Re:The silent majority of experts (2012)
by blindmute on Thursday June 16, 2022 @07:01PM
(#31772076)
When you take this to its conclusion, you either read these forums for only novelty and political opinion, like I've come to, or you just get off the forum. Being an expert in a few things is not good for ones own entertainment
Frankly, yes, the non-tech discussions are the most entertaining and valuable to me. I really do like the format of slow lengthy discussions.
Re:The silent majority of experts (2012)
by gradschoolfail on Friday June 17, 2022 @09:57AM
(#31778241)
Related: I’m by no means the worlds recognized expert in anything, but having known some technical experts and seen the communities they live in, it seems that experts tend not to disagree wildly with one another. Well, when they do, you can be quite sure you are witnessing a new field of technics being born!
FWIw, contrarianism has kind of become, in technical forums, a proxy for correctness and value.
I’ve noticed this when it comes to subjects I have a higher than average (but not necessarily expert) level of knowledge in, in articles in my country’s major news channel.
Re:The silent majority of experts (2012)
by MAMAMassakali on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:53PM
(#31771459)
Gell-Mann amnesia
I had no idea there was a term for it, thanks so much!
What motivates people to make up nonsense?
My best guess is receiving positive attention to compensate for a lack of it elsewhere.
I you want to see this escalated to an Olympic level, watch Meta Stack Exchange over time. It has quite a few characters that are writing lecture-length posts on a daily basis. About...nothing of any remote importance or relevance. Usually concerning some petty complaint or idea about the site, none of which any actual user will ever know about.
In a way, they are 5 star trolls. The most difficult ones to recognize as they seem to well-worded.
They don't realise they don't understand it, and firmly believe in the nonsense they make up.
Irony?
For status. You can make up nonsense if you're a little bit clever without much effort and be a sort of Pied Piper for fools. Having status among fools is a kind of power as then you're able to manipulate them in other ways.
Another interesting effect I experienced is regarding expert credibility.
When I found this place, I was impressed. I figured the world's top engineers are posting. I see them writing about very advanced topics I know little about. Comments are well written, and combined this creates trust.
But there's been incidents. I'm the type of person that has an extremely deep level of knowledge in about 2 or 3 very niche topics that frankly normally nobody cares about. I know that sounds pretentious, but for the sake of argument, let's accept it for now.
By chance, very infrequently, an article and discussion may be about those extremely niche topics. And now things are falling apart. As before, seemingly insightful professional-level comments are written. The problem is, 70% of them are wrong. I'm not talking "different opinion", I mean factually wrong, that's not how this works, and you seem to have no idea what you're talking about.
I imagine to the outsider not in the niche reading along: interesting expert discussion. Just as I was reading about all those topics I know little about.
This raises the obvious question: when I read impressive comments regarding topics I know little about, how many are actually trustworthy and accurate expertise versus how many are just well written made up nonsense?
This question hits me hard because it kind of forces you to become skeptical and cynical by default, which I don't want to be.