I would be careful with invocation of inferential distance. It’s not a get-out-of-explanation-free card you get to use whenever you have a hard time justifying a belief (not that you were trying to use it this way, but some standards have to be met—see below).
There are many reasons why you could have a hard time explaining a concept to someone. It could be that the concept is mush to begin with, and only kept afloat by a common agreement by insiders not to call anyone out. It could be that you don’t actually understand it, in the rationalist sense of having a moving-parts model, where black boxes play a minimal role, and which is connected deeply to the rest of your understanding of the world.
And finally, it could be that there are many intermediate concepts that you mistakenly, but reasonably, assumed others were familiar with, and which take a lot of time to explain. That is the problem of inferential distance. But you have to first rule out the first two possibilities. Then—and only then—do you get to cite inferential distance.
You say that most people who claim to understand art just can’t bring others through. But why can’t you point me to one who has? Isn’t it kind of strange that there are sources that can take you through the inferential distance for all of those topics that aren’t BS, but you don’t even know of the existence of one that could close the gap for art? And that you don’t believe you can close the gap?
And if it were truly clique-independent, why would we see things like monkey art hoax, where the art expert—and it was some identified in advance as an expert—violated pretty basic conservation of evidence principles. On being informed it was a monkey rather than someone the entire community has given awards to, her reaction was: “Well, I guess it looked kind of rushed.”
Why don’t these experts have the understanding necessary to say, “you liar”?
You say you are an expert in one area of art. I accept that you have a broad knowledge of music. I accept that you have passed the standards typically required to count as an expert in music. What I question is whether you pass the criteria here to count as an expert, which are about whether you have made it truly part of yourself:
If you deleted your knowledge of art in this area, would it grow back? By some method other than someone giving you the blankly solid facts about which pieces are an aren’t art? Would you rate them the same way, for the same reasons? If you harbor any doubts you need to go back to the first two hypotheses I mentioned before you can start appealing to inferential distance.
I would be careful with invocation of inferential distance. It’s not a get-out-of-explanation-free card you get to use whenever you have a hard time justifying a belief (not that you were trying to use it this way, but some standards have to be met—see below).
There are many reasons why you could have a hard time explaining a concept to someone. It could be that the concept is mush to begin with, and only kept afloat by a common agreement by insiders not to call anyone out. It could be that you don’t actually understand it, in the rationalist sense of having a moving-parts model, where black boxes play a minimal role, and which is connected deeply to the rest of your understanding of the world.
And finally, it could be that there are many intermediate concepts that you mistakenly, but reasonably, assumed others were familiar with, and which take a lot of time to explain. That is the problem of inferential distance. But you have to first rule out the first two possibilities. Then—and only then—do you get to cite inferential distance.
You say that most people who claim to understand art just can’t bring others through. But why can’t you point me to one who has? Isn’t it kind of strange that there are sources that can take you through the inferential distance for all of those topics that aren’t BS, but you don’t even know of the existence of one that could close the gap for art? And that you don’t believe you can close the gap?
And if it were truly clique-independent, why would we see things like monkey art hoax, where the art expert—and it was some identified in advance as an expert—violated pretty basic conservation of evidence principles. On being informed it was a monkey rather than someone the entire community has given awards to, her reaction was: “Well, I guess it looked kind of rushed.”
Why don’t these experts have the understanding necessary to say, “you liar”?
You say you are an expert in one area of art. I accept that you have a broad knowledge of music. I accept that you have passed the standards typically required to count as an expert in music. What I question is whether you pass the criteria here to count as an expert, which are about whether you have made it truly part of yourself:
If you deleted your knowledge of art in this area, would it grow back? By some method other than someone giving you the blankly solid facts about which pieces are an aren’t art? Would you rate them the same way, for the same reasons? If you harbor any doubts you need to go back to the first two hypotheses I mentioned before you can start appealing to inferential distance.