![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Further Academic Progress, Justified True Belief
Adding to the last entry, yesterday morning I received my final grades for "Physical Basis of Climate Change"; an overall A grade, B+ for the exam (one mark off an A, and I think they made a mistake!). An additional email involved the remarking of the final essay for the GradDipAppPsych. I initially received a middling B grade for this, gave a Gallic shrug, and moved on, as it was the final mark. It turns out however that there had been a muck-up in the grades and comments, and I had actually written an A+ essay. The essay in question was on relationship advice which must cause a wry chuckle among those who have an inkling of what was the train wreck in that experience in recent years. In any case, it involved contemporary evidence compared to a traditional Rogerian humanist and client-centred approach, and I was rather pleased that I managed to find some relatively rare and late material by Carl Rogers on the topic.
All these endeavours do lead me to reflect on that thorny epistemological question of justified true belief. I cannot help but notice that there are many people who have very strong opinions on matters that they know little about, and often it seems the less they know the more strident they are. I personally prefer expert opinion and, if I have sufficient interest, I end up taking up a relevant professional activity (e.g., politics, supercomputing, education, etc) or a formal qualification.
Two particular examples come to mind where popular opinion is at great variance with expert opinion. The first is seventy-five percent think that China is a military threat to Australia. Whilst modernising, any serious analysis reveals that China has neither the intent nor the capability of engaging in invasive wars. The second is climate change, where over forty percent think that it's either not a problem at all, or the effects are sufficiently gradual that no drastic action is required which, of course, runs quite contrary to the latest IPCC report, but what would they know? After all, as Gettier pointed out, it is possible that ignorance can be right through luck and knowledge wrong due to unknown, but critical, variables. It is really not a good basis for public policy, however.
All these endeavours do lead me to reflect on that thorny epistemological question of justified true belief. I cannot help but notice that there are many people who have very strong opinions on matters that they know little about, and often it seems the less they know the more strident they are. I personally prefer expert opinion and, if I have sufficient interest, I end up taking up a relevant professional activity (e.g., politics, supercomputing, education, etc) or a formal qualification.
Two particular examples come to mind where popular opinion is at great variance with expert opinion. The first is seventy-five percent think that China is a military threat to Australia. Whilst modernising, any serious analysis reveals that China has neither the intent nor the capability of engaging in invasive wars. The second is climate change, where over forty percent think that it's either not a problem at all, or the effects are sufficiently gradual that no drastic action is required which, of course, runs quite contrary to the latest IPCC report, but what would they know? After all, as Gettier pointed out, it is possible that ignorance can be right through luck and knowledge wrong due to unknown, but critical, variables. It is really not a good basis for public policy, however.
no subject
no subject