4 ms·

Maybe I worded myself poorly. I meant 'really smart people' not in absolute IQ terms, but more in 'hey this dude believes some things about a subject he has kno

Maybe I worded myself poorly. I meant 'really smart people' not in absolute IQ terms, but more in 'hey this dude believes some things about a subject he has knowledge of and from what I can tell he is well regarded among peers and seems smart'-terms.

api 8y ago
That's a bit better but only tends to apply within limited domains. I've met a chemistry Ph.D that would be quite knowledgeable and likely correct when it comes to inorganic chemistry but who believes that the Earth is 6000 years old and that the Noah's Ark story is absolutely literal. Human beings can and often are extremely competent in some domains while simultaneously being highly irrational, misinformed, or just ignorant in others. Then you have to consider ideology and social conformity which can both bias people toward holding beliefs that don't make sense regardless of intelligence. My overall point is that intelligence is only weakly related to logical validity or overall correctness. What and how you think matter quite a bit and those things are learned.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  In some ways the ones who've mastered a field can be worse, they assume that mastery of an esoteric field translates to mastery of everything. Tech is pretty bad for that. I try hard to avoid that trap, we seem to live in a world where experts are undervalued and loud confident sounding people are listened to. It's frustrating since people like simple answers and the loud confident ones are happy to pretend to give them.
  - logifail 8y ago
    >> we seem to live in a world where experts are undervalued and loud confident sounding people are listened to "loud confident sounding people" is fairly self-evident Can you share your definition of "expert", please? :) The former get a lot of airplay (here and elsewhere). Finding the latter appears to be a whole lot harder.

api 8y ago

That's a bit better but only tends to apply within limited domains. I've met a chemistry Ph.D that would be quite knowledgeable and likely correct when it comes to inorganic chemistry but who believes that the Earth is 6000 years old and that the Noah's Ark story is absolutely literal. Human beings can and often are extremely competent in some domains while simultaneously being highly irrational, misinformed, or just ignorant in others. Then you have to consider ideology and social conformity which can both bias people toward holding beliefs that don't make sense regardless of intelligence. My overall point is that intelligence is only weakly related to logical validity or overall correctness. What and how you think matter quite a bit and those things are learned.

noir_lord 8y ago
In some ways the ones who've mastered a field can be worse, they assume that mastery of an esoteric field translates to mastery of everything. Tech is pretty bad for that. I try hard to avoid that trap, we seem to live in a world where experts are undervalued and loud confident sounding people are listened to. It's frustrating since people like simple answers and the loud confident ones are happy to pretend to give them.
- logifail 8y ago
  >> we seem to live in a world where experts are undervalued and loud confident sounding people are listened to "loud confident sounding people" is fairly self-evident Can you share your definition of "expert", please? :) The former get a lot of airplay (here and elsewhere). Finding the latter appears to be a whole lot harder.