a lay audience is no more familiar with specialized claims in math, physics, chemistry, etc. than they are in philosophy, and thus equally susceptible to bs
I would somewhat agree with that. But what I'm saying is the non-lay people in those areas aren't really susceptible to bs, nor did they spend years bs-ing there way through college. There are millions of them and any of them (with a decent GPA) can read pages involving undergraduate material from their field and recognize if it's valid, there's no "what were that dead guys intentions" involved. And especially with math - you cannot find two math books with theorems that contradict each other(unless of course the author made a mistake, which can definitely happen in the problems section, but all mathematicians can agree on which proof is correct). And as the above commentor said: "there is less room for dispute in these subjects among professionals working in the field, at least when it comes to the basic knowledge base."
As a side point, I fail to see how "no more familiar" and "equally susceptible" shows that "there's more of a need". It's like saying "Less than or equal to" implies "greater".
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Date: 6/2/11 23:10 (UTC)I would somewhat agree with that. But what I'm saying is the non-lay people in those areas aren't really susceptible to bs, nor did they spend years bs-ing there way through college. There are millions of them and any of them (with a decent GPA) can read pages involving undergraduate material from their field and recognize if it's valid, there's no "what were that dead guys intentions" involved. And especially with math - you cannot find two math books with theorems that contradict each other(unless of course the author made a mistake, which can definitely happen in the problems section, but all mathematicians can agree on which proof is correct). And as the above commentor said: "there is less room for dispute in these subjects among professionals working in the field, at least when it comes to the basic knowledge base."
As a side point, I fail to see how "no more familiar" and "equally susceptible" shows that "there's more of a need". It's like saying "Less than or equal to" implies "greater".