From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sat Jul 27 2002 - 16:22:17 MDT
On Saturday, July 27, 2002, at 02:09 pm, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> louisnews@comcast.net wrote:
>>> Lee wrote:
>>> Actually, when
>>> I'm first reading something---most of the time---I definitely
>>> don't want to know the authoritativeness of the writer precisely
>>> because I'm afraid that I'll give him or her too much credit.
>> Funny. That's exactly the reason I DO want to know the authority of
>> the writer, so I DON'T give them too much credit to someone who has no
>> knowledge of the field they are talking about.
>
> I come down heavily on Lee's side in this. Trust content, not speakers.
I don't think anybody is advocating accepting bad ideas from experts or
rejecting good ideas from anyone. In a perfect world, we would recreate
all claims scientifically in our own laboratories. However, most of us
simply don't have time to investigate every claim. Knowing the
expertise of the speaker can help provide some hints. A person who has
a long history of experience working in a field may carry more weight
than a person who is just making educated guesses off the top of their
head. This is certainly a reasonable compromise short of investigating
every single statement and trusting no one.
Seriously, many of us are professional in various fields. Are people
really advocating that there is no value in obtaining expertise? Do we
really want to live in a world with no credentials, training, or
distinguishing features? Where everyone is an anonymous black box and
no information on paster performance, experience or reputation is
possible? That certainly would be extreme. Although it is true in a
perfect world that past performance does not indicate current validity,
as a compromise this can be a reasonable working approach.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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