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The Death of Expertise

 
 
 
sharon45 said:
Speakpigeon said:
We can only figure out as we go how to behave in the constantly evolving situation that we ourselves or others creates. We develop new and imaginative technical means to solve difficult problems only to see our enemies use them imaginatively against us. We find impressive solutions only to see people abuse them to create new and intractable problems. It's like driving faster and faster on a winding road.
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That is where wisdom comes in. See, we can come up with all sorts of ideas, but the question always is, should we use them? We came up with the bomb to finish WWII, yet since then, we have been stuck with something that could eventually damage us much further.
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Isn't wisdom really a special kind of expertise?

Still, there's no official title for the wise man. It has to come down to what you do and how you perform over time to be recognised as such, if ever.

But the wise man don't care about being acknowledged as such... :cool:

Not so the expert, usually, right?
EB
 
bigfield said:
I fear we are witnessing the “death of expertise”: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.
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The average person doesn't even get that far. Most people don't listen to opinions based on the expertise of the speaker, but choose their sources based on charisma, platform and social proof. They base their opinions on what they hear via mass media, which in turn is dominated by columnists, DJs and panelists offering their half-baked thoughts on every subject under the sun. People treat these sources as credible simply because they are on; anyone who gets a half page and their portrait in the paper or a two-hour segment in prime-time must be worth listening to, right? When people do decide to seek out more in-depth knowledge on a subject, they frequently choose celebrities ahead of experts. Why buy a nutrition program from a PhD. nutritionist when one can buy a book written by an actress, a reality TV clown, or a guy who has a cute snapchat recipe gimmick? Some people just seem to treat social proof as a valid substitute for critical thinking, as if popular and likeable people are automatically trustworthy.

This is how corrupt politicians with dangerously bad ideas are able to form government, failing markets are able to escape scrutiny, and charlatans write bestsellers. People have no idea why or how they're getting fucked because they can't tell shit from shoe polish, a terrible disability in a world where Sturgeon's law applies to every medium.
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To me it essentially boils down to evolution. We're oriented to be good at making more babies, not solving complex problems, at least insofar as the problems we can solve allow us to make babies. And hey.. it might even be the case that being too good at solving problems makes us less likely to have a large number of kids, and so you know the rest of the story.

I mention this because I think a lot of people get the sense that people should or ought to be more rational. Yes, we wish it to be so, but in reality the composition of the world population literally cannot be that way.

This is an important point to recognise because in it's own way angst over the nature of the masses is also irrational. If life is going to be a thing, and if you are going to be a part of the world we live in, this is the package you get, this is how people have to be.

That said, environmental conditions are still in play, but they're a little more complicated. For people to learn critical thinking skills they need a strong education system behind them, and for a strong education system their region needs a sane culture, and a strong and well-reasoned democracy. At this stage of history these factors barely exist almost anywhere in the world, and accomplishing them flies in the face of many of those in power.
 
rousseau said:
I mention this because I think a lot of people get the sense that people should or ought to be more rational. Yes, we wish it to be so, but in reality the composition of the world population literally cannot be that way.

This is an important point to recognise because in it's own way angst over the nature of the masses is also irrational. If life is going to be a thing, and if you are going to be a part of the world we live in, this is the package you get, this is how people have to be.
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This is how people are but not how people have to be. There's nothing that people have to be except perhaps what they would need to be if they are to survive the next one thousand years. The difficulty is that we don't know what this is. Some people think we need to be rational, or even more rational. Others will see rationality as non-essential compared to our basic instincts.

Personally, I think there's a deeply seated feedback mechanism within the evolution of human species whereby our rationality is really what allows us to keep transforming the world, and to such an extent that, as we are changing the world, we need more rationality just to keep ourselves afloat in it.

The human species won't necessarily disappear if we ever give up on rationality but billions will probably die as a direct result.

So, I guess angst is well justified here.
EB
 
Speakpigeon said:
rousseau said:
I mention this because I think a lot of people get the sense that people should or ought to be more rational. Yes, we wish it to be so, but in reality the composition of the world population literally cannot be that way.

This is an important point to recognise because in it's own way angst over the nature of the masses is also irrational. If life is going to be a thing, and if you are going to be a part of the world we live in, this is the package you get, this is how people have to be.
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This is how people are but not how people have to be. There's nothing that people have to be except perhaps what they would need to be if they are to survive the next one thousand years. The difficulty is that we don't know what this is. Some people think we need to be rational, or even more rational. Others will see rationality as non-essential compared to our basic instincts.

Personally, I think there's a deeply seated feedback mechanism within the evolution of human species whereby our rationality is really what allows us to keep transforming the world, and to such an extent that, as we are changing the world, we need more rationality just to keep ourselves afloat in it.

The human species won't necessarily disappear if we ever give up on rationality but billions will probably die as a direct result.

So, I guess angst is well justified here.
EB
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There is one thing that dictates the ability curve of mankind, and that is who is most likely to reproduce at any given time, which is the point I was making. It's not they 'have' to be in the sense that how people are now will always be that way, it's 'have' to be in the sense that who reproduces most within the context of one's society makes up the brunt of the population at any given time. And right now logical skill is not a big selective variable.

And ironically, at this point in history science has made it especially easier for less skilled people to make up a greater part of the population, so more knowledge may be making us collectively dumber.
 
Prozac, an anti-depressant, widely prescribed.

To get approval it took nine trials to get the needed two. VIIBRYD another antidepressant takes seven trials. The first five fail.

The placebo effect is very high in these anti-depressant studies.

If a physician prescribes an SSRI for depression perhaps they are displaying all kinds of expertise.

But are they displaying any wisdom? Do these drugs actually do anything for depression?

Or are the people who prescribe these drugs dumb sheep just following the herd?

I am not saying there are answers to these questions but the topic of "expertise" is very far from black and white the closer you look at it with real humans in action.

Sometimes it is meaningful. Sometimes it is merely following the herd.

Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/
 
Speakpigeon said:
sharon45 said:
That is where wisdom comes in. See, we can come up with all sorts of ideas, but the question always is, should we use them? We came up with the bomb to finish WWII, yet since then, we have been stuck with something that could eventually damage us much further.
Click to expand...

Isn't wisdom really a special kind of expertise?

Still, there's no official title for the wise man. It has to come down to what you do and how you perform over time to be recognised as such, if ever.

But the wise man don't care about being acknowledged as such... :cool:

Not so the expert, usually, right?
EB
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Well, anybody is allowed to be wise, since it has to do with just being humble, but actual brain power is necessary for mathematics and such.
 
untermensche said:
The placebo effect is very high in these anti-depressant studies.

If a physician prescribes an SSRI for depression perhaps they are displaying all kinds of expertise.

But are they displaying any wisdom? Do these drugs actually do anything for depression?

Or are the people who prescribe these drugs dumb sheep just following the herd?

I am not saying there are answers to these questions but the topic of "expertise" is very far from black and white the closer you look at it with real humans in action.

Sometimes it is meaningful. Sometimes it is merely following the herd.
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Yes, there are many doctors who feel that the public is overly medicated.
 
rousseau said:
Speakpigeon said:
This is how people are but not how people have to be. There's nothing that people have to be except perhaps what they would need to be if they are to survive the next one thousand years. The difficulty is that we don't know what this is. Some people think we need to be rational, or even more rational. Others will see rationality as non-essential compared to our basic instincts.

Personally, I think there's a deeply seated feedback mechanism within the evolution of human species whereby our rationality is really what allows us to keep transforming the world, and to such an extent that, as we are changing the world, we need more rationality just to keep ourselves afloat in it.

The human species won't necessarily disappear if we ever give up on rationality but billions will probably die as a direct result.

So, I guess angst is well justified here.
EB
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There is one thing that dictates the ability curve of mankind, and that is who is most likely to reproduce at any given time, which is the point I was making. It's not they 'have' to be in the sense that how people are now will always be that way, it's 'have' to be in the sense that who reproduces most within the context of one's society makes up the brunt of the population at any given time. And right now logical skill is not a big selective variable.

And ironically, at this point in history science has made it especially easier for less skilled people to make up a greater part of the population, so more knowledge may be making us collectively dumber.
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I think your are conflating to different parameters.

One is the average. The other is how we perform collectively.

On average, we're not too bright. But collectively, we perform much better. We perform much better because we are collectively organised. We have very many specialised organisations, and on the whole brighter people get to lead them. It's true the complexity of this social organisation makes humanity vulnerable but it's precisely because of our social organisation that we can collectively punch above the average capabilities of human beings. And I don't think that this vulnerability should motivate us to go back to the caveman lifestyle instead.

But I also accept that the current value of our average capabilities could be improved. Still, I'm not entirely convinced that it has gone down during the last period. I think the political debate in the America of Trump is perhaps giving the wrong idea of what is going on in the whole world. I'm not looking too closely at China at the moment but I still think the average is going up over there, and that's more people than any other country on Earth. It's a complex picture and I think we won't see the trend before it's too late to do something about it. Just wait and see. Maybe it will all come down to what it is the Chinese leadership does.
EB
 
sharon45 said:
Speakpigeon said:
Isn't wisdom really a special kind of expertise?

Still, there's no official title for the wise man. It has to come down to what you do and how you perform over time to be recognised as such, if ever.

But the wise man don't care about being acknowledged as such... :cool:

Not so the expert, usually, right?
EB
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Well, anybody is allowed to be wise, since it has to do with just being humble, but actual brain power is necessary for mathematics and such.
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No, being humble is just one aspect of being wise. You can even be very humble without being very wise.

Sure, actual brain power is required for technical and abstract disciplines. Clearly, wisdom wouldn't be enough there. But these are different dimensions. We need both.

Crucially, wisdom, I think, implies conscience. Not so science. And science without conscience is not good.

So, while we need brain power, and more and more I would say, we also need more and more wisdom.
EB
 
I was pretty mad by the time I'd finished his book, so FWIW, here's my amazon review:

At no point does the level of intellectual discourse in this book rise beyond a ranting blog post. It consists of opinions, some very silly ones, where in one breath the author will deride expert failure when nutritional scientists warned of dangers of eating eggs, and in the next breath asserts the equally simplistic nonsense that "a generation of Americans got fat avoiding eggs." It also contains multiple bizarre claims that "the purpose of science is to explain, not predict."

This is not a scientifically trained author. He is a political scientist and policy advisor. This would be fine, were it not for the fact that he puts his own woolly field in with the hard sciences. So the follow-up to saying "science is to explain, not predict" is an example of the failures of *political polling*. Here's a clue: political polling isn't science. Nor is predicting who will win an election. Nor were predictions about the future of the Soviet Union in the 80s. Landing probes on comets is science. The latter most definitely takes a lot of very accurate predication [sic], and no one looking at the outcome can call it lucky guesswork.

Otherwise, there's nothing I found even slightly novel in this book's pages, and I really can't be bothered with yet another tedious explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Maybe the author had a thesis somewhere, but it's difficult to tease it out from the other possibility of people just complaining about some non-existent enlightened age before the internet made us crazy. In the end, it leaves me even less inspired by claims of expertise from non-scientists.
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bilby said:
You are entitled to imagine that Quantum physics might enable psychic abilities (for example); but you are also entitled to be (and probably are) deeply wrong.
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Predictive algorithms are psychic abilities... claimed the expert equivocator.
 
For me true expertise is learned by squiring facts and trial and error experience. As a long time engineer clearly politicians and media pundits have no understanding of how the economy works beyond generalizations.
 
steve_bank said:
For me true expertise is learned by squiring facts and trial and error experience. As a long time engineer clearly politicians and media pundits have no understanding of how the economy works beyond generalizations.
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Right. I think that's trivially true, really.

Economy is probably just marginally less difficult than human psychology, perhaps in fact more difficult for all I know, and perhaps more susceptible to ideological preconceptions and certainly to financial interests.

And I don't know that politicians and journalists, most of them at least, could be regarded as economy experts or beyond the reach of financial interests.
EB
 
Becoming an expert dog walker doesn't involve much competition

Becoming an expert professional mathematician, scientist, art critic, actor or engineer does.
 
Yes, but the 3 major cable news outlets parade a stream of so called experts.

As to economics the shallowness is obvious. Wages, employment, goods, services vary in accordance with supply and demand, Econ 101.

I never worked anywhere that people were hired because they had they
money. The idea that increasing profits will create jobs is nonsense.

The goal of capitaism is profit.
 
steve_bank said:
Becoming an expert dog walker doesn't involve much competition
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Why not?

In terms of what is meant usually by expertise, it is much more than just regular practice.

Expertise certainly gives you one clear advantage over the non-experts in a competition but the level of competition is irrelevant to levels of expertise people possess except as a possible motivation to become an expert.
EB
 
Juma said:
The wise is only humble when it is wise to be humble. Thus the wise is just a cunning bastard.
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This seems to say that the wise can only be a cunning bastard.

I'm not sure why that would be, except, trivially, if we were all cunning bastards.

Including yourself, presumably.

Apparently not a wise comment to make but maybe a price worth paying to suggest you're not a cunning bastard.
EB
 
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