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TWO_WRONG

                                            September 17, 2021

                                            From material originally published
                                            at the dailykos in 2015.

                                                                TWO_GATES

Experts can be wrong, even in their field:
                                                                 
    Above, I mentioned that insisting on that the consensus         
    among climate scientists settles the issue could be called      
    "argument from authority"-- and actually, that's technically    
    correct: it is not at all a logical impossibility for the     
    97% (plus) consensus among climate experts to be wrong:              
                                                                         
    They may have a bad "groupthink" problem; or they may all           
    have fallen into the same trap, mislead by quirks of the       
    evidence; or maybe there's an insanely huge conspiracy, and    
    they've all been corrupted by the secret triumvirate of        
    George Soros, Warren Buffet and Dr. Evil.                      
                                                                   
    It would not, however be a good bet that that's so, and no    
    sensible person would assume that it is.                      
                                                                    
    Before you get to the level of certainty of a logical proof,    
    there are probabilistic rules of thumb to apply to decide       
    what you'll even think about trying to prove.                   
                                                                    
                                                                   




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