Experts from a world that no longer exists • Hacker News Board

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#61

Post by dougabug » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

2sk21 wrote: post #32

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.

Perhaps this was a cherry picked example on the part of the authors, but the network generating relevant novel images conditioned upon the text prompt “an illustration of a baby daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog” … made me take a (not entirely permanent) break from on ripping on GPT-3.

https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#62

Post by intrasight » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

I did enjoy the article. I forwarded it to some colleagues. I wasn't aware of Ford's rule. But I will say that the rule perhaps only applied in that place and time. I've worked in the nuclear industry, in defense, in aerospace. Not documenting failures in those industries would be a recipe for disaster. Technology is way too complicated today. The man who "either did not know or paid no attention to the previous figures" isn't very likely to help in advanced engineering disciplines. In basic research, I think this man or woman can still make an important contribution.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#63

Post by squiffsquiff » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

Tldr: "society advances one funeral at a time"

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#64

Post by sidlls » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

notreallyserio wrote: post #57

raziel2701 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't help but wonder how much better our governments would operate if the median age of their workers were somewhat lower (IIRC that's around 45).

That's more than a little ageist. Age has little to do with it. I've worked for--and been managed by--thick-headed, egotistical 20-somethings and stodgy older folks alike.

Youth who think they're forging new territory usually aren't, but there are plenty who think they are and have an arrogance about it that is insufferable.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#65

Post by bratwurst3000 » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

FormerBandmate wrote: post #46

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…

This article strikes me as the height of overconfidence tbh. The experts are frequently wrong but they're also usually right, and just blindly ignoring them usually leads to easily avoidable mistakes. You weigh the opinions of experts and then discount them when they're wrong, but only when you're really sure

How come they are very often two experts with opposite opinion? Whoever is right can only be proven by time and mostly by realizing the wrong choice was made.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#66

Post by mnl » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #42

raziel2701 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly the reason why I left academia. Egos competing for space, money or talk-time to defend themselves not the progress of science.

We tend to romanticise it, but in the end it's just another job. It shouldn't, because selling you doing science is not the same as doing science, but on the other hand social expectations are that you must have a job, so what kind of exemption were we hoping for exactly? Once you realise it's ordinary people looking for whatever ordinary people look for anywhere else everything falls into place. Some science gets done regardless, we're talking about professionals here.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#67

Post by dariusj18 » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

notreallyserio wrote: post #57

raziel2701 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't help but wonder how much better our governments would operate if the median age of their workers were somewhat lower (IIRC that's around 45).

Head to Capitol Hill and you'll see that the legislative side of that is much much younger. Though perhaps the age of the legislators skews the average.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#68

Post by jointpdf » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #35

dwiel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s a reference to a 50+ year old economics joke: https://worldin.economist.com/article/17506/edition2020dont-...

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#69

Post by gilleain » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

coffeefirst wrote: post #22

Something I've noticed in the pandemic: there's a pretty big gap between what people remember "the experts" saying vs what, if you listened to one or two qualified professionals and kept them straight, actually said. Individual experts—the good ones at least—seem to hold up pretty well even if they didn't see everything coming. It's the widespread sampling of chyrons and faces that inevitably says everything all of t…

Yes it seems like a combination of magnifying and muddling information.

Say, for example, a cancer researcher makes a statement like "Red wine contains compounds that might protect from some cancers" - not very interesting as news. So it gets magnified to "Red wine CURES cancer".

Next, another expert says "excessive use of alcohol can increases the risk of certain cancers". Of course the news converts this to "Alcohol causes cancer".

Finally, combine these two messages and people quite understanderbly conclude that cancer experts have no idea if alcohol causes or cures cancer.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#70

Post by Mikeb85 » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

gorwell wrote: post #3

There was an amusing example of this yesterday with The Economist saying, `The sharp increase in inflation over the past year has blindsided many economists. Almost no one saw it coming` https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1461651190144503808

Lol everyone saw it coming, but policymakers needed everyone to think it wouldn't come, otherwise the public appetite for Covid measures would have been far less...