I would like to understand the meaning of the word Autoritätsdusel in the quote
Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit
from Albert Einstein from 1901. I have already looked for translations:
- Authority gone to one's head is the greatest enemy of truth (Collected Papers, Volume 1, 1987)
- Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth (Highfield and Carter, 1993).
- The stupor of authority is the greatest enemy of truth (Sommer, 2001).
- Authority fluff is the greatest enemy of truth (Google Translate, 2023-01-09).
- Authority bias is the greatest enemy of truth (ChatGPT, 2023-01-09).
But translations always have to cut some of the semantics, especially when they words and phrases are affected which are semantically rich, subjective, vague or have multiple ways of being interpreted.
Which of the above translations is best, and are there aspects of the interpretation which just got lost in translation? (Does someone here have a better translation?)
See also this 2008 WordReference discussion.