Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

And forming or refining beliefs in the absence of information is something we should be afraid of

I think this gets to the heart of our differences. I don't know things, so I ask people. Or I take up positions which others can criticize. As part of a discussion, I learn more. If modern banking practices are germane, educate me on them.

You, I think, seem to feel that there is some threshold of knowledge that one must reach in order to talk reasonably about something. I, on the other hand, acknowledge that more information is better than less, but that doesn't give me the freedom to not act on things. I learn by both conversing and experimentation.

There is a concept called "strong opinions, weakly held" You might want to look into it.

As a side note, the internet is full of folks spouting off about things they know little about. So is life. Democracy is built on the concept of average voters voting on policies about complicated matters. Either learn to deal with these topics as part and parcel of community life or prepare to be frustrated a lot.

"I think this gets to the heart of our differences. I don't know things, so I ask people. Or I take up positions which others can criticize. As part of a discussion, I learn more. If modern banking practices are germane, educate me on them."

"There is a concept called 'strong opinions, weakly held' You might want to look into it."

These are fine methods of learning when you're surrounded by people significantly more knowledgeable than yourself. The problem is precisely the situation I was discussing: when you don't have a critical mass of knowledgeable people, it's the blind leading the blind, and thanks to the Dunning-Krueger effect, it's unlikely that you'll be able to tell who among the chorus of voices knows what they're talking about, and may even have trouble recognizing that you're going down the wrong path.

"As a side note, the internet is full of folks spouting off about things they know little about. So is life. Democracy is built on the concept of average voters voting on policies about complicated matters."

And direct democracy isn't terribly prevalent. Representative democracy, however, is based on electing representatives who are either themselves more knowledgeable or who can talk to (or employ) those who are on a whole range of subjects. And even on this count, I would argue we generally need to work on finding ways around our biases to make better selections.

"Either learn to deal with these topics as part and parcel of community life or prepare to be frustrated a lot."

You think my options are "live with it" or "be frustrated?" I choose the third option, to advocate for improvement, to advocate for greater education where it makes sense in the public sphere (such as economics), and to advocate for systems of government that are more resistant to direct action on matters that are likely to be adversely affected by common misunderstandings.

You think my options are "live with it" or "be frustrated?" I choose the third option, to advocate for improvement

Then you've chosen my second choice, living with it. Advocating for improvement is exercising your options to participate in the conversation, even if your participation only amounts to acknowledging our collective lack of knowledge.

Isn't it great that reasonable people can discuss things that are complicated? Think of how many intractable problems have been solved because people were too stupid not to know they were insolvable?

Expertise is easy -- you can rent it when you need it. Highly-effective teams working tough problems are not easy. It's perfectly legitimate to say something along the lines of "hey, we're sadly lacking in knowledge here, and here are the steps we should take to improve things" but that is a just another form of participation.

You're conflating what I was saying with the idea that we should just say "it's complicated, everyone should give up," which is just silly. What I'm saying is that if we don't stand on the shoulders of giants, there is a limit to how far we can go. And specifically, I'm talking about subjects which are counterintuitive at a basic level, and are not well learned by informal discussion, but instead demand rigorous study. The pernicious thing about these subjects is that it is hard for an outsider to judge good from bad without doing the math or scientific experiments themselves. Most subjects thankfully don't fall into this category, but economics, quantum physics, a lot of medicine, and a lot of math do.

This, by the way, is precisely why it is so difficult for us to "rent" certain expertise when you need it: non-technical people have a hard time hiring a good programmer because they don't have a basis to judge programmers off of. As it turns out, the guy who can talk the most convincingly is often not the person who is the most knowledgeable or skilled.

An aside:

"Then you've chosen my second choice, living with it."

That's ridiculous. The idiomatic phrase "live with it" means that you put up with or endure it. It is pretty much the opposite of working to change something. By your logic, "be frustrated" would also be "living with it" as anything short of killing myself or becoming a hermit would. This is just being obtuse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com