Two kinds of #authority, only one of which is the source of authority #bias:

1️⃣ Social authority earned because of a title or position of power or influence: a mayor, a policeman, a priest, a CEO, a rock star. They are, in principle, as fallible as anyone else.

2️⃣ Intellectual authority earned for having been right often in the past and for being specially good at reasoning, as evidenced by a concrete track record of useful interpretations and accurate predictions: #SamHarris, #StevenPinker, #BalajiSrinivasan, your chemistry teacher in high school, that journalist you follow, your friend’s grandmother. All things being equal, it is totally rational to assign more weight to those people’s opinions and advice than to any of the above’s. No bias here.

#cognitivefallacies #authoritybias #rationality