i finished listening to sam harris'
the moral landscape audiobook last week. this bit really stuck in my memory and i'm glad
butterlies and wheels is quoting it... so i'm adding it here for future reference:
“while it is a standard rhetorical move in such debates to accuse scientists of being ‘arrogant,’ the level of humility in scientific discourse is, in fact, one of its most striking characteristics. in my experience, arrogance is about as common at a scientific conference as nudity. at any scientific meeting you will find presenter after presenter couching his or her remarks with caveats and apologies. when asked to comment on something that lies to either side of the very knife edge of their special expertise, even nobel laureates will say things like, “well, this isn’t really my area, but i would suspect that x is…” or “i’m sure there are several people in this room who know more about this than i do, but as far as i know, x is…” the totality of scientific knowledge nowdoubles every few years. given how much there is to know, all scientists live with the constant awareness that whenever they open their mouths in the presence of other scientists, they are guaranteed to be speaking to someone who knows more about a specific topic than they do.” [p 124]
