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Experts from a world that no longer exists

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Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#31

Post by brabel »

IncRnd wrote: post #29
brabel wrote: post #25

This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed and advice that was good in their own "time" is no longer good... however, that's an obvious remark: as another commenter pointed out, people almost always tend to think "this time it will be different" and choose to ignore the experts... I would say more usef…

You missed about half the article. There was this part (along with lots of examples), "Some expertise is timeless. A few behaviors always repeat. They’re often the most important things to pay attention to."

I didn't miss it, just ignored it because no one, not even the experts, konw which part of their expertise is "timeless" and which isn't (otherwise the problem wouldn't exist in the first place).

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#32

Post by 2sk21 »

dougabug wrote: post #2

This article is uncannily apropos for HN. The spectrum of opinions towards emerging technologies is so starkly colored by the eras during which practitioners did their primary work. It reminds me of the Heinlein quote from “A Door into Summer”, “When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”

I was thinking about this in the context of large transformer based language models like GPT-3. Based on my years of experience in the field, I keep thinking that this is a dead-end on the path to full AI but I have to force myself to keep an open mind and to not to fall into that trap.

Incidentally, Morgan Housel, the author of this essay is a very good financial writer - worth reading his other essays too.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#33

Post by jonplackett »

nickdothutton wrote: post #23

What I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t know. I wrote a little about it here: “Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignificant…

I read a while back that scientific ideas usually take about 50 years to be accepted. Which means essentially that they never are accepted, the people who disagree with them just die and the next generation embrace them. Einstein pretty much hated quantum mechanics and ended up making a bunch of discoveries while making every effort to disprove it.

So if that’s how scientists do it - who should be the most amenable profession to new information and ideas, what chance do the rest of us have?

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#34

Post by 2sk21 »

kingcharles wrote: post #30

This quote made me feel better: "Some of the biggest businesses of the last 10 years are all in industries that were the starkest examples of stupidity 20 years ago." I'm still a little bitter from VC experiences 20 years ago. In 1998 my friends and I built a browser-based (Java applet) collaborative word processor and spreadsheet called Office Wherever (o-w.com). We shopped it to a dozen VCs and all went ROFLMAOWTFB…

I feel you. When I was working in IBM research, I developed a web-based tool eerily close to Jupyter in 2007 but was simply unable to get traction within the company and abandoned the work by the end of the year. I still regret not pushing forward with it to this day.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#35

Post by jameshart »

dwiel wrote: post #27
smitty1e wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZeroHedge has predicted 83 of the last 7 downturns.

I follow ZeroHedge, but this statistic isn't very helpful without knowing the number of false positives or incorrect timing.

At the risk of explaining the joke...

"predicted 83 of the last 7 downturns" implies a false positive rate of at least 76 incorrect predictions for 7 correct ones.

Of course, if they made 83 downturn predictions but didn't correctly predict the 7 that actually occurred, thee false positive rate could also be worse than that.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#36

Post by efitz »

brabel wrote: post #25

This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed and advice that was good in their own "time" is no longer good... however, that's an obvious remark: as another commenter pointed out, people almost always tend to think "this time it will be different" and choose to ignore the experts... I would say more usef…

And what if the opportunity cost lost retrying something that didn’t work over and over? Maybe it will eventually succeed but what else could have happened with the same effort?

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#37

Post by raziel2701 »

nickdothutton wrote: post #23

What I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t know. I wrote a little about it here: “Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignificant…

I went through grad school and I saw how change comes about one funeral at a time. A big shot professor that has made their name with their pet theory/work will fiercely defend it against competing ideas, and people will defer to their expertise. It's not scientific, it's egotistic. They are a wall against progress that gets removed upon death. These professors can also create a dogma through their students who also all rely on the continued success of their theory for their employment. The incentives are misaligned against accepting new theories if it means someone will lose prestige.

This article resonated strongly with me.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#38

Post by raziel2701 »

jonplackett wrote: post #33
nickdothutton wrote: post #23

What I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t know. I wrote a little about it here: “Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignificant…

I read a while back that scientific ideas usually take about 50 years to be accepted. Which means essentially that they never are accepted, the people who disagree with them just die and the next generation embrace them. Einstein pretty much hated quantum mechanics and ended up making a bunch of discoveries while making every effort to disprove it. So if that’s how scientists do it - who should be the most amenable p…

I think the new ideas get accepted when either the old guard die, and/or an undeniable technology gets created by use of the new idea.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#40

Post by ghaff »

IncRnd wrote: post #29
brabel wrote: post #25

This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed and advice that was good in their own "time" is no longer good... however, that's an obvious remark: as another commenter pointed out, people almost always tend to think "this time it will be different" and choose to ignore the experts... I would say more usef…

You missed about half the article. There was this part (along with lots of examples), "Some expertise is timeless. A few behaviors always repeat. They’re often the most important things to pay attention to."

I'm not sure it's so much about timelesss expertise (Although that exists as well). Rather, the advice is probably something along the lines that when experts tell you that some form of the thing you're doing has been tried half-a-dozen times in the past and has failed--it probably will fail this time too. However, sometimes the difference from what was done in the past is sufficient to make it work this time. Or the surrounding technology ecosystem is qualitatively different. So it's worth considering what it is in today's environment that would invalidate the expert opinion.
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