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> The one benefit of this is that it makes it extremely difficult to fake being an expert. The problem with this is that it only makes it easy for experts to

> The one benefit of this is that it makes it extremely difficult to fake being an expert. The problem with this is that it only makes it easy for experts to identify non-experts. I'd argue that it makes it harder for laypeople to spot experts, because in both cases, they're just hearing the same set of words which they don't understand. This just leaves laypeople identifying experts based on using certain words rather than the content of what's being said. In this way, misused technical words make it easier for non-experts to pose as experts to laypeople.

thaumasiotes 12y ago
I remember reading an essay about an internet dispute (as I recall, over the term "rule of thumb") where the essay's author wrote (in my paraphrase) "I know nothing about the history or scholarship involved, but I can see that the person on one side, who coincidentally shares my politics, is adhering to scholarly forms, citing sources, etc., and the person on the other side is doing nothing but dismissing it and basically saying 'come on'. I know who to trust here." That person displaying the ideal scholarly comportment was citing to a crank who claimed to have a piece of the legal code set down by Romulus. You know, the mythical founder of Rome. The scoffing counterparty was pointing out (again, in my exaggerated paraphrase) "a classicist who could show plausible evidence that a historical Romulus existed, much less find part of his code, would be the greatest classicist in the history of the world. If there were a Nobel prize in history, he'd win." And that second person was entirely correct. There's always a citation available for anything you might want to argue. And if you don't have any knowledge of the field, seeing someone cite a paper you can't understand isn't an improvement over seeing them speak as if they themselves were the highest authority. I'd used that same "the side I like behaves more like real scientists than the side I don't like" argument myself in the past; seeing this came as a bit of a blow.

thaumasiotes 12y ago

I remember reading an essay about an internet dispute (as I recall, over the term "rule of thumb") where the essay's author wrote (in my paraphrase) "I know nothing about the history or scholarship involved, but I can see that the person on one side, who coincidentally shares my politics, is adhering to scholarly forms, citing sources, etc., and the person on the other side is doing nothing but dismissing it and basically saying 'come on'. I know who to trust here." That person displaying the ideal scholarly comportment was citing to a crank who claimed to have a piece of the legal code set down by Romulus. You know, the mythical founder of Rome. The scoffing counterparty was pointing out (again, in my exaggerated paraphrase) "a classicist who could show plausible evidence that a historical Romulus existed, much less find part of his code, would be the greatest classicist in the history of the world. If there were a Nobel prize in history, he'd win." And that second person was entirely correct. There's always a citation available for anything you might want to argue. And if you don't have any knowledge of the field, seeing someone cite a paper you can't understand isn't an improvement over seeing them speak as if they themselves were the highest authority. I'd used that same "the side I like behaves more like real scientists than the side I don't like" argument myself in the past; seeing this came as a bit of a blow.