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

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#81

Post by chaxor » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:28 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).

This doesn't make any sense. Aging is certainly a problem that needs to be solved, but the idea that you expressed here seems to be that younger people are better at their jobs - which is very wrong.

This line of thinking is akin to "If less of the postmen had diabetes, I would get more of my mail faster!" Don't fall for these ageist logical inconsistencies

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#82

Post by ericjang » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #59

This sounds like a bunch of boring truisms when stated this way, but perhaps a little extra insight can be wrung out by binding this to some more specific claims. There's a corner of the cognitive science literature about iterated learning in a Bayesian framing. A question it asked was roughly, "If we partition a dataset over a sequence of agents who each see only a slice, and we allow each agent to communicate somet…

> So in contexts where one is actually trying to solve the _same problem_ as a group, placing very high weight on the honest information received from previous experts can be critical.

Another "loose attempt to make this argument rigorous" might be to invoke Grim Trigger [1] strategies from repeated PD games. A very large negative weight is placed on "dishonest" behavior across a communication channel (game).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_trigger

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#83

Post by franze » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

I am sometimes called an expert. I strongly focus on things that I or others already tried and did not work. And then hypothesise if the circumstances are the same or similar this time around. Looking for arguments that they haven’t changed (enough).

My track record is ok-ish.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#84

Post by varelse » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

When someone today complains that solar power is still too expensive, or that cell phones and flat screen TVs in the hands of poor people proves they aren't really poor, they immediately flip my Bozo bit. To be fair people who hate nuclear power have always flipped my Bozo bit although they might have done the job delaying its adoption long enough for solar power to become cheaper by now.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#85

Post by ericjang » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #80

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…

From the book of Proverbs (in the Bible): "The wise man gets a lot of advice" (paraphrased). One chapter later: "The fool listens to most of it" (also paraphrased). If you don't have the time to sort it all out, don't listen to all the viewpoints. Society, collectively, is insane - it believes so many contradictory things that could not all possibly be true. You can't listen to society or "they say" as a guide. You'l…

You don't believe in the "wisdom of the crowds" ?

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#86

Post by paulpauper » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:30 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…

This is why eyewitness testimony can be unreliable . People are sure someone said or believed something, or that there is a consensus about something, but this may not be true. Social media can make this worse, particularly by forming false consensuses about issues in which no such consensus may exist.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#87

Post by varelse » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:31 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.

But that's the system we built. Starting in college you're going to spend a decade and a half studying to be a world-class expert researching a topic of your own choosing.

And as soon as you become a professor you stop doing research and start begging for research funding so others can do what you did. And no one sees the problem with this so it continues.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#88

Post by dsizzle » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

This seems to assume that experts' advice can only be valued (or not) as an appeal to authority. But that would ignore that experts can also provide _explanations_: "This won't work because this subsystem would violate the laws of physics" e.g. -- and that explanation might then spur someone to find an equivalent subsystem without that flaw, or perhaps one would find a flaw in the initial reasoning, or whatever.

Similarly, seeing a list of past failures may inspire variations that seek to overcome the shortcoming without having to waste time first reproducing the same failure. One can try to learn _why_ it failed and use that to guide future attempts.

The advice to be wary of experts reminds me of the advice to avoid criticism while brainstorming, the idea in common being that criticism and negativity supposedly stifles creativity. However, it turns out that criticism _enhances_ the brainstorming process https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/should-we-allo... It seems that criticism from expertise could similarly be a boon to future advances.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#89

Post by burnished » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

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 mean.. Einstein did prove himself wrong a bunch he just hated it. Its not like the work was flawed, or not performed. Its hard to find the sort of fault in that you seem to be implying.

Re: Experts from a world that no longer exists

#90

Post by paulpauper » Sat, Nov 20, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

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…

If half the experts say to buy stocks and the other half say to sell, who is right? Aat some point, you have to decide. I have observed this a lot with finance. Listening to the wrong experts would have meant missing out on the biggest bull market ever (2009) or selling during the lows of the 2020 covid crash.