Jeff Raymond wrote:
stvrtg wrote:
4. If Essjay misrepresented himself in any
substantial way in arguments
related to his claimed expertise, how is it that noone qualified in that
area suspected he wasnt a Phd/Thd? I suspect the reason is because his
ventures into misrepresentation were quite limited to the cantankerous. I
suspect also that this fact might bother people who might have thought they
could tell just by looking at someones pixels.
Because, generally, we don't expect people to lie about their academic
credientials. How many editors in that area who would know if he were
making it up do we even have? And, again, Essjay was (yes, the word is
now was) a very trusted member of the community - he kept the charade up
enough where few, if any, would bother questioning him anyway. That's a
problem, and it's disturbing that you don't recognize it.
But we don't just defer to experts, even trusted ones, especially in
situations where other people are also experts. If I came across
another person claiming to be an expert in artificial intelligence, I
would still check their edits, and sometimes contest them---whether
they're telling the truth about their credentials is actually pretty
irrelevant, because there are plenty of CS PhDs with non-mainstream POV
views on the subject. I'd imagine theology is similarly contentious.
In fact wasn't this exactly what Larry Sanger criticized us for a while
back---that we *don't* actually defer to experts?
-Mark