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> Whenever someone offers you their opinion, a superb initial question paraphrases Morgan Housel: “what have you experienced that makes you believe what you do?
by newsbinator 5y ago
> Whenever someone offers you their opinion, a superb initial question paraphrases Morgan Housel: “what have you experienced that makes you believe what you do?” The profound usefulness of this simple question is that it immediately anchors abstract ideas back to real-world experience. Or reveals its absence; especially in non-practitioners like politicians or academics.
- theknocker 5y ago
- throwawayboise 5y agoWorth knowing, but in many cases a person's experience with something amounts to little more than an anecdote. I experienced a robbery in a restaurant, committed by a black man. Yes it really happened, but I should not generalize very much based on that experience -- or if I do, I need to be able to discern which attributes of the experience are incidental and which are relevant, and to weight one-off experiences differently from deep experience in an area of claimed expertise.
- tux1968 5y agoA fact is true (or not) regardless of the messenger. This credo is essentially an appeal to authority rather than addressing the assertion itself.
- mistermann 5y agoIf it was posed as an assertion rather than an exploratory question I'd agree.
- torstenvl 5y agoWhat have you experienced in your life that makes you think analysis of errors in logic applies to analysis of errors in establishing premises? GP isn't appealing to authority, he's suggesting a way to get to the heart of epistemological differences.
- greenyoda 5y ago> This credo is essentially an appeal to authority Strange, I read it as exactly the opposite. Many times, people who are considered authorities in something, such as academics, have little or no real world experience in the matters that they're giving advice on. For example, why should a business owner take advice from an economist, who has never run a business (or even worked outside of academia), on how to run a business? By asking "what have you experienced that makes you believe what you do?", we can at least establish if someone really knows something or is just an "authority". Similarly, if I see a book about software development, I'd like to know what significant software the author has delivered. If their expertise is mostly in writing books and making YouTube videos, I don't want to waste my time reading their advice. Ironically, the author of this article seems to work for a "wealth management group", so we should ask what experience they have that would make them a credible source of advice in psychology or brain function. They write nothing about their own actual experience, only quoting various authorities.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoSounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me. "Morgan Housel Author Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. ... Google Books "