Hi Billy, On Nov 23, 2011, at 2:55 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Fact is, though, there is no substitute for actually knowing a field / > discipline. > This means that none of us can be competent in more than , say, 4 or 5 areas. > Maybe a few more if you really work at it, but there are limits
The really tantalizing question is whether there is some sort of meta-discipline -- e.g., "BS detector" -- that it *is* possible to master. That is, we can't possibly know everything, but we can learn to know when somebody lacks credibility. Sort of like Napier's Law for words, not just numbers. I actually think it is possible to come up with a good heuristic, in that it could at least distinguish sloppy reasoning from solid thinking. Alas, if the heuristic were ever published and widely-adopted, then the cheaters would learn how to hack it. So if I come up with such a meta-discipline, I'd have to use it rather than talk about it... E -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
