Ability to see expertise is a milestone worth aiming for (2022) • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

yohannesk wrote: post #56

jiggawatts wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I were to guess, I would say an average 4th grader knows the difference between nano, milli or micro seconds. Understanding the magnitude might not be the problem for the CTO. But why should the CTO care? How does it translate to his business requirements? That's your job to explain, no?

> If I were to guess, I would say an average 4th grader knows the difference between nano, milli or micro seconds.

Have you ever spent any significant time in an environment where most people are not (children of) college graduates? Because this is absurd. The average person who has just finished a year of high school physics probably can’t tell you those.

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

#102

Post by kritiko » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

yobbo wrote: post #97

yohannesk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What real life project only involves experts on specific field? Are you working on toy problems? Isn't there cost/benefit analysis to everything? If I understand something well, I can explain it to non-experts in understandable way. If I can't, then I probably lack full grasp of the topic

> I can explain it to non-experts in understandable way Ok? But you are required to motivate a decision that is based on terms, conditions, probabilities, consequences that can only be encoded at knowledge-level A. When projected down to knowledge-level C, it sounds like "otherwise bad things might happen". The jargon is not what matters. The logic of the decision is not meaningful or believable without knowledge of…

Nuclear risk is about the reaction to somebody using a nuclear weapon, not the bomb itself being bad.

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

#103

Post by nerdchum » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #71

Not directly related to the article but I had two amusing encounters with expertise recently. I sat next to an Econ professor (at an Ivy) on a flight. I told him I had worked at a hedge fund, and he was like "wow, I could never put myself in a situation where my living depended on my economic theories being right." A good friend of mine is a kinda-famous evolutionary biologist. He's in his mid-40s now, unmarried and…

Maybe the evolutionary biologist is so next level that they want humans to die out so other animals evolve.

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

#104

Post by hiatus » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #94

xyzelement wrote: post #71

Not directly related to the article but I had two amusing encounters with expertise recently. I sat next to an Econ professor (at an Ivy) on a flight. I told him I had worked at a hedge fund, and he was like "wow, I could never put myself in a situation where my living depended on my economic theories being right." A good friend of mine is a kinda-famous evolutionary biologist. He's in his mid-40s now, unmarried and…

I'd venture the difference is being a professor vs. a practitioner. To profess is to talk and teach and expand the opportunities of the discipline by lodging the ideas in peoples minds. A practitioner is someone who actually does something, but it doesn't really scale much past their own ability to physically do it. They have a practice. One plants, the other harvests. Such a good question to pose though.

> One plants, the other harvests.

This sentiment was so elegantly expressed and struck a chord. Thank you for that.

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

#105

Post by detourdog » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

joshuaissac wrote: post #30

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If two nearly identical wallets (very minor, but noticeable differences) are placed on a counter and one is significantly more expensive... how would you expect those wallets to sell? I would expect both of them to sell out. The people looking for a higher quality product will immediately go for the more expensive product, and the remaining wallets would sell to people who just need a wallet.

> The people looking for a higher quality product will immediately go for the more expensive product It is more complicated than that. There is no guarantee that the more expensive wallet is also the higher-quality product. The people looking for a higher-quality product can be classified into those who can measure the quality well (perhaps by observing those minor differences), and those who have to use less effecti…

This day and age we can make our own inflation. We are all free to pay as much or as little for wallet as we would like. So we all shop by price, quality, or availability.

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

#106

Post by digging » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:37 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…

Just stop pushing these theories. You're way off.

> I don't believe 100% that this is how the world works enough to bet my own money, but I am going to tell hundreds of students every year this is how the world works

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a good professor does. If the economist acts in this way, they have failed as a teacher, not as an expert in economics. Likewise I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of economics as a science - it's not one, and it sounds like the economist was making a quip at the predictive weakness of the field overall.

> The biologist story is subtler.

No, it's not. You're just having to push harder to keep it afloat.

> One could argue that failure to become a parent signals that you deeply, fundamentally, don't get biology

One would be wildly wrong to make that argument. Once again, I think this shows a deep lack of understanding on your part of the field itself and what it means to study a field. And also what it means to have a child as a human, honestly.

> economists and biologists vs financial advisors and engineers is that we expect the later to have skin in the game but for some reason allow the former to not have to

Is this not obvious? You're reaching very hard to dig at researchers in a way that indicates you don't know what research actually is. Or maybe you're defensive of the work you do? I shouldn't speculate too hard here or I risk also being this wrong.

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

#107

Post by blackbear_ » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #61

I understand the intent, but this article seems to be arguing for an Emperor's New Clothes scenario where no one can identify the value of something except for a vanishingly small number of people. It's some economic variant of the tree falling in the forest analogy: if a service has quality but no one can recognize it does it have value? It strikes me as a recipe for regulatory capture and overcredentialing. Value u…

> Value ultimately lies in the purchaser, not the producer.

I'm not entirely convinced that this holds, in practice. It makes sense for rational purchasers with perfect and complete information, but that is never true in reality, and it ignored all cognitive biases that humans use to make decisions, including being misled by advertisment.

For example, the tobacco industry can scream all they want that smoking does not cause cancer, but being loud about it does not make it true. Initially, people didn't even like smoking because of the bad taste, but massive advertising campaigns including paying celebrities to smoke in public changed the perception of the value of smoking. In a similar manner, after acquiring all major sources of diamonds and inflating their prices, advertisement convinced the public that a man absolutely needs a ring with a diamond to "prove" their love to their bride. Same for the food industry and sugar, you know where I am going.

All of these are examples of "value" created by producers by misleading customers that their product is good and not harmful for them. But facts don't become true or false just because everybody believes in them. People can believe false things, and no matter what they do or say, those things remain false.

Not to mention that immediate value for individuals can have considerable negative value in the long-term for society. Think at the huge resources we spend on finding cures for cancer and obesity, just because we sell addictive stuff and pretend that people "want" those. If you consider society as a whole, this appears to be an extremely inefficient use of resources.

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

#108

Post by digging » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #82

nouveaux wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the economist, he may have the best theories but it doesn't mean it's correct. He is likely saying his theories have too much uncertainties. In the case of the evolutionary biologist, successful procreation does not require any knowledge of biology. When it comes to planes, there is a high correlation between the quality of the plane and the quality of the design.

// successful procreation does not require any knowledge of biology. Maybe this is a good point. I would argue that a high school kid who knocks up his girlfriend has demonstrated a better intuitive grasp of biology than my PhD friend.

> a better intuitive grasp of biology

Not even a little. The high school students are slaves to unconscious drives in their bodies and that's not even related to having an understanding of biology. Or do you say that a world expert in biology who would rather spend their time furthering studies than raising a child actually knows less about biology than rabbits? Your arguments aren't making any sense.

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

#109

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:44 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.

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by xyzt » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 2:46 PM UTC

for me, path to expertise is knowing the "language", "practicing maturity," and system 1 mastery of a topic.

i think expertise is "mastery of system 1(ref Daniel Kahneman) of a topic." which means identifying more "patterns" through "practice and observation." the patterns capture both the rights and the wrongs.

the entry to any subject is "learning the language" of the subject. what comes next is to become "mature." maturity is based on amount of practice in a big and unbiased search space, the ability to play with subject and identifying primitive constructs, ability to criticize and seeing the weaknesses,

the measuring method for maturity level is amount of "simplicity," "freedom", "flexibility", "speed", and "ability to identify the essence" that the system one adheres to bring.

excerpt from Saunders Mac Lane "category theory for working mathematician." "many properties of mathematical construction can be identified using universal mapping properties." see how simple the definition is?