There are a lot of people citing the "appeal to authority" fallacy in the responses to this tweet. Yes, it's a fallacy if you use it as proof, but another person's opinion can rationally be used to inform your own. https://twitter.com/ziwe/status/1282737925894135808

If you disagree with someone, at least one of these is true:
1) You have different information
2) You have different core values (or goals)
3) One of you has better synthesized the shared information into an opinion (or plan of action) consistent with the shared values (or goals)

So if you disagree with a person, but you think that person shares your values, has as much or greater access to information as you do, and has a good track record of synthesizing the two, you must ask yourself: Where is the difference coming from, and have I made an error?

The disagreement is a clue that you might be making a mistake that you'll regret later when you learn more or consider further. It's dangerous to simply trust authoritative figures, but the disagreement is an opportunity to further reflect, and it is wise to take it.

I once thought I had found a key flaw in a decades-old concept at the foundation of a scientific field. I ran my mouth about it. I later realized I was mistaken. I was right to not have absolute trust in the existing consensus, but I did not take the dissonance seriously enough.

This is a form of the "fallacy fallacy". I could identify a fallacy associated with changing my mind, and I used it as an excuse to close my mind to change.

It's also an error of conflating proof and evidence. The common way you see it is saying "Absence of proof is not proof of absence", which is correct, but absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. Information is often useful even without taking you all the way to certainty.

So while an authority figure's opinion is not *proof* of anything, it *is* evidence, the strength of which depends on your previous level of confidence in the figure in question. It's information you can use.

By the way, I first came across this idea in a Harry Potter fanfic of all places. In it, Harry makes this argument in favor of trusting Dumbledore, who is doing something mysterious, but who is also by all accounts brilliant, well-informed, and well-meaning.

It's called "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", by @ESYudkowsky . It might be the best thing I've ever read, both from a story perspective and how much I learned about rationality along the way. I can't recommend it enough.

I said I can't recommend "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" enough. Here's another tweet dedicated to that recommendation. It is still not enough. You probably have more downtime than usual right now, so what better time? The other thing you're reading can wait.

And to address the content of the rt, I'm not shy about saying I'm voting for Biden. Even from a neutral public image standpoint, I feel like that's almost no information beyond what an attentive person can already infer about me.

Voting is not an all-encompassing expression of values, and it's not the only political action available to us. But it is the most direct lever we have for choosing our leaders. How people can look at it from anything other than a consequentialist lens, I do not understand.