Why you can't trust measurements

semente · May 3, 2022

On 4/24/2022 at 9:39 PM, JoshM said:

That's fair. I read your response as, "It's not surprising given that he insulted Amir." My reaction was simply that Amir clearly doesn't apply the same standard to himself.

I think the issue is that much of what happens at ASR is "appeal to authority," rather than "science." This, for example, was just posted:

I don't know how anyone is supposed to react to that. As we've all seen during the pandemic, doctors disagree with one another. If I'd have listened to the doctor who once told me "We can't do anything about your pain besides give you opioids," I'd be in bad shape today. My mother had to diagnose herself with a rare disease that multiple doctors missed, likely saving her life. Others in that thread noted similar personal experiences with doctors, but Amir has no response to that.

There's a reason why appeals to authority are identified as a logical fallacy. Amir has justified MQA by saying "Well, are you Bob Stuart!?" over and over again. Yet simultaneously the expertise of someone like Mike Moffat is dismissed. However, if we're supposed to trust Stuart on MQA, why shouldn't we also trust Moffat on the Yggy? Appeal to authority is why Amir made such a big stink about @Archimago being anonymous. But either evidence speaks for itself, without reference to someone's name and CV, or we're not really dealing with science.

There is, of course, some truth to the fact that how much you trust any evidence is at least partly based on the behavior and track record of the person presenting the evidence. We can't all replicate measurements at home because we can't all afford AP equipment (or have the time to conduct the measurements). But that's exactly one of @GoldenOne's points.

Ultimately, every ASR debate comes down to "Amir must be the unquestioned authority," which isn't really conducive to robust inquiry, scientific or otherwise.

In my view, the more people doing measurements and checking each others' work, the better. But Amir's work is no more above criticism than anyone else's. (Indeed, based on track record, it's just as reasonable for someone to trust Amir less than someone like Arch or Golden!)