In a comment on my post, "How Can I Believe You?", Tracy Gustilo mentioned that experienced readers develop a sense for when an author or a speaker's claims are well-supported.
The authority question is incredibly important in our age of information overload, and I don’t think it’s ever definitively answered. Who can you trust? On what topics? That changes over time.
For me there is a fruitful tension between sources (theories, narratives, facts) that are to a good degree “authoritative” (for one or more of the reasons you mention) and (for lack of a better word) what I’ve been calling techne, which are frameworks of (supposed) knowledge and (suggested) practice, that get their authority from a number of additional factors like practicability, intellectual intrigue, mashup potential with other techne. Take a simple example like James Clear’s habit system (empire). It’s a techne. It mashes up well with other productivity techne, all those ideas of four hour weeks, time boxing, etc etc prevalent amongst the usual gurus.
Graeber and Wengrow offer a much more complicated kind of techne, not just a theory or a narrative, because there are political implications and because their ideas mashup (or conflict/engage) with other big picture / techne thinkers like James C Scott or Pinker or Fukuyama. G&W gain authority for me not just for being a good source (which they are, for good enough academic reasons) but because they provide such an intriguing techne I can put in conversation with other intriguing techne. Maybe for me it’s all about the intrigue! (NOT to be confused with conspiracy theories, which I take to be motivated in a bad *overly* politicized and unthinking — i.e. totally suspicious — way that undermines everything constructive.)
Good techne (multiple) really help me be an “expert non expert.”
The authority question is incredibly important in our age of information overload, and I don’t think it’s ever definitively answered. Who can you trust? On what topics? That changes over time.
For me there is a fruitful tension between sources (theories, narratives, facts) that are to a good degree “authoritative” (for one or more of the reasons you mention) and (for lack of a better word) what I’ve been calling techne, which are frameworks of (supposed) knowledge and (suggested) practice, that get their authority from a number of additional factors like practicability, intellectual intrigue, mashup potential with other techne. Take a simple example like James Clear’s habit system (empire). It’s a techne. It mashes up well with other productivity techne, all those ideas of four hour weeks, time boxing, etc etc prevalent amongst the usual gurus.
Graeber and Wengrow offer a much more complicated kind of techne, not just a theory or a narrative, because there are political implications and because their ideas mashup (or conflict/engage) with other big picture / techne thinkers like James C Scott or Pinker or Fukuyama. G&W gain authority for me not just for being a good source (which they are, for good enough academic reasons) but because they provide such an intriguing techne I can put in conversation with other intriguing techne. Maybe for me it’s all about the intrigue! (NOT to be confused with conspiracy theories, which I take to be motivated in a bad *overly* politicized and unthinking — i.e. totally suspicious — way that undermines everything constructive.)
Good techne (multiple) really help me be an “expert non expert.”