Comments on: I fight authority…

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:12:16 +0000

Yeah, but you're conflating process with judgment. I'm talking about the judgment of “what is knowledge” or “what is true.” In cases where one must decide the veracity of a statement or belief, authority is, I argue, not the best way to make that judgment.

By: Pattern Recognition » Blog Archive » More information evaluation…

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:52:52 +0000

[...] As I think I may have mentioned, Authority is my pet peeve when it comes to information evaluation. We’ve seen the sorts of trouble we get into when we put to much stock in authority. Why do we keep using it? I believe that it’s a holdover from a pre-network, pre-Internet, pre-digital world, where cross-checking many things was simply too difficult to manage. We upheld authority in those cases due to a simple inability to compare pieces of information easily and determine what is supported by research and what is not. That’s not the case anymore, however…nearly anything is easily fact-checked, or at the very least examined to determine if it coheres with other facts. [...]

By: Jeff Pomerantz

Jeff Pomerantz — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 02:04:29 +0000

Wow, that horses’ teeth example sounds pretty goofy out of context.

I just reread your Thoughts on Epistemology and Authority post & it occurred to me that one argument for authority is this: an authority is a person who has a network of facts at their fingertips, who knows what the surrounding pieces of knowledge are. It’s not that information is true because an authority says so, stone-tablets-and-Mount-Sinai style. It’s that an authority is more likely than a not-authority to know what truth is, because they’re walking around with the relevant network of facts in their head. To borrow your doctor example: it’s not that I have whatever disease because the doctor says I do, it’s that the doctor can look at my symptoms & bring their knowledge & experience to bear & determine that I have whatever disease.

Anything in the coherence theory literature about how a network of justification in one person’s head maps to a network of justification in the world, or vice versa?

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 01:37:23 +0000

Yeah, but you’re conflating process with judgment. I’m talking about the judgment of “what is knowledge” or “what is true.” In cases where one must decide the veracity of a statement or belief, authority is, I argue, not the best way to make that judgment.

By: Trish

Trish — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 20:28:20 +0000

Studying the web of interconnections is a good idea, certainly. However, as academia can attest to, gathering all of the “experts” in one place, or even in one virtual environment, can bog down a process beyond belief. With no one to lead the group or set goals and expectations, a lot of times there can be too much pointless discussion on tangents, or too much time spent on two people’s particular argument that isn’t really the main issue.

This is not to say that considering all aspects and opinions on a problem is counterproductive. However, without a deadline or as sense of urgency, often all you get is academic discussion and no real product. Authority can sometimes provide that sense of urgency and produce the final word.