[_gabe_]

I do agree with you that it would be nice to have references here.

> There is no way for someone reading your claims to verify them. You expect people to just take you at your word and accept your unsubstantiated claims and innuendo as fact simply because you have made the claims.

Don't we all? The amount of people, myself included, that have 0% knowledge of the intimate details of Covid and virology, and how it spreads, and anything remotely close to scientific knowledge of this, have to be less than 1% of the world. This statistic is completely pulled out of my rectum, but intuition tells me that in a world of 70 billion people, you would be very hard pressed to find 70 million people who have studied this virus in depth and actually understand the details.

Sometimes, you have to accept that people will hold beliefs about stuff without knowing the implementation details, and that's OK. How many of us can hold a modern CPU's architecture in our mind at once? I would wager, nobody in the world has that capability. But we can build abstractions that help us reason at a higher level. How much scientific rigor is necessary for general conversation? How much is necessary for a debate? How much is necessary for a belief? These are tough questions and it doesn't do anybody any good to say:

> And that is exactly the problem with all of the people who grouse about "settled science".

The problem is we have to build abstractions about our infinitely complex universe at some point. How much abstraction is deemed too much abstraction to make an informed opinion?

[lisper]

> Sometimes, you have to accept that people will hold beliefs about stuff without knowing the implementation details, and that's OK.

That depends on what those beliefs are. Not all unfounded beliefs are false, and not all false beliefs are harmful. But some are. False beliefs about vaccines, climate change, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to cite but a few noteworthy examples) are particularly harmful. IMHO it is unwise to respond by throwing up your hands and saying, "What are you gonna do? Sometimes you just have to accept things like this."

[_gabe_]

> False beliefs about vaccines, climate change, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to cite but a few noteworthy examples)

Any statistics to back this claim? These are all heavily politicized topics. The truth is not being sought on either side of the spectrum. Both sides are seeking the narrative that will promote their political agenda.

> IMHO it is unwise to respond by throwing up your hands and saying, "What are you gonna do? Sometimes you just have to accept things like this."

I'm not. I'm saying it's stupid to go berate somebody on HN for not knowing exactly how the science behind Covid works, while at the same time, you possessing equally limited knowledge about the science.

You can find "experts" on both sides of the spectrums saying different things. IMHO it's unwise to accuse anybody who disagrees with you of being ignorant. When, the reality of the situation is, both sides are arguing based off of equally limited knowledge of the actual scientific details on hand. Both sides find the experts that agree with their presuppositions. I find it difficult to trust any political actor, because they are not seeking truth, they are looking to advance their own career.

[lisper]

I'm not berating anyone for not knowing exactly how science works. What I berate people for is casting doubt on the science while at the same time being profoundly ignorant of how science works, and in many cases acting as if this ignorance were actually a virtue, as if being ignorant made one somehow more authoritative than someone who actually makes their living doing scientific research.

> Any statistics to back this claim?

What claim? What I said was:

> False beliefs about vaccines, climate change, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to cite but a few noteworthy examples) are particularly harmful.

That's not a factual claim, that is a statement about what I personally consider harmful.

> You can find "experts" on both sides of the spectrums saying different things.

Yes, if you put "experts" in scare quotes. But if you are talking about experts rather than "experts" then there is an overwhelming consensus with regards to vaccines, climate change, and the election.