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Re: Two small points


Hi Phil,

I read your 'Tools for Critical Thinking' and it was very thought provoking. I do have a couple of questions for you.

--First, please understand I'm not being argumentative with you or your post, but I just want to use the ideas presented in 'Tools for Critical Thinking' to increase my own knowledge.

--Second, I am not, in any way, technically competent in audio engineering, or any field of engineering for that matter. My only knowledge has come from building Heathkits as a youth, earning a ham radio license (now long expired) when I was a teenager, and reading/studying some technical information because of my desire to increase my knowledge of my audio hobby.

With that out of the way, here's my questions:

1. You said:
"Encourage debate on the evidence by people who know the evidence."

Question: How does one determine whether or not the people debating actually know or understand the evidence? To me, the debate can get so technical, that it's impossible to determine who knows and understands the evidence. As you said, there's a lot of junk science out there. How does one filter out the junk in a reliable way.

2. You said:
"Explore alternative explanations. The most obvious explanation is not always the best, and may often be wrong."

"Use Occam’s Razor, the principle that if two hypotheses explain the data equally well, it is better to choose the simpler hypothesis."

Question: Can't these two statements be contradictory? For example, what if the 'most obvious explanation' is also the 'simpler' explanation of a hypothesis? How does one reconcile this? Maybe an example or two would help.

I appreciate your time to help me out with this, Phil.

regards,
Larry


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