the.com/authority
the costume confidence wears when it wants you to stop asking questions
means The recognized power or right to give orders, make decisions, and command obedience — or the expertise that makes a person worth listening to.
from From Latin auctoritas, meaning influence, command, or weight of opinion, built on auctor — an originator, author, or one who causes something to grow (from augere, 'to increase'). The same root that lets you author a book lets you be an authority on it: both spring from the idea of one who makes things happen. It traveled through Old French autorité before settling into English, picking up its commanding tone along the way.
- milgram test
- 65% delivered lethal shocks on a lab coat's say-so
- word root
- from auctor, the one who makes things grow
- uniform effect
- strangers obey a fake guard's badge instantly
- expert trap
- people defer even when the expert is plainly wrong
federal reserve — controls us monetary policy and sets interest rates for 330 million people
international court of justice — un body that ruled on border disputes between nicaragua and honduras in 1986
world health organization — declared covid-19 a pandemic in march 2020, coordinating global health response