On August 3, I was flipping through kxcd’s nerdiddlyumtious comic archive, and decided to share this one on my facebook wall. By the time I checked my account the next day, my wonderful CogSci friend from university and bona fide IT maven, Vladislav Sekulic, had responded with these praiseworthy posts:
Vladislav Sekulic So true! Brings up interesting issues. Compare Mike1979 chatting with his Wikipedia/Google-savvy friend to an actual car mechanic/expert. Suppose he gets the same advice and answers. Does his internet savvy friend know as much as the mechanic about car repair?To narrow down the situation here a bit. Let's say his friend could always have the internet handy and could find any declarative piece of information that is relevant regarding car repairs. Or if we're talking about the medical domain, suppose additionally that the person one way or another has free online access to any scientific journal they could care to search, and can obtain/borrow any textbook that is typically assigned to novices in the domain of interest. Assume the person has a modicum of scientific ability and critical thinking, can write well, etc.Would this person be able to answer any question or present a good argument for a given position regarding these domains? I.e., aside from declarative knowledge, is there a component to expertise in a domain that is a superset and cannot be acquired except through actual practice of the domain?For control, let's further assume that procedural knowledge is not relevant, i.e., the person does not actually have to be able to repair an engine or perform a heart transplant, they just need to be able to give step-by-step instructions on how to do the same, or give advice about it, or argue why a certain procedure is not optimal in some way, etc.One reason I've wondered about these issues relates to self-proclaimed "experts" who blog or otherwise put information online about an opinion they have on a subject, whether politics, climate change, health, or otherwise. They may present a cogent argument, and give good evidence, even going so far as to quote papers from reputable scientific journals. Nevertheless, they do not have formal training in that field.Some people who would read their opinion would not care about that, and only be impressed with the actual arguments -- though, to be fair, in many of these cases I'm sure there is some implicit confirmation bias that the person held before even reading the piece. But others would disregard the argument out of hand simply because they do not have the relevant credentials, regardless of the substance of their reasoning. Who would be right?Sometimes such a self-proclaimed expert will be able to (seemingly) successfully spar with an actual expert in the field. This is perhaps most readily apparent on climate change denier blogs. To a lay person or amateur, it may seem that the blogger and the scientist are on equal footing. But perhaps this would not be the case with a third-party observer that is also an expert, say an actual climate scientist (I can't think of a real example, this is just hypothetical and may not actually happen, which is telling in itself). They may find it "obvious" that the blogger is way out of league. For example, they would never actually endorse their post to be published in an actual scientific journal -- *aside* from any considerations regarding the person's credentials, i.e., rejection on the basis of the writing alone.Again, our climate change denier blogger has all of the abilities I've attributed to them above (full online/journal/textbook access). And I know, I've switched from car repair to climate change, but they both relate to expertise and I hope can be addressed in the same way (or not?).So, what is the difference between the lay person who sees the online climate change dispute as legitimate, and the expert who sees the climate change denier blogger as being "obviously wrong"?Is there something really silly about the situation as I've presented it?Am I totally procrastinating right now??August 4 at 8:34pmVladislav Sekulic I see it as a bit of an "information age" version of a Chinese Room, but am ultimately most interested in the nature of expertise and, importantly, credibility, which has obvious social implications.August 4 at 8:37pmVladislav Sekulic To be fair, I should give a stab at this first. Prima facie, I would say that one difference is that although the super-blogger and expert can have access to the same factual information, the latter has had time to integrate this information in such a way that they can find connections that are not readily apparent, and can see the "big picture" that lets them reason in a way that is more veridical. Although, to be sure, even (and especially) amongst experts, there can be deep disagreements about the "big picture", so perhaps this consideration is not a good one.August 4 at 8:46pm
Given the time and thought that Vlad had
already invested in this conversation, I decided against standard facebook
protocol (which typically involves a crass one-liner by way of reply) and bagan
typing out a more suitable response. Before I knew it, my reply had swelled far
beyond sensible facebook post length, even by our own outrageously verbose
standards. With my own post nowhere near complete, Vlad and I were joined by
the brilliant Tristan Nixon:
Tristan Nixon I think your last comment is the most telling. A person who searches online for a practical piece of advice, and then parrots the answer to a friend does not really "know" the answer to the query - they are simply acting as a proxy for the internet's "knowledge". A mechanic (one hopes), not only knows a lot of practical advice about cars, but also has a sophisticated and detailed mental model which unites and organizes that knowledge. They aren't just parroting facts from a big database in their heads, they can use the model to generate an indefinitely large set of different suggestions, advice, predictions, diagnoses, etc. about cars. Its a competence vs. performance distinction. A lay person may have a sufficient model of a car to be able to digest and understand a certain piece of information about spark plugs, but their ability use their limited model to adapt to novel and unforeseen issues is going to be much less.August 5 at 6:51pmTristan Nixon As for climate change denier bloggers, I think there's a small handful of amateurs who actually have a fairly decent understanding of the science, and make a few good critical arguments. There's also a whole lot who know very little and who make overly simplified arguments that appeal to a lay audience precisely because they give the illusion that these issues are simpler and more straight forward than they really are.August 5 at 7:12pm
After nearly a fortnight’s worth of
typing, procrastination, thought, and delays, I finally posted my response
as a facebook note.
Needless to say, I have yet to receive a
response. :-)
Instead of having you click through to
the old note, I’m copying the whole thing below. While facebook’s intellectual
property issues provide enough justification for this redundancy, the main
reason that I’m putting this up here is that I had accidentally switched “Mike1979”
and “Me” in my note. This glaring error is corrected in the version below.
