Post B17dZaCctFDQ1dBZhI by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
 (DIR) More posts by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
 (DIR) Post #B17dZYy3TvxwC9MQLY by vnikolov@ieji.de
       2025-12-10T11:31:45Z
       
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       When a sentence begins with"I am not an expert",it should continue with a full stop and end-of-text.(Or possibly with a useful redirect.)Context: I had a close encounter with yet another social media post where the continuation consisted of a comma, the word "but", and half a dozen bogus paragraphs instead.Par for the course...
       
 (DIR) Post #B17dZaCctFDQ1dBZhI by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-12-11T00:31:27Z
       
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       @vnikolov There are a number of subjects on which I am sufficiently better informed than the average person that my lack of expertise, although obvious to me, is not nearly so obvious to others. As a result, I am often treated as "the person to go to" about such topics. Very occasionally I have been paid to consult on such a subject, on the grounds that the actual experts were all busy doing the thing and thus unavailable. It's a distinctly weird position to be in.
       
 (DIR) Post #B18yZSAT3VqnIjuok4 by vnikolov@ieji.de
       2025-12-11T08:09:18Z
       
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       @publiusYou may well be a de facto expert.(To myself, both the presence and the absence of a formal certificate carry little information by themselves.)Besides, and this has been said many times before, in every or almost every significant field, nobody can know everything there is to know in that field.I.e. for each expert there exists expertise that is lacking.The good experts know which things they don't know.
       
 (DIR) Post #B18yZTdZamj5rIXZkO by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-12-11T16:01:29Z
       
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       @vnikolov I had a bizarre moment a year or so ago where I knew immediately a chemistry fact that the elderly professor who makes the Cambridge University chemistry videos didn't!