Ability to see expertise is a milestone worth aiming for (2022)

Post by Swizec » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

shadowsun7 wrote: post #67

Author here. Previous time this was on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930985 As an update, I temporarily relocated to a different city and spent four months training Judo for five hours every day and have since reached the vocab point for the sport. That experiment was covered here: https://commoncog.com/expertise-acceleration-experiment-judo... and https://commoncog.com/mental-strength-judo-l…

Post by thesumofall » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:47 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #37

thesumofall wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is this really the point of the article? The article argues that it is difficult to identify expertise. However, the situation you describe is one where (if I read you correctly) not your expertise was questioned but your recommendation. If there wasn’t any tangible difference between the CTO’s and your suggested course of action on a metric that he as a customer cared about, then maybe his proposal was indeed th…

I'm finding this entire line of discussion incredibly curious because not only does it confirm my original argument and the that of the article, but it hammers the point home. Everything you've just said is gibberish to a master. It's like making a straight-faced argument that setting the speed limit to 1 mph on a motorway might make perfect sense, and the traffic engineer is actually at fault for not making it clear…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #81

krisoft wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see zero problem with having no children and studying evolution. You don’t need to become superconductive to study the physics of superconductivity. You don’t need to become infected by every virus to study virology, and you definietly don’t need to be a virus to be a good virologist. So why would you need to pass on your genes to study evolution?

// So why would you need to pass on your genes to study evolution? You can study whatever you want, I am questioning if you can be considered "expert" if you profoundly fail at the topic of your field.

Post by ubermonkey » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #80

selykg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as the economist. I suspect he understands that they're theories, thus, to some extent guesses. Some data might support it, but does it hold true in every case? Probably not. Does it hold true in most cases? Maybe not. Would he bet money, effectively what a hedge fund does in my very limited experience here? Sounds like no. This to me sounds like a simple example of he understands the limitations of his work!…

Yup, your explanation resonates with what I think are the superficial reasons society is accepting of both of these cases. You have to think a little bit deeper to feel why this might be problematic. If the economist weighs the risk to not put too much stock in these theories (no pun intended actually), why does he not likewise hesitate to teach these theories to his students? Like "I don't believe 100% that this is…

Post by dustingetz » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

3abiton wrote: post #26

fidotron wrote: post #11

There is clearly a major problem with this in SV. A lot of people seem to confuse confidence with expertise, and fail to grasp that a scary proportion of the time the individual is so confident because they don’t understand the problems with what they are doing. Furthermore, modern software management practice doesn’t want this because it wants replaceable cogs. If you can recognize expertise you have to appreciate t…

Dunning-kruger strikes again