Brian Weatherson at Crooked Timber links to a PDF with the interesting title:
by one Neil Levy. Brian says:
But Neil’s main point is more subtle than that. It’s that it can be a bad idea to approach a topic as an expert when in fact you’re not one.
and in the comments Sebastian Holsclaw says:
“But Neil’s main point is more subtle than that. It’s that it can be a bad idea to approach a topic as an expert when in fact you’re not one.”I don’t think this is really his point. His point is much closer to: you should not approach a specialty topic at all unless you are an expert.
One of the major problems with his idea is the fact that you aren’t an expert in everything, you can only be a limited expert. He admits this, but fails to address the challenge this represents. His theory strongly suggests that people should avoid engaging ‘expert’ topics where they are not experts. (I note that he makes minimal effort to distinguish between expert and non-expert topics. A suspicious person would probably suggest that expert topics might be one where agrees with the expert and non-expert topics might be otherwise). What do you do with cases where the best challenge to a theory comes from someone who is expert in something else? This happens all the time in the sociology/psychology/economics spheres. It sometimes even happens in the harder sciences.
to which Neil Levy adds:
Sebastian’s right: my main point (as I just said over at TAR, Brian’s other site) is that if you’re not an expert you shouldn’t approach certain evidence at all.…which is not surprising as I find Sebastian is generally correct when he doesn't disagree with me.
Posted by P6 at March 1, 2004 02:47 PM
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