What I was trying to say was more that avionics are by nature risk averse, so if they're doing something it's probably worth understanding why. So it's not so much "it's safe because it's in an airplane", I was more going for "consider why this very safety-focused environment looks different". So sure, I might be in the wrong if what I said was interpreted as a simple appeal to authority, but I was trying to get a point across that people spent a lot of time trying to make and keep these systems secure, so let's try to learn from that instead of invalidate it as being simply old or outdated (which Boeing themselves ironically seem to be guilty of).

It is very clear that the aviation industry is NOT risk averse. They are averse to losing money (via needing to spend money to redesign systems, recertify interfaces, re-train pilots, rebuy new equipment and simulators, all of those reduce risk but are capital intensive). But they are no longer risk averse. They might never have been risk averse at all - the roots of the aviation industry is exceedingly risk seeking in the first place (to fly is itself a risk seeking activity - and that's something understood by all pilots and all aviation and aerospace engineers on day 1 of wanting to fly)

You can say the civilian oversight groups that seek to regulate the industry are risk averse, but the companies that build the planes themselves, if they had their say, we'd be flying mach 3 upside down all day.

> They are averse to losing money (via needing to spend money to redesign systems, recertify interfaces, re-train pilots, rebuy new equipment and simulators, all of those reduce risk but are capital intensive).

Re-designing systems introduces risk and uncertainty. Being able to leverage existing pilot training reduces risk (because crashes have resulted from pilots forgetting they were flying X and applied training for Y). Buying new equipment introduces risk of manufacturing defects that wasn't present in the working one.

Appeal to authority is an informal fallacy of logic. It can/should never be used to prove an argument.

Sure, if everyone is an expert on the subject, or is willing to spend the time to become one, you should never appeal to authority.

That's not most people on most subjects. If someone appeals to authority and says "climate change is real, here's 100 scientists with PhDs who agree" I accept that. I am not willing to become an expert on the subject to be able to spend the time to review the facts for myself. Citing sources in a paper is essentially appealing to authority (I understand I could read those papers and the ones they cite, all the way down, but for most things, I'm not going to do that).

For what it's worth, for a specialist in a field, they'll have already read most of the papers that are cited and will be looking for new or missing ones to find gems or flaws in the argumentation.

That's fair. Most papers are probably written with specialists in mind, so I guess that wouldn't be a good example of appeal to authority.