From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Sat Jul 27 2002 - 18:09:42 MDT
Harvey Newstrom:
<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>
I think Harvey's got the right slant on this....
*puts on 'employer' hat, thus assembling credentials*. Speaking as an (ex!,
thank god) employer of some tens of people I can assert with some authority
that the only thing that ever sorted out the usefulness of a potential
employee was a) 3rd party validation .ie. a qualification, b)Testing and c)
Word of mouth. In the absence of a) or c), b) is the only option. Resumes
mostly indicate the capacity to assemble resumes, which, in itself, may be a
useful indicator.
*puts electrical engineer hat on, thus assembling credentials*. Speaking as
an electrical engineer, S/N ratio is defined by physicists and engineers
(not mathematicians, AFAIK) as 10log (base 10)[signal measure/noise measure]
(could be 20 log base 10, it depends on whether you are talking about a
power ratio or not). The better stream has a higher S/N ratio. Is the S/N
ratio of this thread improved by me saying this? I'd like to think that 2000
list members didn't have to scuttle off to google it out of the web and
validate it.
In validating authority no system is perfect, but it helps if you don't have
to work relentlessly at it. For example, when Amara says something about
star stuff, I know that there's a wealth of knowledge back there because she
spends her life in it. What Doug Shrecky doesn't know about torturing flies
isn't worth knowing!
One of the nice things about this list is that there's so many credentialed
folks from a huge diversity of backgrounds. It simply feels better that
you're dipping into that pool of experience. You can 'cut to the chase'.The
other side of this is that when you do get input from those not 'in the
business' the dialogue is not necessarily degraded! Odd and/or incorrect
views can lead to good places. It's a question of matching the validation
effort against the down-side of accepting an opinion without it.
"Trust content, not speakers" can work if the content includes the
validation, and when it does it can turn the validation into a lot of hard
work chewing through mountains of words. If you intend to act on information
(which includes a revision of your own opinions) -caveat emptor-.
Colin Hales
*am I qualified to say this? hmmm. I'd better check ;-) *
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