There are four general categories of people professing beliefs that I might run into:
1) Laypeople: people who know they aren’t experts and have the baseline level of knowledge in their society
2) Crackpots: people who disagree with experts, and are wrong, but not in a way that a layperson can prove for himself
3) Experts: people who have studied a subject matter, are familiar with and understand the relevant evidence, and can be justified in rejecting crackpot claims based on the evidence
4) “Visionaries”—people who disagree with the majority of experts, and are right
Since most people are laypeople with respect to any given field, the problem is that, as a layperson, how can you tell the difference between a crackpot, an expert, and a visionary?
Relying on the object level is a terrible idea. It’s hard for a layperson to refute a crackpot. Anyone can create a reasonable sounding argument in favor of a position—all they have to do is say a bunch of lies and half-truths from which their conclusion logically follows. It’s impossible for the ancient Egyptians to have built the Pyramids, because they’re so massive we couldn’t duplicate them today with modern technology, so aliens must have done it! Except that we most definitely could build an exact replica of the Great Pyramid today if we wanted to spend a couple billion dollars on the project. Crackpots have zillions of arguments that a layperson can’t refute on the object level by themselves.
It is really incredibly easy to be bamboozled by a crackpot argument, and looking at the object level is rather futile when you haven’t achieved expertise yourself, which usually takes the form of graduate school or direct experience working in a relevant field.
As far as I can tell, some form of modesty is the only reasonable way to avoid being suckered by clever crackpots...
EDIT: For some reason I can’t get the site to stop mangling the second hyperlink. Although I kept said hyperlink for reference, here is the actual page address: http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html
Um, you just refuted a crackpot claim on the object level, using the kind of common-sense argument that I (a layman) heard from a physics teacher in high school. ETA: This may illustrate a problem with the neat, bright-line categories you’re assuming.
On a similar note: I remember a speech given by a young-Earth creationist that I think differs from lesser crankdom mainly in being more developed. As the lie aged it needed to birth more lies in response to the real world of entangled truths. And while I couldn’t refute everything the guy said—that’s the point of a Gish Gallop—I knew a cat probably couldn’t be a vegetarian.
No, I contradicted a crackpot claim by stating that the opposite was true. I didn’t refute it; that would have required providing evidence (in this case, by explaining how someone without budget constraints actually could go about making a replica of the Great Pyramid using modern technology).
Not sure what you just said, but according to the aforementioned physics teacher people have absolutely brought beer money, recruited a bunch of guys, and had them move giant rocks around in a manner consistent with the non-crazy theory of pyramid construction. (I guess the brand of beer used might count as “modern technology,” and perhaps the quarry tools, but I doubt the rest of it did.) You don’t, in fact, need to build a full pyramid to refute crackpot claims.
I feel this is solving the wrong problem.
There are four general categories of people professing beliefs that I might run into:
1) Laypeople: people who know they aren’t experts and have the baseline level of knowledge in their society
2) Crackpots: people who disagree with experts, and are wrong, but not in a way that a layperson can prove for himself
3) Experts: people who have studied a subject matter, are familiar with and understand the relevant evidence, and can be justified in rejecting crackpot claims based on the evidence
4) “Visionaries”—people who disagree with the majority of experts, and are right
Since most people are laypeople with respect to any given field, the problem is that, as a layperson, how can you tell the difference between a crackpot, an expert, and a visionary?
Relying on the object level is a terrible idea. It’s hard for a layperson to refute a crackpot. Anyone can create a reasonable sounding argument in favor of a position—all they have to do is say a bunch of lies and half-truths from which their conclusion logically follows. It’s impossible for the ancient Egyptians to have built the Pyramids, because they’re so massive we couldn’t duplicate them today with modern technology, so aliens must have done it! Except that we most definitely could build an exact replica of the Great Pyramid today if we wanted to spend a couple billion dollars on the project. Crackpots have zillions of arguments that a layperson can’t refute on the object level by themselves.
It is really incredibly easy to be bamboozled by a crackpot argument, and looking at the object level is rather futile when you haven’t achieved expertise yourself, which usually takes the form of graduate school or direct experience working in a relevant field.
As far as I can tell, some form of modesty is the only reasonable way to avoid being suckered by clever crackpots...
This is true, but also doesn’t seem to engage with the point of the book, which is largely about when to trust yourself over others, as opposed to some random (person who may or may not be a) crackpot. (In the latter case, you can’t trust that you’re not being presented with deliberately filtered evidence.)
Moreover, even in the latter case, it’s possible to be skeptical of someone’s claims without making the further assertion that they cannot possibly know what they claim to know. It’s one thing to say, “What you say appears to makes sense, but I don’t know enough about the subject to be able to tell if that’s because it actually makes sense, or because I just can’t see where the flaw is,” and quite another to say, “No, I unilaterally reject the argument you’re making because you don’t have the credentials to back it up.”
EDIT: For some reason I can’t get the site to stop mangling the second hyperlink. Although I kept said hyperlink for reference, here is the actual page address: http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html
Um, you just refuted a crackpot claim on the object level, using the kind of common-sense argument that I (a layman) heard from a physics teacher in high school. ETA: This may illustrate a problem with the neat, bright-line categories you’re assuming.
On a similar note: I remember a speech given by a young-Earth creationist that I think differs from lesser crankdom mainly in being more developed. As the lie aged it needed to birth more lies in response to the real world of entangled truths. And while I couldn’t refute everything the guy said—that’s the point of a Gish Gallop—I knew a cat probably couldn’t be a vegetarian.
No, I contradicted a crackpot claim by stating that the opposite was true. I didn’t refute it; that would have required providing evidence (in this case, by explaining how someone without budget constraints actually could go about making a replica of the Great Pyramid using modern technology).
Not sure what you just said, but according to the aforementioned physics teacher people have absolutely brought beer money, recruited a bunch of guys, and had them move giant rocks around in a manner consistent with the non-crazy theory of pyramid construction. (I guess the brand of beer used might count as “modern technology,” and perhaps the quarry tools, but I doubt the rest of it did.) You don’t, in fact, need to build a full pyramid to refute crackpot claims.
He was giving an example of something someone may not be able to refute (and showing that it could at some level easily be known to be wrong).
Re “Um,”: that is a contempt display in my experience. Not useful.