[coldtea]

>But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out?

Because it tells you that the more vocal people are usually full of BS, and you should take notice of what the silent experts and does-of-stuff practice. Who said there's no way of "correcting for this silent majority"?

[gwern]

> Because it tells you that the more vocal people are usually full of BS

How's that? All the more vocal people tell you is that they're... more vocal. Where is the evidence that the more vocal people are correlated with systematically being wrong in a predictable and correctable way?

> you should take notice of what the silent experts and does-of-stuff practice.

And how do you do that when they are silent?

> Who said there's no way of "correcting for this silent majority"?

You still haven't given any way.

[coldtea]

>All the more vocal people tell you is that they're... more vocal. Where is the evidence that the more vocal people are correlated with systematically being wrong in a predictable and correctable way?

I'm sorry, if you want a verifiable proof with papers and references I don't have one for you. A lot of things in life don't have such proofs.

But my empirical experience has been that tons of people with no idea what they are doing are ranting on blogs and tutorials and such, where hardcore programmers I know are silently getting far more impressive shit done.

Let's say this: how many of the iOS, the Android or the Windows Phone teams blog, vs those working on the respective platform?

>And how do you do that when they are silent?

Watch them work, work with them or fucking talk to them. That they don't write blog posts like superstar primadonnas and that they don't give talks at conferences and rant on HN doesn't mean that they are impossible to find or unable to speak when found.

[gwern]

> I'm sorry, if you want a verifiable proof with papers and references I don't have one for you. A lot of things in life don't have such proofs. But my empirical experience has been that tons of people with no idea what they are doing are ranting on blogs and tutorials and such, where hardcore programmers I know are silently getting far more impressive shit done.

I hope the irony here is not being lost on you.

[coldtea]

More like self-knowledge -- those "silent" people are making far more impressive shit done than _I_ do too.