Re:Street Epistemology
by telchior on Thursday June 23, 2022 @02:44PM
(#31853474)
Is it wrong to follow the opinion of someone with far more data than you?
In the modern world, the vast majority of people (including me) don't have the mental capacity to examine everything. Whether we're talking about politics, science, art, whatever else. Most of us become narrow specialists who are pretty much incapable of forming a good, defensible opinion or concept for a great number of subjects -- both important and trivial ones.
Granted, I don't know how you'd pick which experts to listen to and believe in a given field. I don't, personally, pick a subject matter expert and decide to believe them on everything. But I actually wish I could do that; there's just no social mechanism for picking those people.
In the modern world, the vast majority of people (including me) don't have the mental capacity to examine everything. Whether we're talking about politics, science, art, whatever else. Most of us become narrow specialists who are pretty much incapable of forming a good, defensible opinion or concept for a great number of subjects -- both important and trivial ones.
Granted, I don't know how you'd pick which experts to listen to and believe in a given field. I don't, personally, pick a subject matter expert and decide to believe them on everything. But I actually wish I could do that; there's just no social mechanism for picking those people.