NO, not in general. Every time a theoretical physicist explains the “solution” to artificial intelligence, I remember that this is not true. Scientific literacy does not cure our worst conceits. 1/https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/991653323525664769 …
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2/ In the end, you need deep expertise in a domain to call BS. Otherwise you cannot reason by first principles accurately — you are forced to reason by analogy to things you already know, and this is error prone.
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Replying to @adampaulcoates
Not always true. This is the argument that paleontologists used to "refute" the Alvarez's asteroid impact hypothesis for the dinosaur extinction. The Alvarez's were outsiders (indeed, Lluis was a physicist). But they were right.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
Were they outsiders to the community, or outsiders with respect to the necessary knowledge? [Genuinely curious: this is a cool example -- thanks for posting.]
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Replying to @adampaulcoates
Total outsiders to the community. And not experts in what people thought was the relevant knowledge (it wasn't). I saw a talk on it, which was fascinating, by someone who'd written a book about it. But I never read the book.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @adampaulcoates
It's easy to find other examples. John Sidles at UW has done this kinda thing several times. One example: I believe
@dabacon told me that Sidles had found some kinda bug in the way LIGO approached gravitational wave detection. He's trained as a doctor.1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
He also co-invented magnetic force resonance microscopy. Just a very curious, imaginative person, who sometimes beats the experts at their own game.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @dabacon
So "error prone" in my sentence is doing a lot of work: we should remember that error prone does not mean "always in error"!
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