That’s a good start, now take those ideas about imaginary expertise and use them to do some introspection… :)
Anyway, it’s hard to clearly define what an ‘imagined expert’ is. All it means is that the person overestimates their knowledge of a subject, which affects ALL human beings, even bona-fide experts. Expertise in anything other than a very small slice of human knowledge is obviously impossible.
It’s easy to spot lack of knowledge in another person but not so easy to spot it in yourself.
About ‘crackpottery’, I don’t like labelling people as crackpots. Instead it’s much better to talk about crackpot ideas. There is no distinction between ‘crackpot’ and ‘wrong’. All ‘crackpot’ means is that the idea has very low likelihood of being true given our knowledge about the world; this is just the definition of ‘wrong’. It is in human nature to be immediately suspicious of consensus; that’s not the problem (in fact it’s part of the reason why science exists in the first place). The problem is when people try to push alternative agendas by pushing wrong information as correct information. That’s not a problem of imagined expertise; it’s a problem of willful misguiding of others.
I don’t see sixes_and_sevens labeling people as crackpots:
I have observed that imaginary experts often buy into the crackpot narrative to some extent, whereby established experts in the field are all wrong, or misguided, or slaves to an intellectually-bankrupt paradigm.
(Emphasis added.)
In other words, it’s not that someone has or lacks the crackpot label. Rather, there is a “crackpot narrative”, a sort of failure mode of reasoning, which people can subscribe to (or repeat to themselves or others) to a greater or lesser extent.
The difference is significant. It’s like the difference between saying “Joe is a biased person” and saying “Joe sure does seem to exhibit fundamental attribution error an awful lot of the time, doesn’t he?”
That’s a good start, now take those ideas about imaginary expertise and use them to do some introspection… :)
Anyway, it’s hard to clearly define what an ‘imagined expert’ is. All it means is that the person overestimates their knowledge of a subject, which affects ALL human beings, even bona-fide experts. Expertise in anything other than a very small slice of human knowledge is obviously impossible.
It’s easy to spot lack of knowledge in another person but not so easy to spot it in yourself.
About ‘crackpottery’, I don’t like labelling people as crackpots. Instead it’s much better to talk about crackpot ideas. There is no distinction between ‘crackpot’ and ‘wrong’. All ‘crackpot’ means is that the idea has very low likelihood of being true given our knowledge about the world; this is just the definition of ‘wrong’. It is in human nature to be immediately suspicious of consensus; that’s not the problem (in fact it’s part of the reason why science exists in the first place). The problem is when people try to push alternative agendas by pushing wrong information as correct information. That’s not a problem of imagined expertise; it’s a problem of willful misguiding of others.
I don’t see sixes_and_sevens labeling people as crackpots:
(Emphasis added.)
In other words, it’s not that someone has or lacks the crackpot label. Rather, there is a “crackpot narrative”, a sort of failure mode of reasoning, which people can subscribe to (or repeat to themselves or others) to a greater or lesser extent.
The difference is significant. It’s like the difference between saying “Joe is a biased person” and saying “Joe sure does seem to exhibit fundamental attribution error an awful lot of the time, doesn’t he?”