Re: Plausibility Check

In message <1154155194.873791.277480@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Franz Gnaedinger <frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Richard Herring wrote:

The other half is learning how to present it in such a way that others
can assess its credibility for themselves. You are very bad at that.

I always tell about my sources of information when someone
asks me about.

Scarcely. See below.

Trust nobody.

How can you live without trusting anyone?

Provisionally, as we all do. Depending on your outlook, you could think of it as following the Kalama Sutra, or as Bayesian inference in action.

Poor fellow.

You think blind faith is a good thing?

Which includes estimating its accuracy and credibility, their
motivation, by how many levels of hearsay it's been distorted, etc... If
they don't provide the metadata for doing that, they get low scores.

Okay, tell me about your metadata. Your understanding
of the world has been mediated, first by your mother and
father, then by siblings and comrades, by teachers, by
books, by journals, by radio, TV, the Web, etc. Almost
everything you know has been been provided or at least
influenced by one or another medium (by someone or
something "in between," which is the meaning of the word
medium). Tell me all that came in between your natural trust
as a baby and the above statement "Trust nobody.".

You just described it. I couldn't put it better myself.


But you fail to present the evidence from which you made your
evaluation.

I gave you the quote

English in the time of Shakepseare had 200,000 words,
information technology alone created 200,000 words

and by request I gave you the source, the radio program
Mailbox, DRS 1, 11:40 to 11:45, one or two or perhaps
three years ago.

You give the time to the minute, but can't recall the _year_? That's no way to cite a reference.

I gave you the link to the website, you
can contact the editors of the Mailbox, I even wrote
a draft of a letter to them. Can you ask for more?

Much more. Write the letter yourself. You want your argument to be credible, it's up to _you_ to do the work.

When you get the reply, make sure it contains a verbatim transcript of what was said, and identifies the speakers, their qualifications, and the sources they cited. And get their permission to post it here.

--
Richard Herring
.