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Comment by throwaway77384 | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably about to embarrass myself, but I got stuck on this comment. I am trying to make sense of it and I can't. Can you please help me out:

When someone says "I'm not an expert and even I can see that...", they are presumably implying that even without the technical knowledge required to spot an obvious 'fake' or 'quack', perhaps an impostor, they can still identify said impostor.

In this case that seems to me to be a valid statement. Albeit one of relatively low value, since nothing much has been added to the discussion. All we now know, is, that the impostor has overreached and even laypeople can call their bluff (and an additional audience member has confirmed this to us). But that's it.

I want to see how this is often the preface of someone missing something non-obvious though? What is the non-obvious thing in this case, that the parent commenter is missing?

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Haha, I don't see how your comment should be embarrassing. So often when something seems "obviously wrong" for , the reason for that is not because it is actually wrong, but because it only appears so for non-obvious reasons that elide those without subject-matter expertise.

So even if the conclusion is right, the fact that the person drawing it is uneducated is not a justification for it. After all, the same justification could be given in a case in which that conclusion did not hold.

Thank you for the elaboration. And thank you for sticking with me here :)

So, if I am getting this right, we have the following factors: Person A makes a statement (this could be an impostor or not-impostor), Person B observes that there is an impostor at work (or not) and Person B could either be educated or not and lastly, whether they agree or not.

So we have the following possibilities:

1.) A -> non-impostor -> B educated (B trusts A based on shared knowledge, easy)

2.) A -> non-impostor -> B uneducated (B has to trust A, A made argument well enough to convince B, but B has nothing but a 'feeling' to rely on)

3.) A -> impostor -> B educated (B immediately figures out A is a sharlatan based on knowledge, argument ensues...or it's just obvious A is no good)

4.) A -> impostor -> B uneducated (B has figured out A is an impostor, but that could be for who-knows-what reasons and is therefore less valid)

And the conclusion here is that in case 4.), the person has used their lack of education about the subject matter as a way to add weight to their statement (or to embarrass the impostor further), when, in actuality their lack of education just indicates that they have little reason to participate in the discussion in the first place.

Am I now kind of getting it? I feel I'm being slow today, but it bugs me when I don't understand something.

The cases in which B is educated doesn't really matter for the point I'm trying to make.

There are two relevant cases:

1. A is a non-impostor, B uneducated -> B has to trust A, but A's argument seems flawed because B doesn't know of the non-obvious feature that fixes the apparent obvious flaw in their argument.

2. A is an impostor, B uneducated -> B has to trust A, but A's argument seems flawed because their is an obvious flaw in their argument that even B can spot.

From the point of view of B, there is no way to distinguish between these two situations, and so their being uneducated doesn't help them spot the impostor.

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