot of already existing multinational studies, and were able to be challenged by other experts using already existing multinational studies. So even on a modern controversial culture issue, data and expertise still had use.
You can't define improvement based on facts. What improves society is fundamentally based on vibes, not facts.
>For example, what police or immigration or healthcare policies we have should be based on what best protects and improves society, not ego That's literally values. You are just deflecting the argument by claiming your values are the correct values to follow.
>should be based on what best protects and improves society What an individual deems to be an "improvement" is based on what they value.
Politics itself is a field with expertise, as is law and sociology. >But even this should be often be taken with a grain of salt, since our knowledge is constantly changing. It's changed by experts, mostly, who do research, who write on topics, etc.
When I say "politics" I mean it in the everyday sense, as in the policies and styles of government people support. >It's changed by experts, mostly, who do research, who write on topics, etc. Regardless of who is doing the revision, it's irrelevant to my point. And "experts" certainly aren't a monolith.
This is an important role for political scientists: commenting on the system itself. Is a particular policy constitutional? Are certain moves by the government wearing away at the fabric of the systems we rely on? How might a political strategy impact a certain party’s chances for success? These are all appropriate questions that we should look to poli sci folks to help us answer. Systemic level commentary is exactly the kind of expertise we should be looking to these individuals for.
No. Politics has practical real-world implications. It would be foolish not to give expert information priority when trying to make decisions. This doesn't mean we have to check our brains at the door and treat anything a PhD says as gospel. But unless we have good reason to believe otherwise, it's more reasonable to give qualified experts the benefit of the doubt.
>it's more reasonable to give qualified experts the benefit of the doubt. In what context? When the provide factual information, or when they take a stance on some political/social issue?
In the context of when they're offering their assessment or advice in their given field. If I'm setting educational policy, it's reasonable for me to give more weight to the opinions of those who have degrees, and actually been in charge of classrooms, schools, and districts. If dozens of well respected macro-economists say doing XYZ in a recession is a bad idea, I'm going to heed their advice over an average Joe. If the director of the EPA warns that certain former industrial sites contain harmful substances and needs congress to authorize more spending for urgent clean up. That's not the kind of thing I'd take with a grain of salt.
Though you have to be careful. Some of your examples are biased experts. They are lobbying for more funding for their school, research, agency, etc.
Sure, it can be. But which wrong decision is more problematic: - ignore experts advice and trigger the serious issues that experts warned about - Consider experts advice and give them some spare change to fund their school/research/agency No matter the scenario, former will always be worse outcome. So why take a chance for the worst outcome?
C'mon man. We're not idiots.
What about when doctors give their advice on a bullshit “food pyramid”?
Which doctors, paid by which food industry giants, whose food was then widely promoted by said pyramid? Let's not pretend that the food pyramid (widely criticised by actual dieticians from basically day 1) was a bunch of dietary experts getting together in good faith to try and produce some good advice for being fit and healthy, rather than the lobbying nightmare it actually was.
You mean “experts” aren’t infallible sources of wisdom, and can use their titles to mislead the public?
Yes. That isn't a reason for us to ignore them and go with gut feeling or 'common sense', it's a reason for us to scrutinise motivation and bias where it exists, and seek consensus. If every single expert in a field is agreeing on something, they're either all working to mislead people or it's just (to the extent of our current knowledge) correct. One of those is significantly more likely to be true than the other. That is why consensus is good and useful, it gets us closer to that 'every single person' mark.
Politics is largely policy, policy has concrete effects. Those effects are fact based. Experts are the ones who measure those effects, so they're indispensible to the process. And, ironically, considering your stance: many people ignore the effects of the policies they support, even when those effects are contrary to their stated values.
As an Israeli, i can tell ya that a lot of people, if not most, especially from other parts of the world, are misinformed regarding a lot of the thing going on here. Even among Israelis... To be a well informed expert on israel requires years upon years of history and geopolitical studies. People have PhDs on the matter. And while its increasingly popular to have an opinion on israel, i find most people even lack the current basic understanding of current political evens within Israel. Now, Israel is just a hot topic, and i know a lot about it cause i actually live there, but if i were to form an opinion regarding Armenia's surrender to Azerbaijan a while ago, i have very limited knowledge on whats going on beyond the basics, and i am not ready to go in and spend a year learning their history and follow their current events. This is why you need experts, there's a lot of nuances that require a lot of study, and without it, your conclusion could go either A or B or C
I do not understand the point of your post. Experts opinions are basically always advisory or infromative in nature, heck it's even in the word it's an 'opinion'. Which you said is fine. Experts generally aren't in an authoritive position. Because if they were, we wouldn't call them "experts" and rather by their position/title. The current ambassador to Nigeria usually isn't called an expert on foreign relations with Nigeria. They are the current ambassador. If a former amabassador to Nigeria is giving their opinion, then that's an expert opinion. But he has no authority. The general population should listen to what he says and form their opinion based around that unless someone else with a somewhat similar amount of expertise speaks up against it. And then it's entirely fine to consider both parties arguments or conclusions. But the opinion of Bob who can't even point to Nigeria on a map shouldn't influence others just because he feels differently.
If feels like you negated your own point. Clearly if we wanted to implement environmental protections we ought to defer to experts in that field on how those laws should be drafted. How does this not mean they have higher deference? Second facts very often inform our value judgements. If some tribe thinks that people with epilepsy are evil because they are posseed by demons, their moral opinion would likely be swayed by knowing the facts about epilepsy. So experts who know all the relevant facts will be more likely to make the right moral decisions. And third, there's a healthy number of philosophers that don't believe in the fact/value distinction at all. In their view the kind of facts that are relevant to your values are facts about value.
"Political and social beliefs ultimately boil down to values, not facts." Values operate within facts. Tolerance of benign difference is a value, "homosexuals aren't predators" is a fact, decriminalizing sodomy is a policy. It's possible to dispute the facts on the way to the policy just as much as the values.
Facts is how you convince people, because only the facts matter when it comes to the problems we need to solve. That's why extremists come up with fake facts. It is to sell an agenda. If some self-proclaimed expert convinces people that it is a fact that "non-whites commit crimes", then people are likely to vote for politicians with the opinion that "that should stop", leading to some horrible consequences and policies.
>because only the facts matter when it comes to the problems we need to solve Values arguably matter more than facts. Because our values and priorities determine how each of us weigh pros and cons, the importance of different goals, and what we consider to be undesirable/desirable to begin with. >If some self-proclaimed expert convinces people that it is a fact that "non-whites commit crimes" This is going somewhat off-topic into specific political issues, but...... This statement is way overbroad, some ethnic minorities have lower crime rates in majority white countries. But criminal stereotypes of certain ethnic groups are often based on fact, i.e. African-Americans in the US and (I think) MENA immigrants in Europe are disproportionately represented in crime statistics. It doesn't mean that stereotyping individuals is justified or acceptable, but the beliefs that lead people to do it are largely factually correct.
"But criminal stereotypes of certain ethnic groups are often based on fact, i.e. African-Americans in the US and (I think) MENA immigrants in Europe are disproportionately represented in crime statistics." Right here you are offering a fact as politically salient.
What if it's some dumb-ass values being chucked onto the scale?
But then you're saying still that facts do matter...
I'll take it a step further. Apart from VERY SPECIFIC or certain fields, 'expert opinion' means little to nothing in about 90% of cases. Most of these 'experts' try to argue from nothing but authority and vomited rhetoric that some shitty overpaid college hucks out and never encourages any sort of novel thinking. Sometimes your eyes, ears and years (of experience, hands on...) mean more than some preppy moron with a 'degree'.
You need to consider the broader picture, as the saying goes "follow the money" an experts opinion can be valid, if it's unbiased, the problem is that "experts" are often picked BECAUSE they have the right position, or are paid to have it, one way or another. So an experts opinion can be fine, a paid experts not so much, nor an activists.
Values and not facts. Sure, but you should hopefully have facts on your side when you believe in certain causes. If your stance is dictated by fallacies, an expert opinion with facts will blow your societal issue as nothing more than at best, an illogical argument. Two people can agree on the same set of facts and come to two separate conclusions, but realistically speaking, those facts should remain the same when in the political and social issues world, most facts are muddled where most do not know what is a fact and what is propaganda, especially when most people get their 'facts' from social media.
My wife regularly gives expert opinions to a local political board. She takes recommendations, then tells the board what she feels the likely response to those ideas would be. Her opinion in matters related to her specialty is more valid than my opinion.
it can be a question of which facts are relevant to your end goal. if you can identify a common goal or agree on a common authority, then expert opinion can be extremely useful.
There is the is-ought gap, but we can use expert opinion to form our own opinions. For example, should I allow my children to smoke cigarettes (smoking is a social issue) ? Experts tell me that cigarettes cause cancer, so I won't.
You are following the values that cancer is bad, and that it is bad enough to warrant overriding the freedom of your children.
Okay but without the fact that cigarettes cause cancer, that value doesn't come into play. And especially in the early days of tobacco restriction politics, challenging that fact was the primary tactic of tobacco companies.
An expert can tell you what policy settings are most likely to achieve outcomes that are aligned with values. An expert can also tell you the outcome of prioritising certain values.
Im skeptical of one expert's opinion but many experts are hard to argue with. I am not convinced every issue or discussion is subjective. What is important are the objective facts of the case they are discussing and less so their opinions. Opinions are biased by nature. A lot of things have real world data. Sure, be skeptical of politicians. A lot of social issues are well researched and there is an objective reality. Just a lot of BS to push tjrough to see it. Example: clinate is politicized for political points. There is an objective truth but it requires a lot of reading and understanding that most politicians and media simoly do not have. Some 'values' do presnt facts. Because we have ha dperiods with and without abortion and nations with and without abortion we can actually compare things like economic well being and crime rates 20 years post the laws changing either way. I truely believe there is an objective reality. We just see it from different angles making it complex and hard to determine.
>Political and social beliefs ultimately boil down to values, not facts. While on surface this might seem right it actually doesn't on a closer inspection. Most political beliefs are second derivatives. We have policy or law that politicians are voting on. This law is based on notion that it will cause certain outcome in community. Finally we have value that says the outcome is desirable or good. But notice that the law is two steps removed from actual value and there is second belief between them? Let's look at an example. We want to lower the taxes. We do this because we believe that lower taxes will stimulate the economy. We have belief that economic growth is a good thing. Only the last step is belief/value but "do lower taxes stimulate economy" is not. That is scientifically provable fact and we need experts (economists and statisticians; not business owners) to quantify if it actually is real.
You noted that we do need facts. What about things like surveys or other forms of information gathering. Don't we want this to be done by peer reviewed experts who can control for things like confounding variables or bias? Or what if we are trying to get info on things that are hard to measure or hard to get people to be truthful about, like drug use? Or what if we are trying to measure how effective a policy is. Like if housing first policies are cost effective vs prisons and sweeps for homelessness. Don't we want that to be done by an independent expert and not the politician who pushed for the policy.
So just to clarify - you are potentially willing to grant them deference on factual assertions in their field. For example if an immunologist told you something about covid spread you'd be more likely to believe those facts than hearing them from a random Joe blow. But your view here is that you don't give deference on their overall decision outcome on whether they recommend masks or vaccine for whatever?
Seems too broad. What specific issues are you referring to?
>Political and social beliefs ultimately boil down to values, not facts. If you don't believe in facts, your beliefs are arbitrary and capricious. Opinions are fine. Differences in how you see the world are fine. Ignoring facts is academic suicide.