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avalot comments on Secure Your Beliefs - Less Wrong
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Anti-vaccination activists base their beliefs not on the scientific evidence, but on the credibility of the source. Not having enough scientific education to be able to tell the difference, they have to go to plan B: Trust.
The medical and scientific communities in the USA are not as well-trusted as they should be, for a variety of reasons. One is that the culture is generally suspicious of intelligence and education, equating them with depravity and elitism. Another is that some doctors and scientists in the US ignore their responsibility to preserve the profession's credibility, and sell out big time.
Chicken, meet egg.
So if my rationality is your business, you're going to have to get in the business of morality... Because until you educate me, I'll have to rely on trusting the most credible self-proclaimed paragon of virtue, and proto-scientific moral relativism doesn't even register on that radar.
I disagree. I think Americans are far too trusting of medical professionals. So much of what has been recommended to me by doctors is useless or even harmful to my recovery. Ever tried to talk to your doctor about conditional probabilities? Also, I don't think we should associate the medical profession so closely with "science".
Starting on page 114 of his book about randomness, The Drunkard's Walk, Physicist Leonard Mlodinow tells a real-life story about being told by his doctor that the results of a blood test showed that there was a 999 out of 1,000 chance he had AIDS and would be "dead within a decade." Mlodinow (who did not have AIDS) uses this as an introduction to Bayes' Theorem. His doctor had made exactly the error described in An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem.
Well, to be precise, the Intuitive Explanation describes exactly this error, previously found to have been made by doctors.
You're objecting that this particular instance wasn't described in IEBT, but rather its class was? Otherwise I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing. Or am I missing an edit by the parent?
I'm saying that the doctors are the original and IEBT is the copy, not the other way around.
Its entirely possible that most Americans should trust doctors more (and homeopaths and themselves less) while above average Americans should trust doctors less.
I absolutely agree that most smart people trust doctors too much. If I trusted doctors more, I'd have gotten a completely unnecessary total disc replacement at the ripe old age of 22. As it was, I trusted him too much- I'm ashamed that I actually considered it even though I understood all the reasons the next doctor used in his judgement of "total disc replacement!?!? He's insane!"