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Tuesday January 14, 2003
(from material written 2002)
The subject at hand:
"Social Epistemology"
GARDNER
Scientists can't keep up
even with accredited
colleagues.
Other fields,
get ignored. Except/unless... Are there respected
what? synthesist/generalists
the specialists
Real outsiders, One possibility: sometimes listen to?
have no chance. Flashy, mainstream
press folderol GOLD
attracts general
Perhaps not attention.
a problem?
How hard is it
to become an
insider?
Citizen's can't keep
up with scientists.
Even though many public
policy issues ride on
scientific questions.
So citizen's have to rely
on different categories
of experts: Alternatively: rely on
incentive structures so
Elected officials you don't need to know.
Appointed bureaucrats
Judges E.g. product liability
Activists law could focus solely on
Reporters results, which would
Editors place the the burden of
foresight on internal
company experts.
What checks exist?
Strategies for
(Seriously: step information overload:
through some
scenarios in Reviewers
tedious detail,
if need be.) Automatic Filters/Searches
Random Samples
Specialization
Give up.
Cross fingers. Better: define
incentives so
TWO_LEVEL that others
can't benefit
from your
Aren't there others? ignorence...
For example, "Don't be
an early adopter", e.g.
don't listen to anyone Reduce what
talking about a new you need to
computer language if you know.
can avoid it.
This might be related
to the "Reviewers" strategy,
in that you need to wait for
the reviews to come in (and
here "word of mouth" is just
a different kind of review).
It also might be related to
"Specialization"... you make
a conscious decision to get
really good at one computer
language rather than being
a jack of all languages.
But at the very least,
there are probably different
ways of slicing things up.
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