Re:Interview with Scott Aaronson
by pron on Saturday April 23, 2016 @11:10AM
(#11555843)
All I meant is that there's little point in presuming the statement is correct and then asking a followup, when there's little reason to believe that it is in the first place. Aaronson doesn't support this statement, nor does he argue it -- he just asserts it. In any event, my point had little to do with credentials and much to do with knowledge. I don't think Aaronson claims he has too much knowledge in the social sciences, credentialed or otherwise. Would you also presume his medical advice to be correct?
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This is argument from authority. But, in a world where we don't go through people's statements and rigorously examine the provenience of each of them, argument from authority is a valid heuristic.
Perhaps it is an argument from meta-authority, or a meta-argument from authority :) But I don't think it is. The argument is simply that there's little reason to accept a factual statement as correct if it is not supported by factual study.
The reason I'm so sensitive about this issue in particular is that I've personally been involved both with the social sciences and STEM, and I'm extremely annoyed to see people in the latter group put so much emphasis on evidence, and at the same time display such a broad dismissal of the former group without so much as a rudimentary understanding of the field(s). You hardly see historians dismiss research in solid-state physics as you see computer scientists dismiss research in sociology (which goes above and beyond the well-accepted inaccuracy of the latter due to intractability).