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The Death Of Expertise

thefederalist.com

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Re: The Death Of Expertise

#141

Post by ds9 »

blumkvist wrote: post #66
EvanMiller wrote: post #18

I think what the author misses is the large institutional structure that restricts the supply of experts and (as a result) enhances their prestige. These days, with the growing availability of technical information, existing systems of licensure, credentialing, and professionalization are breeding resentment on both sides of the lectern. The author's focus in the article is on the layman's resentment for the expert.…

I think this article is about laymen's tendency to overestimate their own knowledge of a particular subject (typically every subject), thus resisting the opinion of people with formal (or non) authority. I, for one, share the author's view on this phenomenon. In my opinion it is a wide spread issue, maybe even pandemic in proportions. When was the last time you heard somebody not having an opinion on a particular sub…

It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, mentioned and linked by the author. Basically, the less expertise, the more tendency to overestimate one's own knowledge and the worse the ability to accurately identify real experts.

However, there is also a problem of misapplication of D-K. It is not always true (like all generalizations, it fails to give any sound basis for assessment of any particular individual); and it can be a pretext for smuggling other premises.

To try to explain the latter as briefly as possible, suppose there is a consensus of experts on proposition P, and critics C dispute P; then a speaker or writer denounces the criticism as an illustration of D-K, but maybe C are critiquing on the basis of some claim that is not refutable by the proponents' expertise - maybe that they have a conflict of interest, or are talking outside their area or expertise.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#142

Post by mturmon »

na85 wrote: post #70
Niten wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies, but you're displaying precisely the kind of aggressive and arrogant ignorance that this article highlights. You trust Bruce Schneier because he's a popular figure. You said it yourself: "Tom Nichols is a nobody" due to a fatal lack of PageRank not helped by a non-unique name. While I admire Schneier greatly and am thankful that there is somebody like him working to popularize cryptography, computer securit…

Bruce Schneier is more than a celebrity (though I did use him as an example because he's somewhat famous). He consults for Congress and is the author of multiple widely-used cryptographic algorithms (thinking here of Blow/twofish). He's an expert who also happens to be a celebrity, but I can still cite him as an expert without conflating the two. >there are countless others equally or better qualified to speak out on…

For chrissakes, you did not even carefully read the article, or you would have seen the paragraph @Niten linked. Bonus: there is another anecdote about his government service in the text of the article.

If you are not willing to read the article in which the author demonstrates his credibility, you have no standing to complain about it.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#143

Post by mturmon »

jcape wrote: post #105
Niten wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies, but you're displaying precisely the kind of aggressive and arrogant ignorance that this article highlights. You trust Bruce Schneier because he's a popular figure. You said it yourself: "Tom Nichols is a nobody" due to a fatal lack of PageRank not helped by a non-unique name. While I admire Schneier greatly and am thankful that there is somebody like him working to popularize cryptography, computer securit…

...and here is Mr. Nichols explaining why even if Iraq did eliminate it's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction in 2003, the U.S. would've been right to invade because Saddam had been lying (about WMDs) and willing to invade his neighbors for so long: http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/journal/17_1/rou... Given that Iraq was a belligerent in both the Iran-Iraq war and Kuwaiti invasion, that's reasonable…

Excellent find, and part of why people can't always trust experts.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#144

Post by socialist_coder »

This just screams out at me "Fox News"!. The only way they can push their normally brain dead agenda as hard as they do is to ignore mounds of literature and opinions from the scientific, intellectual, and other subject matter experts on the basis of "opinions" and "freedom of speech". If 99% of people with actual knowledge of the issue disagree, not to worry, 99% of the fox news viewership does agree so obviously the experts are wrong.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#145

Post by rapala »

turbojerry wrote: post #132

I'll start with the articles bullet points - 1. We can all stipulate: the expert isn’t always right. All humans are fallible, including "experts", such as Albert Einstein, who famously rejected Quantum Mechanics. 2. But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn’t engender insecurity or anxiety to think that an expert’s view is likely to be…

> Do I need to know the 12 Astrological Houses to reject astrology? Do I need to know the King James Bible to reject Christianity? Do I need to know Mein Kampf to reject Nazism? Do I need to know the Talmud to reject Zionism?

Well, that is the catch. You don't need to know anything to reject something. But to argue against something, to have a discussion, requires you to know what you are arguing against. But things like Christianity and Nazism are poor examples. Christianity is not factual, it's personal and spiritual, unless you want to talk about theology. And about Nazism I know too much.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#146

Post by ds9 »

The most egregious flaw in this guy's argument is that, contrary to his disclaimer about not advocating a technocracy, he's deceptively arguing that people should trust experts beyond their respective areas of expertise.

To see this, consider some points that should not be controversial:

1. Experts, properly identified, have much more factual knowledge in their respective fields than others who are laypeople in relation to those fields (the only thing the author gets right).

2. Being an expert in facts related to a particular topic does not mean that the person is truthful, benevolent, unbiased, or candid with the public; nor that his/her intentions, goals or ideology align with those of anyone who is asked to "trust" the expert.

3. Expertise makes one better qualified than others to make value judgments, only to the extent that the value judgments depend closely on factual issues. In other words, if A and B agree that X is a good policy if proposition P is true, but a bad policy if P is false, then the expert in the intellectual area covering P is better qualified to decide the right conclusion - but if A or B claims that X is a good or bad policy for reasons unrelated to P, then that expertise is irrelevant, and a false basis for following the expert's recommendation.

Keeping these points in mind, there is no such thing as an expert in "public policy". Someone may be an expert in factual issues that are considered relevant to policies, but making policy decisions intrinsically and pervasively involves value judgments and ideologies, regarding ends as well as means, and therefore is not properly conceived as a realm of expertise comparable to, say, bridge design, reducing infectious disease or conducting accurate polls.

Thus, for example, on views like the author's, if you can't recite the statistics about gun-involved deaths and injuries, you're unqualified to have an opinion on gun laws - but this is a gross fallacy unless you've agreed in advance that the right policy depends on those stats. But the latter is a value judgment, not a matter of expertise.

In this way he tries to parlay a sort of snobbery about expertise (he's obviously very proud of having been consulted by political leaders) into something like "you're anti-rational unless you shut up and obey". A real expert who's worthy of trust will instead present the facts, as well as possible to a lay audience, including the likely consequences of policy choices, and then defer to the public and a democratic process for decisions.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#147

Post by shanusmagnus »

msandford wrote: post #111
lliamander wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the fields in which he is an expert have failed to provide sufficiently better predictive power over the judgement of a well-read or experienced layman[1]. I do not mean that as a criticism of the OP; this is merely a consequence of how young "social science" as a science is, and how difficult of a subject matter it attempts to study. The fact that a "2 sigma" level of confidence is considered acc…

Agreed 100%. You should only be considered an expert if you can make expert predictions. In physics or engineering that's damn near trivial; for anything that the layman might want to know I can provide him with quite a good answer. In the social sciences nobody actually KNOWS anything with any degree of certainty. And as for which policy is best, you might be able to give an answer that's good in aggregate or agreea…

I've been thinking about the parent and grandparent comments for the last hour, and the longer I do, the wiser I think they are, as in one fell swoop you get a tangible way to think about what you should be able to expect from experts and their expertise. If you study a topic for twenty years, and even after this twenty years of study you are unable to predict fundamental and crucial phenomena related to that field (a global financial meltdown, say) then your "expertise" is of minimal value, however painfully it was acquired; similarly, if using your wide-ranging armchair internet quarterbacking you're able to do things (predictively; via engineering; whatever) that other people cannot do, then you're as much an expert as could reasonably be hoped for.

While I share the OA's disillusionment with a culture that seems to pride itself on stupidity, and to resent the hell out of expertise as traditionally defined, I think that the instinct can be thought of as a kind of intellectual and memetic antibody that has, for the most part, served this country well. A lot of the things that many of us value (GNU software; Linux; Wikipedia; Apple Computer) owe their existence to people who, by socially normative standards, had 'no business' doing what they were doing in the first place.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#149

Post by pixl97 »

derefr wrote: post #22
pragmar wrote: post #4

I'll gladly defer to an astrophysicist on matters of the universe, a plumber on piping, or a mechanic on auto repair. I think the problem is the field of social sciences is kind of a wasteland. While I can respect the skills and analysis of someone in the field, it's highly nuanced material with plenty of room for debate. I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

But social scientists know that. The astrophysicist, and the plumber, have many hard rules, and because of this, there are many situations where their training will force them to shout "No! Stop!" at something you're doing. Social scientists, by-and-large, don't have very many hard rules... and so they don't often shout "No! Stop!" They are aware, far more than the members of the hard sciences (who are used to most t…

>The most useful thing a person with training in the social sciences can tell you, of which the general population isn't aware, is what you should be less sure of

I'd say that is true for any expert in any complicated field. Almost any engineer will tell you a system made of a few simple components will have a much higher probability of being deterministic then a system of many complex components. Being that social sciences deal with the most complex creatures in existence they should damn well know determining anything with a high rate of probability is near impossible.

Re: The Death Of Expertise

#150

Post by pjc50 »

LaurensBER wrote: post #131
jamessb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that UK fees tripled for academic year 2012-13, becoming £9,000 (almost $15,000) per year.

Do you happen to know why they did this? It seems very unfair to "tax" young people 60,000k. I understand that the UK is also in a crisis and that costs have to be reduced. Income has to be raised but with the job market as it is and an pension system that is unfair for young people this increase seems to be very harsh and unfair.

There is a very strong push from the right in the UK towards a US-style privatized system.

The way the student loan repayments work over a lifetime, this is effectively a 5-10% income tax on middle income people with degrees, but without generating headlines about putting up income tax.

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