Dave had a question that at first glance seems tough to answer, but it reminds me of what I teach my biostatistics students. Rule number one, never do anything unless you can explain exactly why you did that thing (as opposed to any other option), and you have to explain that to your mother so that she understands your choice.
So, sufficient knowledge is enough that you could explain the topic to someone else to their satisfaction. Therefore, if you feel that if you were called on in a crowd to explain "string theory" and you would decline thinking that you didn't know enough, well then, you don't know enough. Thus, we are each our own judge on this matter. If I can't explain something so that you can understand it, then I don't know it well enough to have an opinion on it. Cheers, Jim On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 18:55, Derek Pursell <dep1...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Mr. Roper makes an excellent point here; the value of establishing that one > should not have an opinion (interpretation: bias?) before studying or > gaining further knowledge of a subject is invaluable to the pursuit of > knowledge. This principle applies for scientific and non-scientific > purposes. This idea, so presented, does bring up another question: what > would we like to define as "sufficient knowledge" in order to justify having > an opinion on a subject? From my personal experience, people tend to form > opinions on subjects relatively early in the process of learning about them > (if indeed, any meaningful degree of learning takes place), so the perils > are obvious. Granted, the definition of "sufficient knowledge" is broadly > interpretative and would vary from subject to subject, but it can be > troublesome because of the age-old issue of how people define and use the > same word to mean many different things. >
