[hpoe]

This is why I have three things I never trust the experts in. - How to be healthy - How to educate - How to raise kids

It seems like every decade we find out everything we did last decade was bad and wrong but now we've finally for sure got it figured out, and this time we know we are right because we have fancier gadgets and more citations in our name.

From Frued to the Food Pyramid it seems that the experts always have just finally figured it out.

[munificent]

> - How to be healthy - How to educate - How to raise kids

I think it's interesting that all of three of these hinge on the same problem: human variability. I strongly suspect that humans are much more variable internally than conventional science and journalism accounts for.

The scientific method uses statistics which is important for showing aggregate effects but can also obscure variability. And journalists have an incentive to offer simplified guidance that is as widely applicable as possible.

The end result of a lot of information like "Do X" when what it should really be is "If you are like Y do X, if you are like W do Z."

This is a pattern I think of as "the missing parameter" that I see just about everywhere people give advice once I started looking for it. Examples:

- "(Static/dynamic) types don't help programming." For what kinds of programs? Developed by whom? At what scale and timeframe?

- "You (should/should not) use a schemaless database." How big is your dataset? What is the relative fraction of reads/writes? What kind of data? How many users? How much money do you have? What are your failure modes?

- "People should move (to/out) of cities." Which cities? What is the city's transit like? Which people? What activities do they prefer? Do they have kids? What's their economic status? Age? How important is it to be near a hospital?

- "You should eat less salt." For people of what age? Activity level? Diet?

- "Teach by example not generalities." Teach what material? To whom? How important is their understanding? How long should they retain it?

- "Children should go outdoors on their own more." What age? What personality do they have? Where do they live?

Whenever I see people arguing about some generality, what is often happening is that each party has implicitly filled in those parameters with different values, so they are all correct but talking past each other. When I see this happening now, I try to take a step back and figure out what implicit parameters they are assuming and see if there's a higher-level parameterized stance that unifies their arguments.

[throwaway2245]

I learned recently that the Food Pyramid was created by the Department of Agriculture in the US, i.e. not by the Department of Health.

So, not experts. (Not in the field they were claiming).

[ncmncm]

It's worse. It was created by the Dairy Council as a way to promote dairy products, and then distributed to schools by the DoA.

[wnevets]

I'm always confused when I read/hear people say things like this. Do people think there is a skyscraper downtown with a giant sign on it that says Expert HQ on it or something where they release their findings from?

[hpoe]

I understand that science is multi-facted discipline and there are a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to their craft and discovering truth because of their desire to solve human suffering and figure out how the world works.

I also think there are a bunch of "scientists" that like the veneer that comes with the title like to spend their time talking on TV, going to parties, chairing committees and stealing credit from people doing work. They are aided and abetted in this endevour by the popular media and politicians who just want to slap out some new "discovery" to get clicks.

The first group is anxious for their work to be peer reviewed, tries to explain things simply, and will do what they do even if there was no reward and no one appreciated their work. They have qualifications.

The second group uses jargon to try and confuse people, hate when people call them on things, use their influence to restrict funding to others and publicly deride their opponents who disagree with them. They have credentials.

Unfortunately, society generally listens to the 2nd group over the first group because they often tell them what they want to hear.

[Retric]

Doctors learn the results of science, but generally aren’t scientists. People doing science outreach are generally in that same category where their knowledgeable, but speak outside their specialty. Simply because being able to do original research today means a very narrow focus.

Beyond that, the best available information isn’t always that clear. Low salt diets for example where prompted based on very limited information that suggested they where slightly more likely to be useful than pointless. Unfortunately, we rarely have unambiguous data which gives clear guidance. Vitamin C for example is mandatory, but you can have zero vitamin C for 2 weeks without issue or quickly excrete excess. For more subtle interactions it’s just difficult to figure out what’s going on.

[sgtnoodle]

I think a lot of people think that sociopaths and narcissists have a tendency to rise to power in politics, business and media over time, as well as have a tendency to lie and cheat to the general population to advance their agenda. "Science" is one of the topics that the average person reveres but doesn't really understand, and so is readily weaponized for less than altruistic reasons.

As a recent relevant example with the pandemic, there was a widespread effort by the media and politicians to discredit various well understood, several decade old drugs known to effectively regulate inflammatory problems. The primary objection was an appeal to "science" claiming that the drugs were untested for their effectiveness specifically against covid, and sensational claims that they are dangerous. Meanwhile, you have pharmaceutical companies injecting mRNA purposefully designed to essentially cause a temporary auto-immune disease into anyone they can, enjoying the fact that they were able to skip a decade of best practices for vetting new treatments. It just seems like maybe there's some unscientific human bias in there...

[didibus]

> It seems like every decade we find out everything we did last decade was bad and wrong but now we've finally for sure got it figured out

I think you're being unfair. Most of the time, it's not a major 180, it tends to be smaller course corrections, refinements over current understanding of data, and the discovery of even more correlated complexities.

The issue is people want simple answers, easy to follow guidelines, and guaranteed results. The science just isn't at the point where it can deliver those. So people make up best guesses for them each decade based on where the science is at that point.

[arkitaip]

So who do you trust on these matters?

[hpoe]

Generally common sense, good wisdom, and my own understanding of the situation as well as my personal investigation.

Like everything I need to know about nutrition is "eat food, but not too much, try and get a variety, generally plants are better for you than sugar, fast regularly and get exercise."

[tomkat0789]

I've personally be satisfied with what I'll call "informed" common sense. An example from health is the documentary "In Defense of Food" where the journalist uses a little science and history to create the heuristic: "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much." None of those insights are really surprising, the only exception maybe being the "mostly plants part".

A downside of depending on complicated theories from experts is that it makes a "priesthood" of people telling you what to think all the time. I think there are enough examples from health, environmental, and privacy policy making to demonstrate that the "priests" don't always have the public's best interests in mind.

[lazyasciiart]

Most people end up trusting their family historical wisdom.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Whoever sells the most books.

[MPSimmons]

You're describing several feedback loops that are decades long to test. I suspect that's why they all have problems with conclusive results.