[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Check the reliability of the authors you read: A theologian is a less- reliable source of information than a scientist.

I would be glad to discuss in the opt-in section of MobileRead.

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Observe who is willing to debate, and who is not: The former are most likely to be telling the truth, while the latter are probably trying to keep their lies from being exposed.

I don't agree with this at all, but it would be hard to find proof one way or the other -- except -- debates where there is significant math involved are worthless.

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

With all due respect barry, I suspect that you are innumerate because people who are not good at math have a strong tendency to personalize things.

Do you have a study on this? And is it any kind of math, and any kind of personalization?

I wonder if any difference in "tendency to personalize things" might be greater between people skilled in various mathematical specialties than it is between math nerds, and the innumerate, in general.

I feel that I can read medical journal articles critically. But it is a real challenge for me to master the literature on even narrow questions, and so time-consuming that I've only ever tried to do it on two or three questions. On the rest of what my doctors may advise, there aren't enough hours in the day not to rely on extremely dubious rubrics involving credentials and personality, almost as if I was borderline illiterate.

Economics? I lack knowledge of the sort of statistics commonly found in economic journals and thus have to rely on popularizations I have no means to independently access. I suspect that it goes the other way -- lots of great economists would find critical reading of New England Journal of Medicine articles impossible.

You say you are are elitist. I myself am sometimes a bit of an elitist. My point is that no person has elite level knowledge of more than a tiny handful of subjects.

I think that, even by your elitist standards, someone who reads fifty well-reviewed fiction books a year ranks much lower in knowledge than someone who never reads books but spends the same time reading academic journals, middlebrow magazines, and newspapers.