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Okay, I have some thoughts on this, coming from the perspective of journalism. I don't know who Naomi Wolf is or what she wrote about this topic, so this is just a general musing on fact-checking and subject matter experts from someone who's dealt with both, with varying results:

Journalists are almost never subject matter experts, nor are most fact-checkers. While this can definitely create blind spots in our ability to cover a subject in-depth, journalistic ethics and research methodologies are supposed to adjust for those deficiencies. That said, journalistic inquiry of unfamiliar subjects can often open the door to new explorations of old ideas, so long as the right methodologies and ethics are employed along the way.

It's worth noting that experts rarely agree to a point of consensus (not even close), so journalists (good, ethical ones) are supposed to explore the nuances and compare/contrast different experts' research. (It's also worth pointing out that a lot of history's "experts" were just men who could read, who assumed they knew stuff definitively, until future men who could read disproved that same stuff; on loop.)

Even today, rabbis disagree on interpretations of the Torah (interviewing a rabbi about reaching minyan virtually on Shabbat during the pandemic opened my eyes to this), and different Catholic priests will often give us different answers to the same questions about the Bible. Some versions of the Bible have more books than others because of disagreements in old times, too.

I don't personally think anyone necessarily needs to be a theologian to write about the Bible so long as they approach their inquiry in an upright manner (including spiritual discernment) -- sometimes, having a "child's mind" about spiritual things is better than being an expert in the field. But in any case, I think when it comes to writing or talking about religion, there isn't enough emphasis placed on discernment and method.

I think when we get too authoritative about who is allowed to write about certain subjects, we close ourselves off to possibilities, which is never good. There should always be a research methodology based on independently verifiable information and sound ethics, with room for critique, public discourse, corrections, and new discoveries after publication. Just my two cents on the overall subject of experts and facts!

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All fair points. And I definitely agree about the need to be careful we don’t preempt valuable contributions by people because they’re driving out of their line. Experts get things wrong, and they also get stuck. DNA was, for instance, discovered by James Watson, a biologist, and Frances Crick, a physicist(!). Sometimes the best ideas come from people outside the field able to see things differently.

The issue would seem to come down to respecting what we don’t know and being self aware and humble enough to recognize when venturing into new territory that we don’t know much. It’s like Chesterton’s Fence (https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/beyond-chestertons-fence); the principle doesn’t negate the possibility of tearing down the fence, only that we should understand why it was erected before we do.

The methods of journalism, it would seem to me, safeguard the journalist (and their institutions) by ensuring enough is uncovered about why the fence is there to comment on its removal. Those without that sort of in-built caution tear down what they don’t understand.

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Definitely! Astronomy is another good example -- it's shocking how many valuable contributions amateur astronomers have made to the field, even still today.

And yes to Chesterton and his fence! That's the right approach to researching anything. There are so many things each of us doesn't know we don't know. Journalism was really humbling to me for that reason, but once you get comfortable with it, it turns everything into a big adventure.

I was looking up this Naomi Wolf person and it seems like she tends to lean more toward the sensational, and that critics accuse her of cherry-picking a lot to support her perspective. That doesn't seem too far off from most mainstream writers today, but it also doesn't seem surprising that she wrote something in a similar fashion about the Bible. Still, there have been no shortage of people over the years who've questioned some of the translations and removed books of the Bible, and whether those were political choices more than spiritual ones, etc. I think it's fair to explore those questions, even if the answers someone comes up with aren't the best or totally accurate, because it gets the rest of the world talking and digging for the truth about that subject too.

As someone who's worked under editors with master's degrees in journalism who couldn't seem to grasp basic journalistic ethics, and who's been blatantly lied to by authority figures during interviews (it's impossible to believe they were just confused), all I can say is that expertise isn't a magic bullet. -- politics and ideology have always played way too large a role in our society, especially among the expert class. I think the most powerful force for truth is public commentary and open debate after something is published -- it really takes a village to get to the truth!

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I’ll buy that.

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Yeah, Naomi Wolf has poor discernment though in my opinion, she thinks the Devil is basically not involved in modern political evil because she thinks it doesn't care about God. She also promotes a lot of ideas that come straight from Lyndon LaRouche. Lots of things she says are true, like that COVID vaccines don't spread transmission, but associating those ideas with her is almost really a bad thing because it's just associating true ideas with really crazy ones.

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/is-elite-occultism-real

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You never heard of Naomi Wolf?

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Nope! I don't think I'm really her target demographic, so she never showed up on my radar.

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Congratulations, I am not ironic. Even though Naomi Kleins book about her is worth to read.

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Haha! Do you mean a book she wrote about her life?

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Naomi Klein wrote about how she’s always getting confused with Naomi Wolf and goes down the rabbit hole of what it’s like.

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Ohh that's hilarious!

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Now that you mention it, how about forwarding the memo to the head honchos at The Atlantic? Their science writer, Ivy league PhD notwithstanding, divulged earlier this year the awful news about our impact on the natural world: a century and-a-half or so ago, we transformed the peaceful, harmless grizzly bears of California into blood-thirsty monsters by misrepresenting their occasionally inconvenient predation of evil cattle as acts of horror and abomination. And this brave premise is supported by the fossil record, which indicates that ursus horribilis subsisted on a harmless diet consisting primarily of plant forage before the Golden State began to be overrun by the bovine masses. Fact checking of this story didn’t require any more expertise than a vocabulary including the word ‘omnivore’ which apparently isn’t taught in postgraduate programs anymore. Anyway, that case stuck in my craw, so thanks for listening!

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Ugh. There are few things more irritating than a badly reported story.

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It grew out of research that framed an interesting but incompletely proven thesis: that bear behavior and diets had been effected by the advent of cattle ranching in California. In keeping with current perspectives the researchers dated the change to 1539, when Cabrillo sailed up the coast from Mexico and claimed the land for Spain, thereby linking environmental transformation to colonialism. The research employed sophisticated chemical analysis of bear bones/ fossils to establish the point. But the sample size is small and far from comprehensive enough to definitively confirm the claim. The biggest weakness is the dating. California wasn’t actually colonized for another 230 years, so there were no significantly palpable effects on its natural environment until the late 1700s. That’s a soft-spot that might conceivably be caught by a 4th grader, which is about the only time kids ever spend much time learning about state history.

That much being said, the basic premise is indisputably correct: grizzly diets were undoubtedly effected by the presence of cattle. They ate them for the same reason people did, because they were excellent sources of protein. The Atlantic article takes off from about that point to imply that this effect was a distortion, a man-made problem that eventuated the grizzly’s eradication in the state. Again, an incontestable assertion in some important respects, but one that begs further analysis. The possibility that the availability of beef may have led to a bump in the grizzly population even as the state’s human population grew rapidly in the 1800s is not considered, nor is the likelihood that the pre-colonial environment had evolved to naturally suppress such upticks in grizzly numbers. (It seems plausible that other animal inhabitants may have learned to give them a wide berth over the eons before even the earliest native humans showed up.) So the popular version ends up including a gratuitous bit of weak Century 21 enviro-agitprop erected atop a clever bit of chemistry and a shoddy bit of historical myopia. And when I worked myself up into a lather about it all I did find it a bit astonishing that the word ‘omnivore’ was nowhere to be found as a descriptor of grizzly eating habits. Maybe in the bright future that lies ahead of us zoos can just feed them fake meat?

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This reminds me of peer-reviews for manuscripts submitted to scientific/medical journals. Sounds like some non-fiction may benefit from a similar approach but doesn’t seem as practical.

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Yes, and peer review has its own problems. It turns out getting something approximating the truth is harder than advertised :)

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I stopped paying attention to her years ago. She used to do some serious critique of the media and the way it affected girls' body image, but then flew off the handle in her embrace of strange conspiracy theories many years lbefore many others started to do the same.

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So true.

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Added to this is that we live in an age in which truth is often stranger than fiction - if we're able to tell them apart. The questions about what is real and what is conspiracy - and what is a real conspiracy - is the subtext to daily data.

Fact-checkers on the daily media are commonly shills for moneyed interest. Throw AI into the mix - or don't throw it 'cause it's already there - and it comes down to our own discernment and willingness to tell and see the truth. While publishers once gatekept for us, the responsibility now rests increasingly upon us

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If we’re not good critics of what we read, we’re hosed. That has to start with some health skepticism for whatever reports we encounter.

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Christians are so silo’d in their own traditions I wonder if she makes much of a splash in the already seething swamp of Christian books.

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There's a certain Emily Litella quality to all of this. An entire oeuvre premised on one obviously faulty misunderstanding, whose discussion culminates with a cheerful, "Never mind."

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LOL. Perfect comparison.

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As an undergrad at a small conservative Christian college back in the late 80’s and early 90’s I read a lot of Francis Schaefer to include How Should We Then Live. My inclination at the time was to absorb it all without question.

So I was a bit taken aback after I’d left there and went to a book signing by Phillip E. Johnson for his book Reason in the Balance. I was the only person in the bookstore and so we chit chatted and I mentioned Francis Schaefer.

I expected him to express high praise but instead he cautioned me by saying that many think he was speaking about a lot of things that he had little expertise in or only moderate understanding of. It was definitely a challenge to my insular naïveté at the time.

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Much to think about here. With regard to the New Testament church, I have found Frank Viola's writing and exposition very helpful. What we have today is much from pagan practices.

Bottom line, one's walk with Christ is their own and often imperfectly completed 👍🏻

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I’m curious as to what drew her to the topic. I’m assuming this is a grudge match piece.

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I don’t begin to understand Naomi Wolf except as a walking illustration of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

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I had to look that up. Now I wonder if there are experts on the D-K effect. “No, really, I am!!” “Sure, man. Sure.”

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LOL. It’s nincompoops all the way down.

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Wolf is a well-known author looking for the next train wreck to glom upon.

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Sadly, true. At least it seems so.

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It is her style.

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Naomi Wolf is very, very smart but seems not to surround herself with people who are at her level to give correction or guidance, leaving her vulnerable to embarrassment when she does come up against a worthy adversary. I noticed this when Jordan Peterson interviewed her. I'm interested in some of what she's bringing up recently, but as far as the Bible or Torah, she'd be helped by not leaning solely on her own understanding.

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Glad you mentioned the Jordan Peterson interview. Speaking of JBP, he did the wise thing by assembling a round table of those who could speak into his study of Exodus. He, for the most part, does not claim to be an expert on biblical matters, so he invites his viewers and readers to investigate with him. It's an approach that I find far more informative and valuable.

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Jun 9
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That’s great to hear. Good historical fiction can do a tremendous job of making the past come alive. Toni Morrison was, for instance, insistent about her historical research. https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/novels-are-a-waste-of-time

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