Caledonian2 comments on Hug the Query - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 December 2007 07:51PM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 15 December 2007 07:18:53PM 0 points [-]

Does an authoritative expert cause a hypothesis to become true, so that we can surgically intervene on the truth of a physical theory by giving its adherents more authority? Clearly not. Does an authoritative expert cause the "arguments" to become stronger? Defining the matter normatively makes it clear that the answer is no. If we talk about perceived arguments, then a good expert makes us perceive the arguments as stronger

Using the credibility of the authority as a proxy for the unknown quality of the arguments makes it easier to produce a conclusion, but it reduces the certainty of that conclusion significantly, because an additional assumption has been introduced.