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The silent majority of experts (2012)

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Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#91

Post by clairity »

samstave wrote: post #84
planarhobbit wrote: post #2

> Yes, there are many people who blog and otherwise publicly discuss development methodologies and what they're working on, but there are even more people who don't. Blogging takes time, for example, and not everyone enjoys it. Other people are working on commercial products and can't divulge the inner workings of their code. There’s a subset of this silent majority who tried to contribute to discussion platforms but…

I know a number of "secret experts" -- one of which has been a good friend of mine for more than 20 years. He is an expert you have never heard of, but you have interacted with his efforts in everything from VoIP, streaming, ads, all sorts of stuff... He is a cowboy from texas with a stereotypical texas accent, looks like he works at a gas station, but can look at a PCB, take the labels of the chips on the board and…

i grew up in the south but lived on the east and west coasts as an adult. my experience is that intelligence and aptitude are more evenly distributed than insecure city slickers would love to believe. there are homeless people in LA who can rejigger electric scooters for free rides in 2 minutes flat, and they didn't watch youtube to figure it out.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#92

Post by insightcheck »

clairity wrote: post #88
insightcheck wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear in hindsight, but a high school student with little life experience who sees a long text post with hundreds of upvotes and a couple awards can be an easy mark. It's especially difficult because there is actually good advice mixed with the bad and unsubstantiated. I've taken good advice from certain comments (e.g. that led to the discovery of open courseware and actually quality resources on physical exerci…

> "To answer quick questions, I try to search for articles from reputable newspapers first (to see if a verified expert interviewed by a journalist is quoted at length)..." you just failed your own test. "reputable" and "expert" indicate you're offloading evaluation to others rather than doing the hard work yourself of discerning the validity or plausibility of those claims.

Sure, but there's not enough time to be an expert at everything. Let's say I want to better understand how worried I should be about the US economy.

I could study economics textbooks, take online courses, and get a part-time degree in economics over hundreds of hours, read economics papers from journals and the NBER (and equivalent institutions), develop a reputation and a network of experts, and then develop my own analysis and debate with these experts.

Alternatively, I could accept that I'm a non-expert for this particular domain, read some in-depth analyses in the Financial Times (a better source than Reddit), realize I should be cautious and save more, and move on with my life.

If the subject is more important, e.g. I want to work on a months-long project that requires an understanding of a specific economic concept, it would be useful to search for reputable books related to that topic and then study them.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#93

Post by bluGill »

mmcgaha wrote: post #28
bombcar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of the reason the self-help and diet book section is so large; people love the idea that they can get what they want with one weird trick; but the reality is it's not very complicated, it's just hard .

Sometimes there really is a "one weird trick" that can help people. I used to get stuck on problems and it would cripple my productivity. A programmer with two decades more experience than me noticed what I was doing and gave me the best advice of my career. If you are interested in the solution, you can signup for my . . . Seriously though the answer was to just do something else. Don't sit around thinking about the…

Even if there is more than one trick, all you can really apply at once is one. So best to look for a trick that seems like it should work and make it a habit. If that still isn't enough, then look for another. Sometimes you need to break a bad habit that results from this, but often it is many good habits combined that you need.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#94

Post by nathias »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #18
nathias wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit is a system where a guy with 100 IQ decides what is best for all, it isn't that suprising that it doesn't work well for anything more complex or nouanced

Where 100 guys with 100 IQ decide what is best for all, which may or may not be better than one guy with 120.

For contexts that can be exploited to benefit the one guy at the expense of other for sure. For contexts where there is no downside it depends, its good for broad research, bad for in depth content. The problem is there are hardly any places for the latter type of content anymore, because reddit took over with its subreddits that seem good fit for nieches and the price wasn't apparent in advance ...

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#95

Post by nathias »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #17
nathias wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit is a system where a guy with 100 IQ decides what is best for all, it isn't that suprising that it doesn't work well for anything more complex or nouanced

I have to wonder whether the average IQ on reddit is higher or lower than the general population average, because based on my experience there, I could see arguments for either direction.

I'm sure its average, but the self-reported IQ might be way higher ...

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#96

Post by clairity »

insightcheck wrote: post #92
clairity wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "To answer quick questions, I try to search for articles from reputable newspapers first (to see if a verified expert interviewed by a journalist is quoted at length)..." you just failed your own test. "reputable" and "expert" indicate you're offloading evaluation to others rather than doing the hard work yourself of discerning the validity or plausibility of those claims.

Sure, but there's not enough time to be an expert at everything. Let's say I want to better understand how worried I should be about the US economy. I could study economics textbooks, take online courses, and get a part-time degree in economics over hundreds of hours, read economics papers from journals and the NBER (and equivalent institutions), develop a reputation and a network of experts, and then develop my own…

the point is that those aren't "experts", but rather, reporters with differing motivations.

don't look for experts, look for arguments you can verify through your own experience and validate through your own thought experiments. don't reach for immediate judgment, but rather, leave questions open until the evidence is conclusive. the term "expert" is rhetorical at best, and manipulative in most cases. relying on experts is a surefire way to be misled.

as a side note, there's an entire branch of marketing dedicated to using social proof manipulatively.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#97

Post by fleddr »

mathattack wrote: post #24
insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

Yes. Generally people giving advice publicly are in the advice business, not the business on which they are advising. I worked with a Salesperson who got fired for non-performance, who then reinvented themselves as a Sales guru by publicly giving tons of advice. People who are experts in their business (as opposed to being advice folks) tend to give it quietly 1 on 1 to people they trust. It’s a Close Friend game rat…

Kind of like a dating "expert". The only way to become such expert is to date a lot, which means you're not very good at dating in the first place. That is, if we assume that the point of dating is to efficiently find somebody for a long term relationship.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#98

Post by charlie0 »

I've heard about this before. The very very best are people you've never heard of. Why?

Because they spend nearly all their mental resources on perfecting their craft, not writing blogs or marketing themselves online (which is an entirely different skillset). Not to say that there aren't very good people who also write blogs or give talks on certain subjects. Just thinking about it from first principles. All things being equal, those that give 100% in one thing will edge out someone who split spent 90%/10% blogging/marketing on that same topic.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#99

Post by Uehreka »

hbn wrote: post #34
mathattack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Generally people giving advice publicly are in the advice business, not the business on which they are advising. I worked with a Salesperson who got fired for non-performance, who then reinvented themselves as a Sales guru by publicly giving tons of advice. People who are experts in their business (as opposed to being advice folks) tend to give it quietly 1 on 1 to people they trust. It’s a Close Friend game rat…

"Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach."

As a former teacher who is currently by all accounts a fairly capable software developer, this saying drives me up a wall.

I took 2 years out of my life to work for almost nothing so I could share my love of math and programming with the next generation. That I eventually gave in and moved into software engineering to make money says far more about my lack of altruism than my competence then or now.

But forget me, I taught in a cushy city post, I know some people in the peace corps (I taught abroad) who are still in the game, teaching math and English out in the sticks, sometimes having to build or maintain their own school buildings and learning the local language with no assistance. The idea that the defining trait of teachers is a lack of competence is laughable.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#100

Post by annyeonghada »

pvarangot wrote: post #65
peterangular wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my pe…

I tell myself it's the difference between starting adulthood at 14 or whenever your family fails you, and starting it at 24 or 26 after college. The extra years of "streetwise" usually come at an expense of early onset of burnout, for various reasons. Leaving your shell with the energy to take over the world at 26 usually results in more productive endeavors than when you are a teenager.

>The extra years of "streetwise" usually come at an expense of early onset of burnout

I almost cried reading this sentence. I've never realized how my precocious adulting wasn't healthy: every adult compliments you about how "mature" and "responsible" you are. You're actually just anxious because you paternal responsibility on yourself: I had to basically raise myself. The cost of this "independence" has been that, at 27 I feel like a 50 years old with multiple regrets: as a simple, non threatening example, I watched an anime episode or played a video game for the first time as a 25 years old. I've never learned how to relax, or how to have faith in the future for that matter. And it hasn't been positive: life is becoming more and more heavy on my shoulders.

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