The Silent Majority of Experts • Hacker News Board

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#31

Post by groups » Tue, Jan 07, 2014, 7:13 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #15

There's some sort of point about experts in general which I am not sure exactly how to articulate but I think is relevant. I'm going to try to klutz through it anyway. There are lots of fields where fundamental theories are relatively weak or have poor predictive powers. Macroeconomics, climatology, nutrition etc. Basically, we don't have real Knowledge. We have a bunch of data and a bunch of theories. Some of the th…

Aristotle said that the rhetorician is a rhetorician not because he absolutely can convince someone of something, but because he is aware of all the means of persuasion.

likewise, there's no guarantee that a doctor can heal /you/. but you go to the doctor because he is aware of the various means of achieving health. this is different from evolutionary biology, where firm predictions can be relied on.

same goes for lawyers; they can't guarantee a victory, but they are aware of all the methods in the courtroom. These are professions and fields of study whose variables are humans. i agree with the parent commentor that the distinction is worth investigating.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#32

Post by dllthomas » Tue, Jan 07, 2014, 7:38 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #24

xmonkee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so what? I think his target audience here is the {PHP,Java,C++,etc}-sucks crowd. Don't believe you know the global consensus on any technology just because the vocal minority (places like HN) seem to have a consensus. He even closes the article with the following: > Your time may better spent getting in there and trying things rather than reading about what other people think.

> He even closes the article with the following: > >> Your time may better spent getting in there and trying things rather than reading about what other people think. But collectively, those people have spent a lot more time on the technologies, in many more situations, than I have used them or am likely to use them. How am I better off ignoring them and throwing away data ? How does listening to them make me worse o…

The passage you quote doesn't say "worse than random noise", it says "worse than trying it out". I'm not sure that's true but it is a substantially weaker claim.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#33

Post by shadowfox » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 12:54 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #29

nostrademons wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the non-expert bias online is systematic. Time spent participating online is time not spent honing your craft, and so there should be a strong inverse correlation between posting frequency and expertise. There are real, pragmatic ways to correct for this bias and get more useful information out of online forums, too. For example: 1.) Look for people who have a solid, independently-verifiable track record who are…

> Time spent participating online is time not spent honing your craft, and so there should be a strong inverse correlation between posting frequency and expertise. I disagree. Many people (including myself) have observed that qui docet discit , and there is little better way to teach yourself than to discuss and debate and work with other people. This eliminates your claimed strong inverse correlation, and the rest o…

> there is little better way to teach yourself than to discuss and debate and work with other people

Not the OP. But I know a decent number of people of the sort he mentions. These people do actually discuss and debate stuff with other people, but often in person or in rather specialized forums. They don't have a solid presence online and almost never show up in general forums.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#34

Post by gwern » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 2:32 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #30

gwern wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it tells you that the more vocal people are usually full of BS How's that? All the more vocal people tell you is that they're... more vocal. Where is the evidence that the more vocal people are correlated with systematically being wrong in a predictable and correctable way? > you should take notice of what the silent experts and does-of-stuff practice. And how do you do that when they are silent? > Who said…

> All the more vocal people tell you is that they're... more vocal. Where is the evidence that the more vocal people are correlated with systematically being wrong in a predictable and correctable way? I'm sorry, if you want a verifiable proof with papers and references I don't have one for you. A lot of things in life don't have such proofs. But my empirical experience has been that tons of people with no idea what…

> I'm sorry, if you want a verifiable proof with papers and references I don't have one for you. A lot of things in life don't have such proofs. But my empirical experience has been that tons of people with no idea what they are doing are ranting on blogs and tutorials and such, where hardcore programmers I know are silently getting far more impressive shit done.

I hope the irony here is not being lost on you.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#35

Post by coldtea » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 4:53 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #34

coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the more vocal people tell you is that they're... more vocal. Where is the evidence that the more vocal people are correlated with systematically being wrong in a predictable and correctable way? I'm sorry, if you want a verifiable proof with papers and references I don't have one for you. A lot of things in life don't have such proofs. But my empirical experience has been that tons of people with no idea what…

> I'm sorry, if you want a verifiable proof with papers and references I don't have one for you. A lot of things in life don't have such proofs. But my empirical experience has been that tons of people with no idea what they are doing are ranting on blogs and tutorials and such, where hardcore programmers I know are silently getting far more impressive shit done. I hope the irony here is not being lost on you.

More like self-knowledge -- those "silent" people are making far more impressive shit done than _I_ do too.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#36

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 8:45 AM UTC

joshuahedlund wrote: post #26

netcan wrote: post #15

There's some sort of point about experts in general which I am not sure exactly how to articulate but I think is relevant. I'm going to try to klutz through it anyway. There are lots of fields where fundamental theories are relatively weak or have poor predictive powers. Macroeconomics, climatology, nutrition etc. Basically, we don't have real Knowledge. We have a bunch of data and a bunch of theories. Some of the th…

I think you are referring (at least partially) to something called the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], where people who know less about something tend to express more certainty about what they know (and thus tend to get more attention as well) than people who actually know more about it [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I think the grandparent poster is referring to something subtly different. It's not that people making the bold pronouncements are incompetent, it's that they may be competent but are not quite as competent as other folks who stay silent, and they're okay with that. Oftentimes an "expert" knows more than the person they are explaining things to - it's just that they may know less than someone else who doesn't bother to explain things.

Somewhat relatedly - there's another phenomena where people may be quite aware of the limits of their knowledge, but deliberately choose to hide it to achieve some objective (usually personal gain, but it could also be in service of some organization or mission), because they know that their audience is more likely to believe confident people. You pretty much have to do this to found a startup, because all startups are inherently risky and uncertain and yet few people will follow you if you seem uncertain.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#37

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 8:50 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #14

barrkel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Availability heuristic. I think your perspective may be warped by two things: not having worked with excellent engineers in person, and only considering relatively famous devs in your set of people who "participate online" - e.g. you're excluding the denizens of the last 80% of pages on StackOverflow. One of the most capable engineers I've ever worked with is a guy called Yooichi Tagawa. The guy has an incredible app…

"Availability heuristic." It's certainly possible. And there are definitely a great many devs who don't participate online but are brilliant, don't get me wrong. But I still think the average person who does participate online is better than the average person who doesn't . In retrospect, what bothered me was the implication that participating online is detrimental, when I think it's just the opposite, if for no othe…

I think I'd probably agree that the average person who participates online is more skilled than the average person who doesn't. Participating online exposes you to other perspectives and lets you test your experiences against others, after all.

And I wouldn't say that participating online is detrimental. However, I stand by my contention that participating online is not the most effective use of your time if you want to become a better programmer. Programming is. It is a more effective use of time than, say, watching TV (which a fair number of average devs would do), but the information density you learn from grappling with a real problem and trying to solve it with software far exceeds the information density available in blogs and Hacker News comments.

Re: The Silent Majority of Experts

#38

Post by partomniscient » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 12:37 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #36

joshuahedlund wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring (at least partially) to something called the Dunning-Kruger effect[1], where people who know less about something tend to express more certainty about what they know (and thus tend to get more attention as well) than people who actually know more about it [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I think the grandparent poster is referring to something subtly different. It's not that people making the bold pronouncements are incompetent, it's that they may be competent but are not quite as competent as other folks who stay silent, and they're okay with that . Oftentimes an "expert" knows more than the person they are explaining things to - it's just that they may know less than someone else who doesn't bother…

I think risk is extremely pertinent to this situation.

The (relative) silent expert to those more audibly expressing/pronouncing is also considering the outcomes of releasing information that is highly likely to be correct, and what may come of that information becoming public.

They also take into account the scenario where they may be wrong or only partly correct, and if so what are the long term problems that may result in being wrong (or even in being right - take the heliocentric model of the universe for example). Therefore they may deem the risk too high.

We're still finding out what a search engine monetised via advertising does to the world.