by mmooss | 2025-12-12 06:06:55+00:00
(I made some edits to the following ...)

I guess from your name and response that you are the author. I certainly don't want to disrespect anyone personally, and beyond a doubt you know more than I do about castles. I do my own research on the same level; I love your intellectual curiosity.

I disagree on the theoretical claims in your comment here:

> – outsourcing your thinking to "experts" is just as bad as outsourcing your thinking to LLMs. In both cases, you are placing the onus of thinking on an outside source, and depriving yourself of the richness of life in the long run.

Therefore it's better to outsource thinking to amateurs? You might say, 'I'm not saying to outsource thinking to me' and I agree - nobody said anything about outsourcing.

I'm suggesting the opposite: Think more critically, more seriously, and without restraint, and that starts with understanding there's a person behind the information, with perspective, expertise, uneven knowledge and experience, biases and objectivity, etc.

You're depriving yourself of much of the richness of life by not taking critical thinking more seriously. Truth is a very hard, precious thing; knowledge and wisdom even harder; care about them more deeply.

To learn about software development (if that's your profession, as an educated guess), do you read a medieval historian who read a few papers and books and talked to historian friends? For this article, did you read papers and books by experts or by people on your level?

I'd be interested in talking to you about the topic, but I wouldn't take it as a piece of research. I talk to people all the time - most of the time! - who aren't promulgating their words as research. Who would have anything to say?

> — learning how to screen ideas for yourself on a self-developed baloney scale is one of the most important skills an educated adult can inculcate

The research shows that people don't do that accurately, and more educated people perform even worse. Without prior knowledge, how can you prevent people from midleading you? People have been misleading people forever; 'used car salesperson' is an old cliche. Even harder, how do you prevent people from misleading you about things they misunderstand themselves - they will sound even more sincere? Telling people they can figure it out is like telling them they can dodge bullets.

Or another way to look at it is to use the baloney scale developed by science and scholarship for centuries, to great effect: Post-positivism. Emprical knowledge, scholarship, and understanding humans minds always are behind it.

The idea that expertise has no value is hard to defend. Do you not seek out doctors and lawyers? Software developers?

Like I said, I do my own research on the same level. There's nothing wrong with that, but people should know what their reading.

I don't think I'd publish my similar research because there is so much professional research available, and certainly without talking to someone who knows the subject deeply and can point out what I've missed. It would be an interesting hypothesis to bring up to historians of the period. How about Bret Devereaux, a military historian of medieval and ancient Europe, who publishes a popularish blog and might be open to it? Why not, if you care deeply about critical thinking and truth?