[timr]

I agree wholeheartedly. It's far too easy these days to immerse yourself only in the opinions with which you already agree, and to dismiss anything that is challenging or different.

Here's the thing: if you're going to start looking for challenging opinions, it's best to start in places other than talk radio and television news. Stop dismissing credentials. Stop vilifying academic research. Stop rewarding people who are merely controversial, or who play on petty emotional impulses or thinly-veiled bigotry.

Start rewarding depth of analysis, argument and complexity, because the world is a complicated place, full of colors and shades of gray, and no sound bite can possibly encompass it all.

[derefr]

> Stop dismissing credentials.

Err, isn't this the opposite of what you should be doing? Credentials are cached judgements of merit; bypass the cache and judge the merit of the arguments for yourself.

[timr]

Cached judgments of merit? Give the strained engineering metaphors a rest. This has nothing to do with caching, and has everything to do with filtering out bad information.

For any sufficiently complicated subject, your average person lacks the knowledge, experience or intelligence to weigh arguments solely on their merits. It isn't popular to say here to a bunch of opinionated techies, but credentials are a way of bypassing limitations in our own knowledge.

Said another way: there are subjects that must be learned through experience. I am more inclined to believe the opinions of a World Bank economist than I am to believe the comments of JoeThePlumber123456 in some online libertarian forum.

[amr]

By the time one earn those "cached judgements of merit", he/she is less likely to be interesting. I turn off caching and judge for myself:-)

As for the study, I find it silly.

[dkarl]

Stop dismissing credentials. Stop vilifying academic research. Stop rewarding people who are merely controversial, or who play on petty emotional impulses or thinly-veiled bigotry.

These principles may not give consistent guidance with respect to the article under discussion. Isn't that what we're talking about? Maybe we should stop pretending that unobjectionable generalities actually advance the discussion. (Except that one -- it's the only one allowed :-P)