[tjradcliffe]

> It's pretty easy to follow the evidence in most situations, actually.

I'm a physicist who has done work on data analysis in cancer genomics. The depth and complexity of cancer biology is enormous, and "following the evidence" is the work of years.

It's easy to follow superficial arguments about specific experiments. It is very, very difficult to get hold of the ambiguous morass that is the true leading edge, which is so far away from the layperson's event horizon they aren't even aware it exists, and so end up believing that it's not that hard to follow the evidence in most situations.

[emptytheory]

Give me an example of a nonsuperficial argument.

"It is very, very difficult to get hold of the ambiguous morass that is the true leading edge, which is so far away from the layperson's event horizon they aren't even aware it exists, and so end up believing that it's not that hard to follow the evidence in most situations."

What are you talking about here? How does that conflict with what I said? In my original post, one thing I asserted is that you should be aware of your assumptions. I don't see the relevance of saying "knowledge of the leading edge is hard to attain" or "the leading edge is ambiguous".

[emptytheory]

If you're going to downvote, please say why.

I don't think I ever denied that there are technical fields where coming to a conclusion takes time. Should I be apologizing for my use of "most"? The only point I was trying to make was that "guaranteeing your interpretations are correct" is not a constraint (see my response to lumberjack). As a result, being able to form correct conclusions is possible as a non-expert. Is this a surprising statement to anyone?

tjradcliffe's post reads essentially as "non-experts are so unaware/ignorant that they form naive beliefs such as yours". What a constructive comment! Maybe I should just shut up and listen to the experts!