Ozymandias_King comments on A social norm against unjustified opinions? - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 29 May 2009 11:25AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (158)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: JamesCole 29 May 2009 02:01:24PM 4 points [-]

If we had in place a social norm demanding an adequate amount of background knowledge on the topic before anyone voiced an opinion they expected to be taken seriously, the signal/noise ratio might be somewhat improved.

Unfortunately that'd skew things towards the status quo.

Advances in knowledge often come from taking a very different angle on a problem, by someone who isn't immersed -- and thus not necessarily knowledgeable in -- the existing viewpoints about the problem (e.g. by amateurs or people from different fields).

Ultimately a person's view should be judged just on its own merits.

Comment author: Ozymandias_King 31 May 2009 01:37:44PM 0 points [-]

IAWY, but

It's easy to overestimate the size of this effect.

  • We would expect a priori that more information is useful
  • We often don't know how much the person who succeeds where others fail in fact did know.
  • "The Wright Brothers succeeding despite lack of experience/knowledge" -story is more easily remembered and spread because it's feels better.