The recent threads on Sam Harris and Steven Pinker, as well as prior discussion about Jordan Peterson, lead me to wonder who gets nominated as an "expert" or authoritative commentator on any given...
The recent threads on Sam Harris and Steven Pinker, as well as prior discussion about Jordan Peterson, lead me to wonder who gets nominated as an "expert" or authoritative commentator on any given subject.
The topic link is one I reference frequently, particularly with respect to the moral authority or impartiality of expertise. My thought is that Harris, Pinker, and Peterson have all held forth as moral authorities and impartial arbiters on the basis of expertise they don't actually possess.
Me, I'm a total dilettante - there are many and diverse areas where I can claim practical experience, tacit knowledge, academic study, or detailed literature research, but it's hard for me to claim I'm an "expert" at much. I have enough basic science, mathematics, general knowledge, and research skill to draw some fairly reliable conclusions, but usually encourage large helpings of sodium chloride if I expound at length.
So, dear Tilders, what do you believe about expertise, and what you can personally claim expertise in?
Do you believe you need to be a dedicated full-time worker in the field to have expertise?
Have you ever offered an opinion based on subject-matter expertise that proved to be wrong? If so, what did you do?
I don't really believe in 'expert opinions'. If someone is an expert, let them present an argument with factual information and let that argument stand or fall on its own merits. The idea that we...
I don't really believe in 'expert opinions'. If someone is an expert, let them present an argument with factual information and let that argument stand or fall on its own merits. The idea that we should just take someone's word for something without seeing that information for ourselves has always bothered me, because everyone is biased. Ask an expert for an opinion and you will still get a biased opinion because experts are still humans. It's possible to eliminate that bias, but it's impossible to tell if they have, so your best bet is to always assume bias, but not malice.
The only thing I'd claim any kind of 'expertise' on is system administration, because it's been my career for decades and I enjoy it immensely. Even there, the field is so vast and ever-changing that I'd never say I can give definitive or best answers on anything except for the fundamentals. There are always ten good ways to do anything in this field, and which one is best depends less on the technology than it does on the task to be accomplished and the context of the organization itself. I follow science, economics, futurology, nuclear power, music, and online moderation systems because they are interesting to me. I'm no expert in any of those areas, just another asshole with an opinion. :)
Everyone has had an expert opinion they were sure of that was dead wrong. If you don't think that's happened to you, guess what - it did, multiple times, you missed it, and likely pissed off a lot of people in the process by being a know-it-all jackass. Instead of seizing the opportunity to get wiser you opted for defensiveness. Remember that and look for it in the future. That feeling you get when your foot is in your mouth should be a good thing, and making it into a good thing is all about how you handle failure and embarrassment... two things humans are terribly bad at handling.
Pinker and Harris are both surrounded by cults of personality too, which complicates this entire business. If someone is popular and well liked that only enables them to be wrong with authority. It has no bearing whatsoever on their correctness - and people often conflate the two. They are predisposed to believe what popular people say just based on the warm fuzzies of positive reputation they associate with them. There's a lesson here for reputation in online forums too. ;)
Seems to me the main benefit of expertise is that it should enable the group to avoid wasting a lot of time. I like that the paper you linked is focusing on experts 'directing action', that's a great way to look at this. My 'definition' of an expert is someone who is more useful and informative and correct than google. :P
Everyone should be happy to be corrected. It's not about you, it's about the information, the project you're working on, the discussion you're having, and the context. If you can make it better, do it. If someone else can make it better, 'teach me senpai' is a useful attitude. Far too many people take being wrong about something as a personal attack. It's instinctive behavior, probably going back to when we were in tribes of <150 and being wrong had pretty dire consequences for the tribe and for yourself.
When your senpai is teaching you, make sure to give them hell and challenge all of their assumptions and opinions - with the goal being to uncover the information and experiences that led them to these beliefs. Do this right and you'll end up in a better place with a better solution than either of you could have managed on your own, and both of you will get a bit smarter and wiser too.
The problem with this view, is that there's a ton of expert arguments I can't understand or can never be expected to understand. It'd take years of in-depth study to reach that point for each...
I don't really believe in 'expert opinions'. If someone is an expert, let them present an argument with factual information and let that argument stand or fall on its own merits.
The problem with this view, is that there's a ton of expert arguments I can't understand or can never be expected to understand. It'd take years of in-depth study to reach that point for each topic.
As I'm not personally equipped to judge the quality of arguments because I'm a layperson, I need to rely on an expert.
A worse argument can often sound better, or be more in tune with my preconceived notions (think social media liking stuff you agree with). Me thinking I can judge something I'm not equipped for leads me to draw bad conclusions.
It's a lot easier to think I can follow arguments where things like math, formulas, jargon or detailed procedural methodology clearly mean I recognize I have no idea what's going on.
It's a lot easier to think I understand something enough to make my own judgement instead of relying an expert when the language used seems to be just normal words, like in many softer sciences or arts etc.
The idea that we should just take someone's word for something without seeing that information for ourselves has always bothered me, because everyone is biased.
I think it's way more dangerous to think that we can be experts and understand everything ourselves.
Sure everyone has bias, but if you ask an expert what the mainstream opinion in their field is, not what their personal view is, you'll get peer reviewed science's best take on their field.
That's the best you'll get. Even though it feels way less empowering or self-sufficient than having to rely on folks who've got mastery I don't.
The preference for "normal words" is potentially dangerous - it gives power to people who have more confidence, fluency, and charisma than actual knowledge. Sometimes you've got to do homework,...
The preference for "normal words" is potentially dangerous - it gives power to people who have more confidence, fluency, and charisma than actual knowledge. Sometimes you've got to do homework, especially in a time where manipulating trust has become its own dark science.
There's a great deal that can be properly evaluated if you have the foundations. It's why the old "liberal" education method emphasized the need to have basic instruction in all the disciplines - math, sciences, history, humanities, and so on - so that we'd be informed enough to have minimal bullshit filters for the people telling us they're experts.
At the same time, I know plenty of doctors who wish their patients weren't trying to supplant the role of expertise. "Doctor Google" is making the real experts' lives hell, and often leads to people coming in sicker or more resistant to best practices in treatment. Part of the issue is that medicine remains a craft (though bigger data is poised to help with this), and that situates it in a place where expert treatment is a collaborative, not declarative, process. Doctors can't blame their failures on "non-compliance"; they have to engage patients' willing participation and feedback. And yes, they've had to learn "normal words" for doing this.
I'm looking beyond opinionators to the nature of expertise itself. As the article notes, there really are people who are qualified to opine on concrete information in the sciences, but as you'd...
I don't really believe in 'expert opinions'. If someone is an expert, let them present an argument with factual information and let that argument stand or fall on its own merits. The idea that we should just take someone's word for something without seeing that information for ourselves has always bothered me, because everyone is biased. Ask an expert for an opinion and you will still get a biased opinion because experts are still humans. It's possible to eliminate that bias, but it's impossible to tell if they have, so your best bet is to always assume bias, but not malice.
I'm looking beyond opinionators to the nature of expertise itself. As the article notes, there really are people who are qualified to opine on concrete information in the sciences, but as you'd expect, the more complex the inputs, the more room there is for interpretation, bias, malice, and error. In areas such as economics, politics, sociology, psychology, defense, law, and medicine, you can say, "show me the facts" all day long, and even the people who've spent their lives studying these topics won't be able to prognosticate or prescribe as reliably as we might wish.
To paraphrase what you said, if the main benefit of expertise is to avoid waste of resources, there are fields of study where we might be better off admitting that there are no experts, everyone is wrong under the current paradigms, and they'd better spend their time devising tests of models to see what might form the basis for real-world validity.
The Internet still reduces us to using signifiers of reputation to establish trust. Formal credentials are handy, particularly when we're asked to evaluate an expert's veracity in a field where we don't know much ourselves. To some extent, people like Harris, Pinker, and Peterson have misused distinguished credentials and reputation accumulated in their disciplines to build trust outside of them.
One of the purposes of the historical guild systems was to establish professional credentials and standards, including visible punishment for incompetence or other activity that might cast disrepute on the profession. It's also in the nature of recognized expertise that you're presented with increasingly difficult problems, and the solutions become part of the profession's body of knowledge.
I think, based on experience, that in system administration and most areas of technical expertise, there's such a thing as being expert in what one doesn't know, and how to minimize the risks of proceeding in the face of incomplete information.
Everyone should be happy to be corrected. It's not about you, it's about the information, the project you're working on, the discussion you're having, and the context. If you can make it better, do it. If someone else can make it better, 'teach me senpai' is a useful attitude. Far too many people take being wrong about something as a personal attack. It's instinctive behavior, probably going back to when we were in tribes of <150 and being wrong had pretty dire consequences for the tribe and for yourself.
"A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.”
“Granted it is easy at least comparatively to find pleasure in error when there's nothing at stake. But that can't be the whole story since all of us have been known to throw tantrums over totally trivial mistakes. What makes illusions different is that for the most part we enter in them by consent. We might not know exactly how we are going to err but we know that the error is coming and we say yes to the experience anyways.
In a sense much the same thing could be said of life in general. We can't know where your next error lurks or what form it will take but we can be very sure that it is waiting for us. With illusions we look forward to this encounter since whatever minor price we paid in pride is handily outweighed by curiosity at first and by pleasure afterward. The same will not always be true when we venture past these simple perceptual failures to more complex and consequential mistakes. But nor is willing the embrace of error always beyond us. In fact this might be the most important thing that illusions can teach us: that is is possible at least some of the time to find in being wrong a deeper satisfaction then we would have found being right.”
“To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.”
― Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
I don't necessarily believe that you need to be a full time worker, but you absolutely must have substantial, practical hands-on experience in order to fully appreciate the theory and understand...
I don't necessarily believe that you need to be a full time worker, but you absolutely must have substantial, practical hands-on experience in order to fully appreciate the theory and understand its limitations. There are exceptions to nearly everything, so you need to have that drilled into your head through said experience.
As for offering opinions, I'm frequently wrong. I expect that possibility, however, and explicitly state when I'm uncertain. I only respond in full certainty when I've had extensive experience with a particular problem.
As for being an actual expert? I use a PHP framework that was developed in-house by my boss' old company. I'm the one person alive who understands the inner workings better than anyone. That makes me the de facto expert ;)
Wow, that's problematic. Who told you that? My advice for feeling useless or incompetent is this: learn to play again. Build yourself a sandbox and just try stuff - no harm, no foul. No one gets...
Wow, that's problematic. Who told you that?
My advice for feeling useless or incompetent is this: learn to play again. Build yourself a sandbox and just try stuff - no harm, no foul. No one gets to be an "expert" at anything without doing it ignorantly and causing damage for a long time. It's the process of conscious attention to what worked and what didn't that's critical to growth - you can't get there without having mistakes to learn from.
The recent threads on Sam Harris and Steven Pinker, as well as prior discussion about Jordan Peterson, lead me to wonder who gets nominated as an "expert" or authoritative commentator on any given subject.
The topic link is one I reference frequently, particularly with respect to the moral authority or impartiality of expertise. My thought is that Harris, Pinker, and Peterson have all held forth as moral authorities and impartial arbiters on the basis of expertise they don't actually possess.
Me, I'm a total dilettante - there are many and diverse areas where I can claim practical experience, tacit knowledge, academic study, or detailed literature research, but it's hard for me to claim I'm an "expert" at much. I have enough basic science, mathematics, general knowledge, and research skill to draw some fairly reliable conclusions, but usually encourage large helpings of sodium chloride if I expound at length.
So, dear Tilders, what do you believe about expertise, and what you can personally claim expertise in?
Do you believe you need to be a dedicated full-time worker in the field to have expertise?
Have you ever offered an opinion based on subject-matter expertise that proved to be wrong? If so, what did you do?
I don't really believe in 'expert opinions'. If someone is an expert, let them present an argument with factual information and let that argument stand or fall on its own merits. The idea that we should just take someone's word for something without seeing that information for ourselves has always bothered me, because everyone is biased. Ask an expert for an opinion and you will still get a biased opinion because experts are still humans. It's possible to eliminate that bias, but it's impossible to tell if they have, so your best bet is to always assume bias, but not malice.
The only thing I'd claim any kind of 'expertise' on is system administration, because it's been my career for decades and I enjoy it immensely. Even there, the field is so vast and ever-changing that I'd never say I can give definitive or best answers on anything except for the fundamentals. There are always ten good ways to do anything in this field, and which one is best depends less on the technology than it does on the task to be accomplished and the context of the organization itself. I follow science, economics, futurology, nuclear power, music, and online moderation systems because they are interesting to me. I'm no expert in any of those areas, just another asshole with an opinion. :)
Everyone has had an expert opinion they were sure of that was dead wrong. If you don't think that's happened to you, guess what - it did, multiple times, you missed it, and likely pissed off a lot of people in the process by being a know-it-all jackass. Instead of seizing the opportunity to get wiser you opted for defensiveness. Remember that and look for it in the future. That feeling you get when your foot is in your mouth should be a good thing, and making it into a good thing is all about how you handle failure and embarrassment... two things humans are terribly bad at handling.
Pinker and Harris are both surrounded by cults of personality too, which complicates this entire business. If someone is popular and well liked that only enables them to be wrong with authority. It has no bearing whatsoever on their correctness - and people often conflate the two. They are predisposed to believe what popular people say just based on the warm fuzzies of positive reputation they associate with them. There's a lesson here for reputation in online forums too. ;)
Seems to me the main benefit of expertise is that it should enable the group to avoid wasting a lot of time. I like that the paper you linked is focusing on experts 'directing action', that's a great way to look at this. My 'definition' of an expert is someone who is more useful and informative and correct than google. :P
Everyone should be happy to be corrected. It's not about you, it's about the information, the project you're working on, the discussion you're having, and the context. If you can make it better, do it. If someone else can make it better, 'teach me senpai' is a useful attitude. Far too many people take being wrong about something as a personal attack. It's instinctive behavior, probably going back to when we were in tribes of <150 and being wrong had pretty dire consequences for the tribe and for yourself.
When your senpai is teaching you, make sure to give them hell and challenge all of their assumptions and opinions - with the goal being to uncover the information and experiences that led them to these beliefs. Do this right and you'll end up in a better place with a better solution than either of you could have managed on your own, and both of you will get a bit smarter and wiser too.
The problem with this view, is that there's a ton of expert arguments I can't understand or can never be expected to understand. It'd take years of in-depth study to reach that point for each topic.
As I'm not personally equipped to judge the quality of arguments because I'm a layperson, I need to rely on an expert.
A worse argument can often sound better, or be more in tune with my preconceived notions (think social media liking stuff you agree with). Me thinking I can judge something I'm not equipped for leads me to draw bad conclusions.
It's a lot easier to think I can follow arguments where things like math, formulas, jargon or detailed procedural methodology clearly mean I recognize I have no idea what's going on.
It's a lot easier to think I understand something enough to make my own judgement instead of relying an expert when the language used seems to be just normal words, like in many softer sciences or arts etc.
I think it's way more dangerous to think that we can be experts and understand everything ourselves.
Sure everyone has bias, but if you ask an expert what the mainstream opinion in their field is, not what their personal view is, you'll get peer reviewed science's best take on their field.
That's the best you'll get. Even though it feels way less empowering or self-sufficient than having to rely on folks who've got mastery I don't.
The preference for "normal words" is potentially dangerous - it gives power to people who have more confidence, fluency, and charisma than actual knowledge. Sometimes you've got to do homework, especially in a time where manipulating trust has become its own dark science.
There's a great deal that can be properly evaluated if you have the foundations. It's why the old "liberal" education method emphasized the need to have basic instruction in all the disciplines - math, sciences, history, humanities, and so on - so that we'd be informed enough to have minimal bullshit filters for the people telling us they're experts.
At the same time, I know plenty of doctors who wish their patients weren't trying to supplant the role of expertise. "Doctor Google" is making the real experts' lives hell, and often leads to people coming in sicker or more resistant to best practices in treatment. Part of the issue is that medicine remains a craft (though bigger data is poised to help with this), and that situates it in a place where expert treatment is a collaborative, not declarative, process. Doctors can't blame their failures on "non-compliance"; they have to engage patients' willing participation and feedback. And yes, they've had to learn "normal words" for doing this.
I'm looking beyond opinionators to the nature of expertise itself. As the article notes, there really are people who are qualified to opine on concrete information in the sciences, but as you'd expect, the more complex the inputs, the more room there is for interpretation, bias, malice, and error. In areas such as economics, politics, sociology, psychology, defense, law, and medicine, you can say, "show me the facts" all day long, and even the people who've spent their lives studying these topics won't be able to prognosticate or prescribe as reliably as we might wish.
To paraphrase what you said, if the main benefit of expertise is to avoid waste of resources, there are fields of study where we might be better off admitting that there are no experts, everyone is wrong under the current paradigms, and they'd better spend their time devising tests of models to see what might form the basis for real-world validity.
The Internet still reduces us to using signifiers of reputation to establish trust. Formal credentials are handy, particularly when we're asked to evaluate an expert's veracity in a field where we don't know much ourselves. To some extent, people like Harris, Pinker, and Peterson have misused distinguished credentials and reputation accumulated in their disciplines to build trust outside of them.
One of the purposes of the historical guild systems was to establish professional credentials and standards, including visible punishment for incompetence or other activity that might cast disrepute on the profession. It's also in the nature of recognized expertise that you're presented with increasingly difficult problems, and the solutions become part of the profession's body of knowledge.
I think, based on experience, that in system administration and most areas of technical expertise, there's such a thing as being expert in what one doesn't know, and how to minimize the risks of proceeding in the face of incomplete information.
I love this. There are a couple of really great quotes in the book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, which go like this:
I don't necessarily believe that you need to be a full time worker, but you absolutely must have substantial, practical hands-on experience in order to fully appreciate the theory and understand its limitations. There are exceptions to nearly everything, so you need to have that drilled into your head through said experience.
As for offering opinions, I'm frequently wrong. I expect that possibility, however, and explicitly state when I'm uncertain. I only respond in full certainty when I've had extensive experience with a particular problem.
As for being an actual expert? I use a PHP framework that was developed in-house by my boss' old company. I'm the one person alive who understands the inner workings better than anyone. That makes me the de facto expert ;)
Me. I am an expert.
At being completely fucking useless.
Wow, that's problematic. Who told you that?
My advice for feeling useless or incompetent is this: learn to play again. Build yourself a sandbox and just try stuff - no harm, no foul. No one gets to be an "expert" at anything without doing it ignorantly and causing damage for a long time. It's the process of conscious attention to what worked and what didn't that's critical to growth - you can't get there without having mistakes to learn from.
Oh, I was just joking around really. Still, good advice