Comment by dpark
6 days ago
I don’t really care about whether you are “qualified” by your criteria, because I don’t hold your view that there is some specific level of education that allows one to hold and express an opinion. My point was more to point out some potential hypocrisy.
No one is obligated to humor or debate amateurs because no one is obligated to humor or debate anyone[1]. But being an amateur does not mean that the person couldn’t hold a valid or meaningful viewpoint. Dismissing someone’s opinion specifically because they are an amateur is just a special case of appeal to authority. If their opinions are fundamentally flawed, then those can be addressed head on without resorting to insisting that they don’t have the right qualifications to participate in the discussion.
[1] The “faster than light” neutrinos come to mind, too. Scientists involved in the experiments explicitly said they didn’t have time to entertain amateur theories, a valid statement.
Being an amateur has no bearing on how knowledgeable someone is about a subject, but for an opinion to be useful (or just interesting) it needs to be backed up with some grounded rationale, otherwise it is just that - an opinion.
Trouble is you don’t how much time anyone else has spent studying. How can you tell who else has “spent decades thinking about things like intelligence and evolution, perception, qualia, have read dozens of papers on subjects like cortical microarchitecure”? You can’t but you still dismiss others as unqualified.
> it needs to be backed up with some grounded rationale
This was my point. Address the claim and not the qualifications.
There is no gatekeeper to internet discussions, so nobody is stopping you from joining in.
If you feel qualified to add something useful to the discussion, or just to throw your unqualified opinion in for that matter (whichever the case may be), then go ahead. I'm certainly not stopping you.
As may be expected the conversation is already a garbage fire.