>I think you can only have a meaningful debate with an expert if you are humble and you have done your homework.
Would the symmetrical statement, that you can only meaningfully agree with an expert if you are humble and have done your homework, be true?
I don't generally get the sense that "skeptics" of whatever color are less informed than the orthodox. To take myself as an example---I don't really know how vaccines work. I know the broad strokes---the immune system reacts to the dead pathogens and is better-prepared when I actually get infected---but that's just, like something someone told me, I'd have no idea how to verify that specific mechanism of T-cells and B-cells, oh my. If I were to argue with an anti-vaxxer, I would be "right," and they would be "wrong," but it wouldn't be because I was pro-science, but because I was pro-expert.
Would the symmetrical statement, that you can only meaningfully agree with an expert if you are humble and have done your homework, be true?
I don't generally get the sense that "skeptics" of whatever color are less informed than the orthodox. To take myself as an example---I don't really know how vaccines work. I know the broad strokes---the immune system reacts to the dead pathogens and is better-prepared when I actually get infected---but that's just, like something someone told me, I'd have no idea how to verify that specific mechanism of T-cells and B-cells, oh my. If I were to argue with an anti-vaxxer, I would be "right," and they would be "wrong," but it wouldn't be because I was pro-science, but because I was pro-expert.