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This is a typical example of a very dangerous Platonic claim, that we should trust those 'whose knowledge is based on science' or 'experts' or 'scientists'. A claim i suspect that Karl Popper would have torpedoed. Why is it a dangerous claim? 1/n https://twitter.com/epkaufm/status/1340391626909372420
Since it claims unique privileges for an elite group of 'philosophers' as Plato did, and as Popper showed this will inevitably lead to totalitarian rule. The call to only trust scientists or experts is essentially the same. 2/n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies
It can also be easily shown to be very bad logic. Every single scientist or expert, however brilliant, is only truly expert on a tiny, tiny sliver of reality. No scientist has the knowledge or expertise to even integrate that knowledge in the whole of reality. 3/n
It follows all scientists and all experts are lay people in 99.999999999% of reality. So for all practical purposes scientists are no more expert then any non-scientists as soon as they say anything outside their miniscule circle of competence. 4/n
And on top non-scientists and non-'experts' are in fact 100% of the cases actual experts at something they are very familiar with. I have yet to meet a person who is not more expert on something then i (as a former scientist) am. 5/n
It follows we should treat and trust scientists just as we do with anyone else: with an open mind in the full knowledge they and we may be wrong. There are no all-knowing, all-seeing, all-truth science based experts. And there is a lot of expertise outside science. /n
PS Found the reference i had in the back of my mind when making this thread: "Experts overestimate their ability to control personal biases more than non-experts, and more prominent experts are the most overconfident" https://twitter.com/wv012/status/1225171105834508289?s=20
