Dr. Fauci and those idiots!

[LeafByNiggle]

Nope. Fauci has been debunked by an expert team of fact checkers multiple times this year.

Fantasy. Nobody is fooled.

 

[tomarin]

Is it just like the flu? Will ir magically vanish in a short time, like a miracle? Are bleach cures an effective treatment?

I haven’t followed every pronouncement from Fauci, and I’m sure he has made some small adjustments to his advice as the scientific community has learned more about the virus, but I also have a hard time believing that Trump, who I suspect knows very little about anything outside of real estate, has the perspicacity to sound the alarm about much of anything.

Of the two of them, whose advice aligns more closely with the larger community of scientists? That alone ought to tell you all you need to know.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The scientific community knows next to nothing about this virus.

I’m sure they know more than you do.

I remember Fauci was on a documentary in the mid 2000s passionately arguing that AIDS prevalence is completely uncorrelated with the LGBT community.

This is undoubtably a misrepresentation of what Fauci said. Fauce did a lot of very significant ground breaking research on AIDS. I’m sure he knows what he is talking about. Maybe you heard him say that AIDS is affects not only gays. And he was right about that.

 

[BT3241]

He throws everyone under the bus that won’t tow his line

 

[tomarin]

I don’t buy that for a second but thanks for the compliment in your previous post.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

That was very noble of him.What good would panicking the citizens accomplish?

People panicked anyway. Toilet Tissue, Germ-X, Purell, Bleach, Alcohol disappeared off the shelves. All he did was delay the invetiable.

BTW, still can’t find Germ-X or Purell on any shelf.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Ohhhh kaaay ,not sure what your point is,however

 

[LeafByNiggle]

-when the virus will subside
-when a vaccine will be available
-how many deaths will occur
-how COVID spreads
There won’t be any reasonable data on these matters for 5 years at least, and anyone who says otherwise either doesn’t know or is telling you a fable.

This is a good example of fuzzy thinking. The implication is that we should not follow the expert’s medical advice until 5 years have passed, to make sure we know all the reasonable data. Of course this is nonsense. The risk of doing nothing for 5 years is much worse than the risk to doing what is currently recommended. In fact there is a science called public health. You can study it and get a degree in it just like any other science. What we are seeing is the denegration of science - sometimes by actual scientists who happen to have a very narrow view of what science is, and consider their own science to be true “hard” science, and other sciences that they do not understand “soft”, or “squishy”, or “inexact” or other such negative terms. This is why it is so important to have a leader who respects all of the sciences, including public health.

 

[BT3241]

He wouldn’t tow the line so he trashed him like he does to anyone who disagrees with him.
Why go to the doctor or the dentist or listen to any expert and tell the doctor there is no need for a mask if hes operating on you don’t want him to pass out. Go with your hunch like the president.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

People are free to follow whatever advice they see fit, but you should do so with the understanding that for many sorts of “expert opinions,” you are literally better off basing your health decisions off a coin flip.

More fuzzy thinking. The error here is that although it is true that some expert opinions do turn out to be wrong, we, as non-experts have no idea which opinions those are. As rational beings, we have to base our decisions on what we know, even when our knowledge is incomplete. Therefore the fact that some experts are wrong is of no practical use. What we can do is rely on the science of probability - which is every bit as developed as geometry or calculus. What we can say is that expert opinions are wrong less often than non-expert opinions, especially on the more technical matters. Therefore the best strategy a non-expert can take is to follow the advice of the experts rather than doing the opposite of what they recommend.

As such, it makes no sense to to fervently hang on every word that comes out of a medical researcher, because half the time you will receive objectively incorrect advice.

Now we have moved into fuzzy math, using inexact terms like “half the time” when the true probability is more like 2% of the time. It makes sense to take that chance rather than the 98% chance that you will be wrong.

As uncomfortable as it may be to admit, in academia there is a very clear hierarchy of research disciplines in terms of precision. Branches of math and physics are at the top…

I recommend you watch the argument between Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler on Big Bang Theory where they debate this very question. Everybody has their own way of rating other fields.

but it is simply a fact of life that these fields do not provide the same level of respectability as do the harder fields.

Try to justify the study of string theory to a orthopedic surgeon. I got a new hip last year, and I respect that doc more than a string theorist. Respectability is also dependent on what one considers important.

Look it this way: a mathematician who writes a proof hundreds of years ago has found an undeniable piece of information with irrefutable accuracy. A medical paper (even a highly respected one) has a more than 50% chance of being disproven or remaining unreproducible within a few years.

Yet the proof of the 4-color theorem in mathematics in 1976 by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken has not brought any benefit to mankind, while the understanding of the structure of DNA by Crick and Watson in their “less respectable” field has opened the doors to making the development of a covid-19 vaccine possible. As for mathematical theorems lasting forever, there were two faulty proofs of the 4-color theorem that were accepted for 11 years before both of them were shown to be incorrect.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Recall how in the early stages of this virus Birx and Fauci kept referring to their “ models”? Based on that criteria the predicted millions of deaths even if we did thing perfectly

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

More fuzzy thinking. The error here is that although it is true that some expert opinions do turn out to be wrong, we, as non-experts have no idea which opinions those are.

I would disagree with this. I think it is perfectly reasonable for a rational person to disagree with what an expert might say.

Only if that person is himself an equally qualified expert. Otherwise he is being illogical.

Experts often tend to be overly willing to agree with consensus due to social pressure,

“Often” is an allusion to probability without quantification. That’s because one cannot justify a very high specific figure on how often experts abandon the scientific method and bow to social pressure.

desire for publicity,

You get a lot more publicity if you can prove the consensus wrong than if you become simply one of the consensus voices. That is an argument against your claim.

intellectual laziness,

If they are intellectually lazy, they don’t get to become experts.

In many cases an independent free-thinker can get much farther with common sense…

Another example of an unqualified “many cases”. Perhaps the “many cases” is actually a very few cases, and in most cases a free-thinker ends up being just wrong. Consider this: Suppose you are in orbit at the same altitude as the ISS, but 50 miles behind. Common sense would say that to rendezvous with the ISS you should fire your thrusters behind you, pushing you toward the ISS. But common sense is wrong, and if you do that you will find yourself falling further behind. But the expert in orbital mechanics knows that you should fire your thrusters toward the ISS, seemingly pushing you away from the ISS, but in fact that is exactly what you need to do to catch up.

What we can do is rely on the science of probability - w…

If we are going by probability, we should realize that since published research is notoriously inaccurate,

“Notoriously inaccurate” is another one of the unscientific unqualified terms. It is certainly more accurate than what you might find on TimCast, for example. You might as well read the graffiti on the subway walls. I’ll take published research over that any day.

the experts are poor estimators for the correct choice of action.

Poor as compared to what? The average “free thinker”? Nope.

So the experts’ opinion will only be marginally more illuminating than your own.

“Marginally”? Note the continued reliance on unqualified terms that cannot be disputed in any scientific way since the author can claim it to mean whatever they want.

Furthermore, having a healthy distrust of what the consensus believes can allow you to beat the odds and end up being more accurate than the doctors on TV.

On the contrary, in the long run you will lose.