valid points. let me offer some thoughts in return.
Regarding whether the Russia/Saudi authors are shills for the oil industry, there are three ways to evaluate that question. The first is through personal knowledge of the people in question or their work. This is the best way, but obviously a very labor-intensive one, and one that not's necessarily available to most of us. The second way is by relying on the authority of the venue in which the article appears. This can be useful to the extent that certain publications can demonstrate a track record of reasonably fair and objective discourse, or the opposite--although the first approach is always preferable. The third way is by evaluating the internal logic and coherence of the arguments presented, which to some extent stand or fall independently of their authors' affiliations. The problem here is reading carefully and separating out three different elements in pieces like these: knowledge, judgment, and opinion.
Knowledge involves mastery of history and objective reality. It is subject to verification. Some people simply know more than others, and if there are facts that are relevant to a particular case, knowing them is important. To take the Pollack article as an example, what happened in Iraq in 1991, for example, or what the current battle order of the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi opposition is, involve knowledge.
Judgment involves informed and considered thoughts or speculation about factual questions that unfortunately can't be looked up in a book somewhere. Thus, how the Iraqi opposition would fare in battle against the Iraqi armed forces is (or rather may eventually be) a question of fact, but until the battle occurs speculation about its outcome is a matter of judgment.
Opinion involves personal thoughts about subjective things (such as priorities, acceptable risks, etc.). Whether it is worth embarking on a particular military operation, given a consensus about the expected costs and benefits, is a matter of opinion.
When discussing something by an "expert"--or anybody, for that matter--one should separate points into those three categories. The amount of knowledge they can bring to bear is obviously important. Their judgments are perhaps even more so, because that's the area in which we have to rely on the experts most (although with much skepticism). Their opinions, finally, are no better or worse than ours, and should be taken as such.
tb@complicatedenough?.com |
