Another article making the rounds complaining about pandemic "epistemic trespassing", unironically quoting a medical expert who has adamantly & baselessly claimed masks would induce false sense of security—to great harm. For "trust the experts" to work, experts need to deliver.
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Replying to @zeynep
Another perspective is just that one shouldn't consider the strength of a person's background in an unrelated field as conferring special status on their arguments. What they say is valuable to the extent that it makes sense, not because they have a degree in something else. 1/2
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Replying to @WesPegden @zeynep
So the "trespassing" that is most problematic in my view is when experts misrepresent (or even misunderstand) the relevance of their expertise for a particular question, rather than making arguments we expect to stand on their own. 2/2
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Replying to @WesPegden
There's a truth to it: non-virogists aren't going to be able to evaluate virology claims. I'm just unable to get over an tsk-tsk epistemic trespassing article citing a medical expert who has been very confident making baseless claims, and is slow to resistant to actual evidence.
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Replying to @zeynep
Certainly in many cases it will be hard to pass my test of making an argument "that makes sense" without some actual domain expertise! But few of the public virologists are sticking to virology claims in their public discussion (which is good, everyone should be thinking).
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Replying to @WesPegden
Multiple things. There are topics that are not domain of domain expertise, but of values and trade-offs, and the "expert" discussion hasn't recognized this. But more fundamentally, some of the expert class still seems to think the core problem is public doesn't trust the experts.
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Replying to @zeynep @WesPegden
"If only you trusted us, everything would be great" might work in some countries, but I don't think there is a single country in the Western sphere that can claim that. On top of that, there's our own circumstances, extra failure by the administration.
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Replying to @zeynep @WesPegden
I guess I should say that I'm actually worried about the lack of self-awareness... We do need to have a functioning system where we can rely on experts and expertise to have these broader discussions about trade-offs. To gain trust, they need to understand why they don't have it.
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Replying to @zeynep @WesPegden
Right. It can simultaneously be the case (and I think now is) that society is being hurt by failing to credit expertise adequately, yet some experts overstep their fields, arrogate to themselves questions that are moral or political, and/or undervalue lay contributions.
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Of course. It's all happening at once. There is expert failure; there is illegitimate epistemic trespassing; there is grift and ideology; there is usurpation by experts of what is actually political questions that need public discussion...
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Nor any commonly-shared means to distinguish much less resolve any of these errors with general concurrence. How to reality-test, that is the basic issue.
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