The Silent Majority of Experts
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The Silent Majority of Experts
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Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#2But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out?
(The point of knowing about things like publication biases in science is that they are systematic: once you know about publication bias, you know that estimates are on net, higher than they should be, and this is something you can apply to evaluating science that you read.)
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#3One place in which this problem was particularly apparent was (is? I haven't kept up with it for a while) the PHP community. PHP gets a bad rap as a terrible language, but a large part of this was the ease of beginning the learning process with PHP; download [X|W|M]AMPP, spin up an Apache instance, and get just dive in. What this led to was a lot of sub-par instruction material from people who didn't have a solid grounding in design principles, or "tutorials" created from people who had little experience.
Despite this, there were clearly experts who could "finely craft" PHP applications. Although Facebook may not be the best example, it is the first one that comes to mind.
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#4But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out? (The point of knowing about things like publication biases in science is that they are systematic: once you know a…
It's a common argument - "Lots of people use this but don't talk about it! It still matters!". Common Lispers sometimes say that (but we talk a lot. ;-) )
On the other hand, you can't make decisions without data - without discernable activity, it's reasonable to assume a community is dead.
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#5But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out? (The point of knowing about things like publication biases in science is that they are systematic: once you know a…
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 now just starting ventures that need publicity. For example, Marc Andreesen had an absolutely awesome weblog in the ~1 year prior to founding Andreesen-Horowitz, but now his comments are largely limited to snarky one-liners and occasionally insightful one-paragraphers. Why? There's no incentive for him to spread his knowledge around the general public; his firm already has enough of a reputation to draw the top potential founders. The entrepreneurs he funds get his advice, but everybody else has to make due with occasional soundbites.
2.) Look for people who post only brief, offhand comments, but then follow up on those comments and do the research yourself. Many "silent experts" may have time in between compile breaks to throw in a throwaway comment or correction, but they don't have time to write a long missive. However, if you follow-up yourself and do a bit of Googling, you can take their clues and learn what they were talking about. This is how I found out about Haskell, it's how I found out about writing scalable event-driven servers, and it's how I found out about writing multi-language systems where a scripting language is embedded inside a larger program.
3.) Look for people who can see & acknowledge both sides of an issue. Practical experience teaches you about trade-offs, it teaches you about alternatives, and it teaches you that there are often multiple solutions and oftentimes you need to give up some desirable properties to get others. Blog posts by Internet Fanboyz teach you that there is One True Way Of Doing Everything that will solve all your problems, because that is the only way they've ever encountered.
4.) Similarly, look for people who stay out of flamewars. Folks with real jobs who care about their craft don't have time for that shit, because becoming an expert takes a lot of time. So the folks who do have time for that shit are generally either folks without jobs or folks who blow off their jobs to score points on the Internet.
5.) And perhaps most effectively - work directly with an expert. Start contributing to open-source and understand why the maintainers make the choices they do. Take a job at a well-respected company. Work with the gruff neckbeard at your employer. When experienced programmers have to clean up the messes you make, they have a very strong vested interest in not letting you make any messes.
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#6But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out? (The point of knowing about things like publication biases in science is that they are systematic: once you know a…
>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.
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#7The point that resonated the most with me here was that people need to be given big opportunities to fail without prejudgement, otherwise they'll never build their skillset significantly. Obviously nobody is ever hired in a vacuum, but the takeaway for me was:
remember to judge others on their past behaviors, and nothing else.
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#8But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out? (The point of knowing about things like publication biases in science is that they are systematic: once you know a…
>But without any way of correcting for this silent majority, or any sort of predictable systematic tendency, so what? We don't know everything? There's a lot of things we don't know, and on most topics we hear from only a small fraction of people, both expert and otherwise. Why is this worth pointing out?
Because it tells you that the more vocal people are usually full of BS, and you should take notice of what the silent experts and does-of-stuff practice. Who said there's no way of "correcting for this silent majority"?
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#9It's true. I'd label it "indirect knowledge hoarding." But the excuses/reasons are usu. most people are busy or don't feel they'd make good teachers.
There has to be an incentive / prioritization by the person to do something about it. Also, some people don't even think they're experienced enough.
Maybe useful knowledge transfer via teaching or at least reviewing teaching material.
Re: The Silent Majority of Experts
#10We see this in the diving community too, there are a bunch of forums where people have prolific arguments, usually about which agency or brand is best, stuff that has been done to death and barely matters anyway. Whereas if you get off the Internet and go to dive sites you will find a ton of friendly people who have a thousand dives and are happy to share real knowledge, who never bother to go on the forums.