[Foundation-l] "Vital Articles" underperforming?

Thu Dec 8 20:17:02 UTC 2011

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> In my
> experience, experts in a field usually *hate* these general encyclopedia
> articles, and rarely agree with them. I know that when I look up
> "artificial intelligence" (my area) in an encyclopedia, even a
> specialist one, I'm always prepared to groan.

The same holds true for me when watching/reading the news. If I'm
being freshly informed I just take it in. But when it's a
report/article on something I know intimately I'm often left
open-mouthed by the angle they've taken or the vital things they've
neglected to mention.

The extension of that is to watch/read news and think - for *every*
*single* *thing* you see and hear - that someone somewhere is more
knowledgeable than the journalist and doing a massive facepalm.

However, it is far too cognitively uncomfortable and difficult to
process media in that way and it is vital that one reverts to just
giving everything they say 98% credence in order to preserve one's
sanity.

Bodnotbod