Anyway, the question isn’t whether experts are right, its why you think you are more reliable.
This question is incompatible with Popperian philosophy. Ideas haven’t got reliability which is just another word for justification. Trying to give it to them leads to problems like regress.
What we do instead is act on our best knowledge without knowing how reliable it is. That means preferring ideas which we don’t see anything wrong with to those that we do see something wrong with.
When you do see something wrong with an expert view, but not with your own view, it’s irrational to do something you expect not to work, over something you expect to work. Of course if use double standards for criticism of your own ideas, and other people’s, you will go wrong. But the solution to that isn’t deferring to experts, it’s improving your mind.
Most such people are either crackpots, confused or misinformed.
Or maybe they have become experts by thinking well. How does one get expert status anyway? Surely if I think I can do better than people with college degrees at various things, that’s not too dumb. I’m e.g. a better programmer than many people with degrees. I have a pretty good sense of how much people do and don’t learn in college, and how much work it is to learn more on one’s own. The credential system isn’t very accurate.
edit: PS please don’t argue stuff you don’t think is true. if no true believers want to argue it, then shrug.
Incidentally, someone has been downvoting Curi’s comments and upvoting mine, would they like to step forward and make the case? I’m intrigued to see some of his criticisms answered.
I suspect that the individuals who are downvoting curi’s remarks in this subthread here are doing so because much of what he is saying are things he has already said elsewhere and that people are getting annoyed at him. I suspect that his comments are also being downvoted since he first used the term “authority” and then tried to make a distinction between “expertise” and “authority” when under his definition the first use of such an argument would seem to be in what he classifies as expertise. Finally, I suspect that his comments in this subthread have been downvoted for his apparent general arrogance regarding subject matter experts such as his claim that “I can sometimes think better than experts, in their own field, in 15 minutes.”
This question is incompatible with Popperian philosophy. Ideas haven’t got reliability which is just another word for justification. Trying to give it to them leads to problems like regress.
What we do instead is act on our best knowledge without knowing how reliable it is. That means preferring ideas which we don’t see anything wrong with to those that we do see something wrong with.
When you do see something wrong with an expert view, but not with your own view, it’s irrational to do something you expect not to work, over something you expect to work. Of course if use double standards for criticism of your own ideas, and other people’s, you will go wrong. But the solution to that isn’t deferring to experts, it’s improving your mind.
Or maybe they have become experts by thinking well. How does one get expert status anyway? Surely if I think I can do better than people with college degrees at various things, that’s not too dumb. I’m e.g. a better programmer than many people with degrees. I have a pretty good sense of how much people do and don’t learn in college, and how much work it is to learn more on one’s own. The credential system isn’t very accurate.
edit: PS please don’t argue stuff you don’t think is true. if no true believers want to argue it, then shrug.
You seemed curious so I explained.
Incidentally, someone has been downvoting Curi’s comments and upvoting mine, would they like to step forward and make the case? I’m intrigued to see some of his criticisms answered.
I suspect that the individuals who are downvoting curi’s remarks in this subthread here are doing so because much of what he is saying are things he has already said elsewhere and that people are getting annoyed at him. I suspect that his comments are also being downvoted since he first used the term “authority” and then tried to make a distinction between “expertise” and “authority” when under his definition the first use of such an argument would seem to be in what he classifies as expertise. Finally, I suspect that his comments in this subthread have been downvoted for his apparent general arrogance regarding subject matter experts such as his claim that “I can sometimes think better than experts, in their own field, in 15 minutes.”