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Appeal to authority is one of the most naive arguments out there... especially when it's to some programmers attempting to design an economy

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Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy--you cannot use appeal to authority to create a rigorous argument. I agree with that.

But you can gain some idea of probability that something is correct or incorrect. For example, if 99 of 100 doctors agree that vaccines do not cause autism, that does not necessarily mean that vaccines do not cause autism. But chances are really good that the 99% of doctors are correct.

Nice job giving the formal name of a logical fallacy, though. Adds a lot of credibility to your argument!

Saying 99/100 doctors think something medical is true isn't an appeal to authority... Doctors /are/ an authority on medical matters. Programmers aren't an authority on economic matters.

That is exactly an appeal to authority and logical fallacy. It doesn't mean it isn't a helpful short cut in decision making, but it is logically incorrect. There was a point in time when enough scienticians believed that the world was flat. Regardless of their expert belief and number, the world was not flat, nor was it the centre of the universe. Facts remain regardless of what 99/100 people believe.

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