Have not read this book, but the topic was definitely a major one in a freshman seminar I taught once.

Based on some of the final papers I got back, after a semester of talking about expertise, skepticism and critical thinking, I don't think it stuck....

To paraphrase one of the books I assigned reading from: it becomes decreasingly worthwhile for experts to respond to every absurd claim because their evidence is never flashy.

Thanks for pointing out this title to me, and at the end of this year, I may revive this idea as a senior sem.

I got a nastygram from the forum saying there was no email in my profile. I just checked and it's there. Must be a glich. For those who haven't, sent me your contact info, it's enidpd804@yahoo.com. I apologize for any confusion.

quote:

Originally posted by enidpd804:
I got a nastygram from the forum saying there was no email in my profile. I just checked and it's there. Must be a glich. For those who haven't, sent me your contact info, it's enidpd804@yahoo.com. I apologize for any confusion.

Now I am really confused. I looked yesterday, and did not see an email address in your "public" profile. Looked again today, when I checked into this thread, and it is there, just as clear as can be.

Note that my previous comment stating that there was no email address in your profile was definitely not intended to be a nastygram. If it came across that way, please accept my apology. It's too easy to forget, when writing something, that the reader can not see my facial expression nor my body language.

I looked last night and there was no e-mail address for you. All better now!

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by enidpd804:
I got a nastygram from the forum saying there was no email in my profile. I just checked and it's there. Must be a glich. For those who haven't, sent me your contact info, it's enidpd804@yahoo.com. I apologize for any confusion.

Now I am really confused. I looked yesterday, and did not see an email address in your "public" profile. Looked again today, when I checked into this thread, and it is there, just as clear as can be.



Note that my previous comment stating that there was no email address in your profile was definitely not intended to be a nastygram. If it came across that way, please accept my apology. It's too easy to forget, when writing something, that the reader can not see my facial expression nor my body language.

Not at all. I'm confused, too.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Boy. I don't know how many times my prospective clients and clients come in and tell me that they know how their case should go, how it should be handled, and what the law definitively IS.

I have yet to ask one of them why they are even bothering to talk to me if they are so certain that they know how to do it already, but one of these days . . .

I get the same thing from an IT perspective.
IT guys like to get all the facts and come up with a structured approach to a problem but so many assume you can just buy a device and it is the fix ~ most notably when it comes to Wireless Networking (or networking in general).

we also get this all of the time in the auto repair business. A code reader and and a You Tube video make everyone an expert right up to the time that the obvious fix doesn't work. There seems to be no understanding of the possibility that may be more than one answer or underlying cause.

Yes, your youtube video trumps my degree and 35 years experience.

Interesting book.

It reminds me of how I tease some younger friends of mine: "How smart are you when the power goes out?"

I like and agree with the general idea of the book. But we have always had clueless people who think they know it all. This is not new.

The issue I have after reading the free Kindle sample of the book and reading many of the author's tweets is this guy seems (from his tweets alone) to be anti Trump and has an ax to grind.

Just this morning he tweeted something about Trump corroding our values and civic virtues, as well as decreasing our security.

Maybe his account was hijacked, or maybe he's got some kind of problem with people choosing to disagree with his area of expertise, which he seems to be using, at least on Twitter, to attack our President.

As I threatened to do, I downloaded the book last night and just finished reading it.

Some of the more enthusiastic Trumpers will be unhappy with some of his commentary in the final chapter, but those more secure in their beliefs will not be troubled.

Foolishness creeps in here and there. One one of the early chapters, he explains the role of education and credentials in authenticating expertise.

quote:

Lawyers in modern America complete a law degree, but in earlier times young men merely “read law” and then had to pass admittance to their state’s bar. While this less formal system produced men of greatness like Abraham Lincoln—who by all accounts, was in fact a competent attorney—it also produced lesser lights such as Henry Billings Brown, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in the “separate but equal” Plessy v. Ferguson decision. (Brown attended courses in law at both Harvard and Yale but did not graduate from either of them.)

This implies that Justice Brown was the dummy, posing as an expert. Of course, Plessy v. Ferguson was decided by a vote of 7 to 1, one judge not participating, and while Brown was assigned to write the majority opinion, 6 others joined it, some of them judges of highest caliber and emminent qualifications. Chief Justive Melvin Fuller was a graduate of Bowdoin and Harvard, Stephen Field was the longest serving Associate Justice, had been Chief Justice of California, author of most of early California codes, a graduate of Williams College, Edward White, later Chief Justice himself, Horace Gray, with two degrees from Harvard. Several were college graduates who read law to qualify for the bar. The lone dissenter, John Marshall Harlan, whose dissent eventually became the law, was himself a combination of formal education and reading law.

I was disappointed that the author did not identify and analyze another cause of his thesis, which is the erosion of humility in our culture. In past generations, it was important to be humble, to avoid being “too big for your britches”. Humility was an admirable trait to be cultivated and displayed on all occasions. It has become virtually extinct now, except for older people where a bit peeps out now and then. Some of us are very proud of our humility.

I was also disappointed that the role of advertising wasn’t examined. We are now bombarded with ads very persuasively assuring us how brilliant we are for the choices we have made, to use certain products, act in certain ways, how cool we are.

It seems a great deal depends on which experts we chose to rely on. That may be the big problem... My experts can beat your experts.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JALLEN,