Does it bother you

[idleprocess]

There's a flip side to that perspective, matt_j.

I used to work for a man that was, for lack of a better term, a dumbass. Mind you, he wasn't completely incompetent, but on average, he tended to be a negative. It took me years to figure this to because he spoke with the authority of an older gentleman that was an expert in his field. He could talk the talk very well and blow smoke with such finesse that most didn't catch it. In the end his incompetence nearly cost me my job and cost him his position as engineering director.

I'll make a conservative estimate that this man cost the company millions of dollars in delayed projects, engineering defects, cost overruns, and new products that were never designed because the department was correcting his other screwups.

I lost a few productive years of my life because I listened to this man when my own judgdement was telling me not to.

Nowadays, I don't take so much on faith. I will ask seemingly dumb questions to ferret out the reasoning for advice so I can separate the hacks from seasoned veterans.

 

[cheesehead]

Absolutely, it's not about age. Listen to yourself-the negative way to say this is, "assume you are smarter than everyone else-and work from there".

 

[B@rt]

I don't really care where the advise comes from, I'll scrutinize it anyways... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[matt_j]

Well take two scenarios:

1.
You are in the store picking up a flashlight and a kid tells you go with surefire. Than eldery gentelman tells you to buy Inova.

2. Same scenario but this time you are online and you don't know the ages of the people who gave you the advice.

Now for both scenarios which flashlight would you buy if you both like Inova and Surfire equally?

I know there are 12 yo out there who are smarter and have more wits about them than some 50 yo.

Matt

 

[Pydpiper]

If I need a quick answer I'll hunt out a member who seems to be knowledable, review their posts and the responses to their posts, if the responses are positive I then review the posts of that person, I then send a pm to that person for the advise. If I want more I will then post a topic, collect information and start that process all over again.
I belong to a forum about my truck, now I have seperated myself from the majority of the population because in order to answer these questions we are seperated by a 50k truck. I know most of the members and where to seek advise when needed, here too.
I think in order to benifit greatly from a forum you have to participate long enough to get a feel for who is who.. This can be misleading sometimes as well, but for the most part, it works.
Sometimes a 12 year old has had an experience that I haven't, so their opinion is very important to me, but you have to be able to read between the lines. When scanning a topic I skip at least 2 member opinions completely, just because I know that post was there for the sole purpose of seeing their name in a thread.

 

[nethiker]

No, doesn't bother me, I actually enjoy it.

Young people are hungry to learn and by nature love to show what they have learned. A common mistake of youth is to think you know more than you really do. Only experience can teach one the limits of personal knowledge, a lesson some people never learn. What's the saying, "The older I get, the less I really know."

One thing I really enjoy about CPF is the diversity of the community, including the wide variety of ages. There are very few venues for young people to join with adults and participate together as equals. Part of the challange of modern society is to figure out what to do with our youth. There was a time when children were important to the family and society for what they contributed. Now they are often seen as a liability (mischief ridden vagabonds) until they are old enough to enter the workforce. The internet, and CPF gives our kids a way to participate in a meaningful way.

I say I actually enjoy the sometimes frustration misdirection from young people, because it reminds me of where I have been and I gratefully honor my teachers in life by teaching others. Young people also offer an important perspective to many discussions. Inherent lack of experience provides a unique way of seeing. Kids especially are not hindered by prejudice and other preconcieved notions. It's refreshing for me to "see" through a youngsters eyes and try to remember what the world was like before I started filtering out more and more of what I thought to be unimportant.

Greg.

 

[Pydpiper]

[ QUOTE ]
nethiker said:
No, doesn't bother me, I actually enjoy it.

Young people are hungry to learn and by nature love to show what they have learned. A common mistake of youth is to think you know more than you really do. Only experience can teach one the limits of personal knowledge, a lesson some people never learn. What's the saying, "The older I get, the less I really know."

One thing I really enjoy about CPF is the diversity of the community, including the wide variety of ages. There are very few venues for young people to join with adults and participate together as equals. Part of the challange of modern society is to figure out what to do with our youth. There was a time when children were important to the family and society for what they contributed. Now they are often seen as a liability (mischief ridden vagabonds) until they are old enough to enter the workforce. The internet, and CPF gives our kids a way to participate in a meaningful way.

I say I actually enjoy the sometimes frustration misdirection from young people, because it reminds me of where I have been and I gratefully honor my teachers in life by teaching others. Young people also offer an important perspective to many discussions. Inherent lack of experience provides a unique way of seeing. Kids especially are not hindered by prejudice and other preconcieved notions. It's refreshing for me to "see" through a youngsters eyes and try to remember what the world was like before I started filtering out more and more of what I thought to be unimportant.

Greg.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nicely said Greg. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Lurker]

Anybody who takes advice on the internet from an unknown source and assumes it is a qualified source is being very niave. In fact, a huge portion of the advice I have received or witnessed that was given face-to-face and by people who should be qualified has been useless or worse. In other words, the problem you are referring to has nothing to do with age or the internet. Everyone is responsible for vetting the advice they receive.

 

[greenLED]

what nethiker said. My son has more common sense than some adults I know.

 

[lymph]

Use your brain on the internet! Ignore the noise, because there's a lot of it, and focus on the good bits.

Also, I see a lot of people asking questions on the net that if they had thought 3 minutes about, they wouldn't need to ask. Going to a forum has become a replacement for thinking for some folks (admittedly, myself included at times).

Anyway, can someone tell me what time it is?

 

[js]

Certainly this is an issue, but as has been pointed out by others already, it runs boths ways and up and down. Anytime anyone is giving advice, even professionals, there's going to be some bad advice mixed in with the good. People are not infallible, and most people are not sufficiently aware of the limits of their knowledge, nor do they include the bounds or qualifications when they state their knowledge to others.

I myself, have a very strong tendency to generalize too much and too far from what I have personally verified and experienced. Life experience has taught me many hard lessons here, and I have been burned enough to be careful to fight and guard against this tendency.

It's almost an inverse relationship, in some ways: those who know, do not talk; those who talk do not know. This is taking it too far, if you interpret it literally, but still, for myself, I have often found (or seen) that the more experience I have in any given field, the less sententious and absolute are my pronouncements regarding it.

You are always going to have the armchair experts who are good at typing but who lack real experience, and they are always going to be giving advice. That just comes with the territory. The trick is to learn to differentiate those who really know, first hand, from those who don't really know and who are at best only repeating second hand what they have learned from others. It's actually not hard to tell the difference, I have found.

So I can't say that it bothers me that on the internet someones age, sex, and nationality (and a great many other things) are hidden. In a way, that kind of works against the mantle of authority and the inertia of the status quo and conventional "wisdom". And that can often be a good thing. I have found that on CPF, in most cases, those people who are considered experts have earned that title and continue to re-earn it day-in and day-out. And, we really have some fantastically qualified people on this board. Like engineering grade people. The kind of people who do some amazing things on and off the board. Look at what CPF people have done! Look at the Lion Heart and the Alephs. We've got some amazing people here. And most everyone quickly learns who knows and who doesn't. A newbie would be very ill advised to come on, register, post a question, and take the first answer and run with it. That's just a plain bad idea and will in general have consequences. It's as much the fault of the person taking the advice as the person giving it. In my opinion.

 

[Mags]

I hope my comments and/or suggestions havent started this thread? My opinion is that the person listening to the advice has to be more aware that there are other people who are about to share their opinions and that he shouldnt take advice from just one post.

 

[nethiker]

Doesn't matter why or where the thread started Mags. I think it is a good one, with great thought and ideas. Thanks to the original poster.

As to yourself, keep on going. I enjoy reading your posts. I hope we all consider our advice a little more the next time we offer it. And certainly remember to question the advice we ask for.

Greg

 

[MaxaBaker]

Ditto that Mags. Put perfectly. I realise that I do exactly what you mentioned sometimes. But, I think everybody on CPF does every once and a while. I'm sorry if I personally have gotten any of you mad or pissed off.

 

[BlindedByTheLite]

*shrug*
i'm 20 and i've gotten some pretty good advice from Illuminating Biker in a couple different past threads.

 

[Sinjz]

I would think it really depends on the topic. If I was asking about love and heartbreak. What the heck is the 12 y/o gonna know about it? If I were asking about which video card would best work for my system given my limited resources, I might take his advice over a 40 y/o. Now all this is of course has to be backed by some logic and the ability to spot TOTAL BS. I also don't jump on anything based on ONE persons advice, like microwaving my camera, unless I know the person to be very knowledgeable on the topic. On the internet you'll get the advice of the know-it-all, the 12 y/o and the grumpy old man. The beauty of it is that you'll also get advice from dozens of smart and capable people that fall in between the extremes. Usually you take it all in and the consensus is pretty decent info.

 

[greenLED]

you're alright, Mags.

I try to have something to back up what I write here (either linking it to the original post/thread) or based on my own experience. If I'm not 100% sure about something, I don't post or do some digging until I find out the facts. Even then I've been corrected several times here (which I do appreciate, BTW). If you do your homework before posting, I don't think it matters if your 10 or 55.

I don't see a lot of people plain out bluffing around CPF. I tend to see it in other forums, though.

 

[Sub_Umbra]

Interesting question.

It doesn't bother me.

I've never automatically equated age with wisdom. I've been really blown away by finding out how old (young) some of the posters I regularly read are. In tribal cultures the old guys are the only ones that get to talk around the fire -- but it ain't the old guys that invent the airplanes. The Internet is a different kind of place.

Somebody, (maybe Sasha?) started a BIO thread last year that sort of addressed this issue. I don't recall its subject name but it addressed some of these issues very well, IMO. You can look up any poster that participated and get a feel for their life experiences which may help you evaluate the validiity of their comments on some subjects. In the end it's like others have said, you have to evaluate what the individual poster has written before and then decide how much weight to put behind it.

The bottom line is that using the Internet is kind of like buying a newspaper:

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

 

[Topper]

As a near middle aged cranky person (45) I prefer advice from people that have "hands on" experience whether young or old make no difference to me just the do you or did you have one how did it work sorta thing. I think there are quite a few really sharp young folks here as well as some sharp older ones. I do try to limit my comments on lights to ones I actually have but I am not sure I always have.
Topper /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[matt_j]

[ QUOTE ]
Mags said:
I hope my comments and/or suggestions havent started this thread? My opinion is that the person listening to the advice has to be more aware that there are other people who are about to share their opinions and that he shouldnt take advice from just one post.

[/ QUOTE ]

No no no my man. Thread was starded as per discussion I had with a friend over a pint. Here's the story: he was involved in the discussion about camping and outboard motors on the canoes. Advices were piling up like crazy, every now and than somebody was making a radical statment which only seasoned experienced person would have made. My friend who lives in Jersey realized that a lot of members were from Jersey/PA so he proposed a get together. About 4 people who were seriously active in his thread turned out to be 14 yo. Now they all had somewhat right answers (including links to the cabelas catalog for parts) but they also claimed vast experience. I mean they were recommending their "dream" setups. That's it. Now I was laughing becasue my friend also asked about love advice on the same board few months back. I was busting his chops thaht the reason he is engaged is because of some 16 yo kid playing Dr. Ruth.

That's all.

Matt