I've always been fascinated with the appeal to authority. I suppose the ultimate authority is a repeatable experiment that demonstrates a fact to an acceptable level of certainty.<p>Such experiments are often not possible when considering the fuzzy structures that have concrete effects on our daily lives. How do we come to conclusions on sociological or economic theories for example?<p>When the going gets tough, we all tend to appeal to authority.<p>"Look I don't know why it's true per se, but this book right here says it's true, and it was written by this guy that everyone agrees is really smart!"<p>At some point, we all must appeal to another authority in some way. We can't know everything, so we must rely on and trust in others. How can we possibly do that now in the age of Google and Facebook? What about when images and even live video can be convincingly faked?<p>I have this sense of dread that we may reach a point where we all stand around and go "huh... I don't know what the truth is. I guess we'll never know. Oh well." And from then on we will live in our own simulations divorced completely from reality. I mean, it feels like we're already there in some cases.
Ha. With my friends, if we have one of these "we don't know" scenarios, and my friend tries to take out their phone to look it up, I tell them to put that goddamned thing away. Knowing is not fun. Reasoning is fun, asking around is fun, guessing is fun, bullshitting is fun. If you don't need to know, don't look it up!<p>Would you rather get to know someone through many conversations and shared experiences, or by reading a (hypothetical, futuristic) brain scan? And so with the world.