Re: [asa] philological notes on randomness (was: Re: What my tiny little brain was thinking...)

On Nov 15, 2009, at 11:53 AM, Cameron Wybrow wrote:

>
> By the way, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
> You accuse me of claiming (which I don't) to know more biology than
> the biologists, more science than the climatologists, etc., when in
> fact your posts give the impression that you believe yourself to be
> an expert in both fields, since you claim to be able to referee
> between Ph.D.s in climatology who disagree about AGW, and between
> Ph.D.s in the life sciences who disagree about design in nature.
> How could you referee differences between the experts if you were
> not yourself a peer of the experts? It's odd; I have friends with
> degrees in electrical engineering (your field, if I understand
> correctly from your posts), and they do not have the amazing ability
> to make final judgments in other scientific fields that you seem to
> have. They reserve their "air of finality" for questions belonging
> to electrical engineering.
>

You miss my point. Both of us as non-experts still can have sufficient
intellectual ability to understand what the experts are saying. Still,
we won't be at the same level as the experts. What I do here is in
full view of the experts. If I don't get it they can and will correct
me. Recall your complaint of me of getting overly technical on
particle physics. My response was that George Murphy was on that
thread. I knew that when I said things with an expert present I needed
to be extra careful to make sure that I was not being inaccurate. The
"air of finality" I have is only reserved when there is consensus
amongst the experts. (In this case all the English translations saying
the same thing.) If there wasn't then I just stay out of the way and
that marks the fundamental difference between us. I have gotten
sufficient feedback over the years that I am confident I can
understand things outside my field, but I don't have the ability to do
original research without considerably more time, effort, and
education. If only an extreme minority is espousing a view the
combination being outside of our collective experience should give us
great pause of our correctness. Also note concerning the "refereeing"
part, the experts I rely upon don't say "I'm right. Trust me." They
provide the rationale why a particular extreme minority view is
incorrect. Again, I have the ability even in areas outside my
expertise to follow their arguments. I rarely ever have original
arguments. In fact when I do I'll make sure I mark it as such so that
they can be taken with the requisite "grain of salt". I will mark the
same if I espouse an extreme minority viewpoint but I doubt that would
ever happen because the combo of being outside my expertise and true
controversy amongst the experts puts enough self-doubt in me to post
something. This is especially so here. There are enough true experts
here that my bloviating would not add any value.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Nov 15 15:22:32 2009