"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
So if the statement here is that any reader of any published article, and any listener to any public speech or performance, should check the facts, sure, let's all check the facts. Fact-checking takes time and effort, and for sure we all have to rely on more than Wikipedia (which any member of the general public like me can edit) to know what the facts are. It's always going to be necessary to hold factual statements tentatively. The more interesting and bold conclusions we might be tempted to draw from some striking factual statement, the more we should check it out to see if the statement can be verified.
See Michael Shermer's new book The Believing Brain,
which I am reading right now, for much more on how easy it is to believe a statement without checking it for accuracy first, and how hard it is to be sure we are even doing even checking of the most important things we believe.
As I reminded Hacker News participants just a day ago,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716043
Malcolm Gladwell is on record
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html
saying in an interview,
"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?
"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
So if the statement here is that any reader of any published article, and any listener to any public speech or performance, should check the facts, sure, let's all check the facts. Fact-checking takes time and effort, and for sure we all have to rely on more than Wikipedia (which any member of the general public like me can edit) to know what the facts are. It's always going to be necessary to hold factual statements tentatively. The more interesting and bold conclusions we might be tempted to draw from some striking factual statement, the more we should check it out to see if the statement can be verified.
See Michael Shermer's new book The Believing Brain,
http://www.amazon.com/Believing-Brain-Conspiracies-How-Const...
which I am reading right now, for much more on how easy it is to believe a statement without checking it for accuracy first, and how hard it is to be sure we are even doing even checking of the most important things we believe.