Should Experts be Humble when they Speculate about Virgin Fields?
Abstract
Experts can speak with justified authority when they are expert in a mature science like chemistry about which a great deal is understood. When subjects are semi-mature they tend to be quite humble, realising that there is so much which is not understood that they had better not risk looking a fool in a few year’s time by proclaiming too assuredly today. Now curiously, when experts are speaking about virgin fields of discovery, they consider that they run no risks by saying almost whatever they like because it will be decades if not centuries before anything is discovered likely to contradict them. So it is that ordinary punters are daily fooled by the authority with which some expert or another pronounces on subjects about which no one knows anything at all. Who Lies Sleeping? The Dinosaur Heritage and the Extinction of Man by Dr Michael D Magee
Experts can speak with justified authority when they are expert in a mature science like chemistry about which a great deal is understood. When subjects are semi-mature they tend to be quite humble, realising that there is so much which is not understood that they had better not risk looking a fool in a few year’s time by proclaiming too assuredly today. Now curiously, when experts are speaking about virgin fields of discovery, they consider that they run no risks by saying almost whatever they like because it will be decades if not centuries before anything is discovered likely to contradict them. So it is that ordinary punters are daily fooled by the authority with which some expert or another pronounces on subjects about which no one knows anything at all. Who Lies Sleeping? The Dinosaur Heritage and the Extinction of Man by Dr Michael D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 21 January 2010
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In subconscious atonement for the guilt of our selfishness, are we preparing to sacrifice our lives and maintain in death the humanity which we can see we are losing? Do we justify our drive for this luxurious existence by subliminally accepting that we are committing gigasuicide, self-effacingly cleansing the earth of the parasite that we have become?
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