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The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

#21

Post by narag »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #16

I feel like the author intended for me to leave the article less likely to dig my heels in when acting as an expert and more likely to maintain a flexible worldview when making predictions in a scenario where there are a variety of well developed and contradicting predictive theories. And that's probably a good sentiment. But I think it's important to recognize that foxes outperform hedgehogs only in scenarios where…

From the article I got the impression that the experts' job was not necessarily forecasting, so the question was "are experts good at forecasting?". That doesn't mean that experts are not needed, but that there's more to forecasting than specialists.

Re: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

#23

Post by infinity0 »

lordnacho wrote: post #8

> Two days later, a team member with experience in finance saw that the hryvnia was strengthening amid events he’d thought would surely weaken it. He informed his teammates that this was exactly the opposite of what he’d expected, and that they should take it as a sign of something wrong in his understanding. This is an experience every young trader ever has had many, many times. Myself included. You see an economic…

> This is an experience every young trader ever has had many, many times. Myself included. You see an economic figure, you think "hey this should do x", and it doesn't do what you think. The senior trader on the desk will remind you that your wrongness is worthy of further thought.

s/trader/programmer/g also true

Re: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

#24

Post by lordnacho »

schalab wrote: post #12
lordnacho wrote: post #8

> Two days later, a team member with experience in finance saw that the hryvnia was strengthening amid events he’d thought would surely weaken it. He informed his teammates that this was exactly the opposite of what he’d expected, and that they should take it as a sign of something wrong in his understanding. This is an experience every young trader ever has had many, many times. Myself included. You see an economic…

The talking heads point is deeper than that. Not only are they paid to be interesting. The very ability of being good at talking might be co-related with other base attributes. For instance being good at talking might be co-related with tunnel vision, not having a bigger perspective, being able to connect things which shouldnt be, naivety, empathy and so on. So if your process of conferring the title of expertise inv…

> For instance being good at talking might be co-related with tunnel vision, not having a bigger perspective, being able to connect things which shouldnt be, naivety, empathy and so on.

This is a good point. When you really understand something, you know what the limits are. Your mind is full of ifs and buts.

People who are good at talking, especially persuasive talking, tend to be so because they can articulate a clean vision with few wrinkles. Think of any political discussion. In reality there's a tradeoff between higher taxes and higher social services. You end up getting people who essentially argue that it's a no-brainer, one way or the other depending on their flag.

Re: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

#26

Post by dTal »

mhkool wrote: post #2

Predicting anything is a gamble. One simply does not know what will happen but one makes assumptions. Let'ś take weather forecasting as an example. It is difficult to do it right for 5 days and often goes wrong for 10 days. But when you ask a group of scientist a simple question, like "Do you think that humans contribute to the rise of CO2 ?" and 97% say "yeah", then you can make a new assumption: CO2 will probably r…

An analogy:

Go down a sea wall and dunk a measuring stick in. As the waves lap against it, how far in advance can you predict the exact height measured? Not much more than a second - it's too chaotic.

But observe it for a day or two, and deduce the existence of tides. Now you can easily predict the average (minute-to-minute) water height months in advance.

Re: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

#28

Post by robocat »

lordnacho wrote: post #8

> Two days later, a team member with experience in finance saw that the hryvnia was strengthening amid events he’d thought would surely weaken it. He informed his teammates that this was exactly the opposite of what he’d expected, and that they should take it as a sign of something wrong in his understanding. This is an experience every young trader ever has had many, many times. Myself included. You see an economic…

> The senior trader on the desk will remind you that your wrongness is worthy of further thought.

George Soros has written a bit about this effect (about back when he was a trader).

From recollection -

Firstly he enjoyed finding his investment hypothesis turn out wrong, and he eagerly looked for errors. He stated that some of his biggest wins came almost directly from a previously faulty idea.

Secondly he hated giving opinions on any market to anyone, since he felt that the social pressure to be correct hindered his ability to recognise mistakes and change his ideas.

Re: The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

#30

Post by paultopia »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #16

I feel like the author intended for me to leave the article less likely to dig my heels in when acting as an expert and more likely to maintain a flexible worldview when making predictions in a scenario where there are a variety of well developed and contradicting predictive theories. And that's probably a good sentiment. But I think it's important to recognize that foxes outperform hedgehogs only in scenarios where…

This is a truly nice point.
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