There is a reason human civilization has thrived.
it certainly isn't delegation of critical thought to a small an unaccountable social elite...
there is a reason we put a man on the moon and satellites in space.
The reason is reason.
No
one person figured out everything needed to accomplish this.
....and no one person was trusted beyond what he could prove if called upon to do so. The refusal or failure to do so would be a red flag of the greatest dimensions, and that is because people who build (working) rockets aren't irrational sheep and don't believe in fairy-tales.
The irony here is that you think you are somehow different - like you're
thinking for yourself while the rest of us mindless bots just follow
others.
Well the first order evidence of that proposition would be fact that I have to explain that pointing to other people's assertions isn't an argument. If "you" were all thinking for yourselves to the same degree that I am, you would know that already; it would be taken for granted.
The simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of information you
consider knowledge you, just like the rest of us, learned from someone
else. How do you know George Washington was a real person? Were you
there? No, you were told he was. How do you know Antarctica exists? Have
you ever been there? No, you were told it exists, and shown images you
were told was Antarctica.
The only difference between us is in who we decide to trust with the
information we consider to be factual and more importantly, how we go about determining who to trust. That's where the "I don't trust
experts" idea goes off the rails. There is nothing wrong with
skepticism, but that is something entirely different.
Did I say "I don't trust experts"? If I did that was an error. Of course I trust information I've been given when there has never been any serious doubts raised against it and it doesn't appear to create contradictions with established mechanics of reality.
but if I said "I trust X and therefore I'm right", that would be fallacy. If I have no reason to believe Antarctica exists besides that I heard it does then I've no business trying to argue it exists.
Where arguments are known no trust is necessary. If I knew all the arguments I would be an expert. If I run out of arguments I've run out of expertise and I must hold my assertive tongue. This is true for everyone else, only they don't always know it.
An expert in a debate will have the best arguments and if he does not he is not the most expert after-all. Similarly if someone you claim is not expert has better arguments than someone you claim is expert your opinion on expertise counts for nothing. The concept of expertise simply has no useful place in debate.
If you do not immediately see this explain the means to differentiate between an appeal to people and appeal to authority.
I don't know what "appeal to people means".
There are appeals to authority, and then there is the appeal to
authority fallacy, which I already explained is when you appeal to
someone who is not an authority. The difference between these two is the
process by which we tell who is an authority.
and despite what your preferred list of fallacies might tell you, I am saying that all appeals to authority are fallacies because the only irrefutable difference between an authority and a false authority is sound/strong argument on the subject itself; hence the appeal in of itself never lends support, hence it is a fallacy.
The first is about credentials, including experience and proven results.
If someone has a track record of accomplishing the desired result, they
are likely to continue getting said results. That's basic inference.
Hippocrates could reliably perform surgeries that the average person even today would likely botch, yet he was wrong about the four humors. Deductive inference failed.
And yes, there will always be some doctor or some scientist out there
who will tell you what you want to hear, that’s why we look to the bulk
of expertise in order to determine what the authority is there.
As I implied before, a modified ad populum. The majority isn't always wrong, often it is right; but as a deductive argument it is fallacy because sometimes the oddball is Galileo.
To do
otherwise is claim humanity itself is not only incapable of
understanding a particular field, but also that we are not smart enough
to know we don’t understand it. That takes quite an argument to justify.
There are no such implications from my statements.
