From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sat Jul 27 2002 - 16:32:40 MDT
On Saturday, July 27, 2002, at 05:54 pm, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote:
> >
> > Louis writes:
> >> [snip]
>> But the psychological difference between us is apparently real,
>> as evinced by your last remark: you worry that you'll give too
>> much credit to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
>> Perhaps you have too little faith in your own critical
>> faculties, or I have too much faith in mine.
>
> Or you are both well-calibrated, but your critical faculties *are*
> stronger than his. If so, the interesting question is how they got
> that way. Could practice have something to do with it?
You guys are missing the point. Nobody is talking about accepting
expertise without checking it out first. Quite the opposite. Some
people are too busy to talk to every non-expert (or even crackpot) who
thinks "all scientists are wrong" and "I've invented a new theory that
explains everything!" The sad fact is, some sources of "information"
have a poor signal-to-noise ratio. Using expertise to filter out people
who have no experience or knowledge in a particular subject does not
mean that one has to blindly follow experts without question. It merely
means one is too busy to wade through all the non-experts arguing the
basics over and over.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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