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CREDENTIALS_AND_IN_CONCLUSION_SORT_OF

                                             November 6, 2015
                                             
                                             CREDENTIALS
                                                                                       


And thus ends another in my forays in what I think
of as the "too long form", and the time has come to
ask what we've learned, if anything.

First of all, at the outset I thought I would have
something more favorable to say about the practice
of checking credentials as a rough evaluation of
competence.  Instead, it seems like I've got some
very good examples where that fails as an initial
screen. There are some examples where it works, but
even there it doesn't seem to be necessary or
perhaps even advisable... e.g. my objections to
Amory Lovins are his long track record of error and
dubious statements, it's not fundamentally an
objection to him misrepresenting himself as a
physicist--

Let's return to Rod Adams one more time; he does a
good job of making the case I thought I'd be
making:

    "All of us need to make energy decisions, and many
    of you do not have time to study the enormous
    volume of material yourself. Most people generally
    assume that the people that are summarizing these
    complex topics for general consumption have both
    done their homework and can be trusted to tell as
    complete a truth as possible by not slanting their
    findings based on hidden agendas or because the
    truth makes them uncomfortable."

I don't know that that's *really* what "most people" assume...
Really, I think people are doing a lot of affinity checks and
rolling with confirmation bias whenever they can...

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