6 ms·

Call me a cynic, but the whole "think critically and figure it out for yourself" solution is inefficient at best, harmful at worst. Global warming skepticism is

by whack 6y ago

Call me a cynic, but the whole "think critically and figure it out for yourself" solution is inefficient at best, harmful at worst. Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts. There are very effective ways to get high quality recommendations, with minimal effort on your part. Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Not two doctors next door. Not two doctors who published random blogs. Two doctors who are highly regarded by their peers and by the wider industry. Want to get good financial advice? Do the same thing with financial advisors. Looking for good fitness advice? Do the same with fitness trainers or nutritionists. Looking for good software engineering advice? Do the same thing with developers. Eventually the day will come when you have learnt and grown so much, that you are just as capable as the "highly regarded" experts. When that day comes, feel free to debate the merits of their arguments. But until then, don't try to be an expert at everything. Don't feel pressured to derive every single thing from first principles. That's just not scalable.

RangerScience 6y ago
You're a cynic ;) Knowledge from experts should feed into "think critically and figure it out", rather than replacing either with the other. Software has an added bonus of the "works or doesn't" test, so it's easier to (in)validate the results of that thinking than, say, something on the scale of a planet and decades.
- cryptica 6y ago
  >> Software has an added bonus of the "works or doesn't" test, This is true, but I think the new problem that our industry is facing now is "How much effort and how many resources are required to make this software work" - This leaves a lot of room for manipulation and people do exploit it in most companies (especially large corporations). These are many tech companies these days where it takes 20 developers to produce results which could in fact have been done by just 1 developer in the same amount of time. I'm not exaggerating the numbers here. I think the problem lies in perverse corporate incentives (or rather, the absence of meaningful incentives) and the way in which it affects how people pick their battles. Most employees pick all the wrong battles for all the wrong reasons. The more money a company has and the more solid their monopoly is, the more employees will be focused on internal politics rather than value production.
  - RangerScience 6y ago
    > the new problem that our industry is facing now is Goddamn but that's a good observation. Upvotes to you!
rapind 6y ago
Many of us were told growing up that we were a special snowflake. Not sure there's correlation (not sure how you'd prove it), but I have my suspicions. IMO we're in the age of individualism. Hopefully it's just a cycle. The real kicker is it seems to be self-fulfilling. If experts are no longer trusted or respected, the market / margin for expertise shrinks. You get lots of self-proclaimed experts to fill in the gaps with less investment (lower margin == lower investment, clickbait), and then the individual is justified in thinking most expertise is crap... because it is now crap (advertiser supported business model). Maybe we wake up some day and say "Holy shit, it's all just bullshit!" and then expertise can again attract an audience that's willing to pay for it.
- andreilys 6y ago
  You can always rely on the Lindy effect in times like these. Except for technical books, I try not to read any book that have been published in the last 20 years. Old books that are still read will continue to be relevant while the current NYT best seller is more likely to fall into obscurity.
- frequentnapper 6y ago
  How would the non-experts differentiate between true expertise and self-proclaimed one?
  - rapind 6y ago
    Lack of consensus I suppose, but that can also be a false positive.
XelNika 6y ago
> Call me a cynic, but the whole "think critically and figure it out for yourself" solution is inefficient at best, harmful at worst. Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts. I don't think that's true. Lots of global warming sceptics point to some subset of experts who are themselves sceptics. Even subject matter experts have biases. If we ignored those, we'd probably still be unlikely to find many global warming sceptics who had done their own in-depth research. It seems to me that most people in this category (whether it's global warming scepticism, anti-vax, 5G death rays or something else) merely seek to confirm already held beliefs and end up rejecting the opinions of actual experts in favour of misinformation from the kinds of people the blog post is talking about. Beyond that there are also people with deeper issues than just a disregard for subject matter experts. If you look to extremes (e.g. flat Earth believers), some won't change their mind even when they do the experiments themselves and find proof to the contrary.
- whack 6y ago
  > Lots of global warming sceptics point to some subset of experts who are themselves sceptics Yes, this is exactly why you should: 1. Consult more than one expert, until you've found a clear majority. And then trust in that majority 2. Pick either a couple experts who are the most highly regarded in their field. Or use random sampling to pick a couple experts from among a pool of equally qualified experts As you yourself pointed out, people who fall for fallacies often form their own judgement first, and then cherry-pick experts to lend more support to their argument. This is precisely the danger in telling lay people to trust in their own judgement. Cherry-picking of experts is the opposite of expert-guided decision making, because the cherry-picking part is being driven by lay judgement, not expert recommendation. A truly expert-driven approach would rely either on the most highly regarded experts, or random sampling from a pool of equally qualified experts. This leaves minimal room for cherry-picking and confirmation bias.
dredmorbius 6y ago
I'm working on a reply to another HNer on just this point.
cryptica 6y ago
There are too many bullshitters in the software industry. Years of experience helps but it's not sufficient to be a good developer. There are many terrible developers with 20+ years of experience and there are some great developers with only 10 years of experience. The number one characteristic that makes a developer great is their critical thinking ability. These developers don't blindly adopt tools and business processes based on popularity. They are always able to justify their decisions with strong arguments which convincingly explain why their chosen option is better than all the other possible options. This applies to every decision they make. Writing software is more like chess than checkers - You need to consider every reasonable option many steps ahead. IMO software development is a complex area - Following common industry patterns and best practices without thinking about whether or not they actually apply to your particular use case is almost always the wrong approach. There are nuances in essentially every single software project which would warrant deviating from industry norms in at least some ways. To always follow best practices blindly without questioning them or adapting them to your use case is in itself a terrible practice. Also, the problem with trusting experts in complex domains is that the line between an expert and snake oil salesman is incredibly blurry. Sometimes even moderately skilled insiders with domain expertise don't know how to tell apart an expert from a conman. The software industry has grown extremely fast and now the situation is that there are a huge number of highly vocal novices who pose as experts and who are silencing the real experts.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Median competency in most professions will typically be quite low. In software this is exacerbated by the high pay, which attracts a lot of charlatans, and the fact that our industry has almost no professional standards (unlike say structural engineering). I’ve never thought it was much of a problem though, because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    >> because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves Having worked in the blockchain space... I have seen seen the future and it looks nothing like you think. When a company has too many conmen. The most rewarded skill becomes conmanship.
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts. Except that the "subject matter experts" have a horrible track record. Also, global warming proponents misrepresent the skepticism. Nobody is really questioning the warming of the earth. People are questioning how much man is responsible for it. After all, the "globe" has been warming for thousands of years before industrialization. There are "subject matter experts" who believe the warming is mostly a natural phenomenon. There are even fringe "subject matter experts" who believe the earth will cool. You aren't a cynic, you are just agenda driven. > Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Where and which ones? The one's that say you don't need to wear masks or the one's that say you need to wear masks? I won't bother with the rest. All you are saying is believe and trust authority. But the problem with that was a time when "experts" believed in global cooling, medical experts believed in blood letting, political experts believe in racism, financial experts believe in subprime loan derivatives, etc. Blindly believing authority also tends to cause a lot of problem. The problem with the "experts" in your list is that it has become so politicized and corporaticized that one has to be skeptical by default.
yawaramin 6y ago
All of that sounds good in theory until we reach this point: > Looking for good software engineering advice? Do the same thing with developers. Which brings us back to the OP: > Most tech content is bullshit So we've now come full circle. Hence I would point you to another post that came out recently that would be useful to understand what you wrote: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...
someguydave 6y ago
Humans have only been writing software for less than a century, mostly the last 50 years. That's nothing like other professions like blacksmithing or writing. It will take centuries until people learn how to write software well.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Humans have only been writing software for less than a century, mostly the last 50 years 50 years ago was the beginning of Unix sure but programmable computers were already 25 years old by then, and the concepts were even older.
klibertp 6y ago
> with minimal effort on your part. Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Not two doctors next door. Not two doctors who published random blogs. Two doctors who are highly regarded by their peers and by the wider industry. This is a tangent, but I'm currently in the situation where I really need to find these two doctors, after years of suffering from a rare (combination of) medical issues. I've been searching for a doctor who has experience with treating my (or similar) conditions, for decades now, and I just can't seem to find it. Meanwhile, my problems become more and more disturbing, with me being unable to work anymore in the near future. So please, if you know how to find the "highly regarder medical specialists", please tell me. Especially if it would take "minimal effort", because I'm steadily losing strength and soon the minimal effort will be the most I can exert.
- xpaqui 6y ago
  Clearly it was an general example with limited life application. The expert doctor problem is a good example of this. So is the expert financial advisor, etc. In your case I would ask doctors for doctors recommendations, and test alternatives - through recommendation only - outside of the common doctor. The former since doctors know other doctors, the latter due to most alternatives being non invasive, and with no side effects except the perpetual disappointment you've experienced so far.
trianglem 6y ago
Absolutely. It’s question everything. Not question everything and replace the explanations you don’t like with personal, gut-feel views.

by whack 6y ago

RangerScience 6y ago

You're a cynic ;) Knowledge from experts should feed into "think critically and figure it out", rather than replacing either with the other. Software has an added bonus of the "works or doesn't" test, so it's easier to (in)validate the results of that thinking than, say, something on the scale of a planet and decades.

cryptica 6y ago
>> Software has an added bonus of the "works or doesn't" test, This is true, but I think the new problem that our industry is facing now is "How much effort and how many resources are required to make this software work" - This leaves a lot of room for manipulation and people do exploit it in most companies (especially large corporations). These are many tech companies these days where it takes 20 developers to produce results which could in fact have been done by just 1 developer in the same amount of time. I'm not exaggerating the numbers here. I think the problem lies in perverse corporate incentives (or rather, the absence of meaningful incentives) and the way in which it affects how people pick their battles. Most employees pick all the wrong battles for all the wrong reasons. The more money a company has and the more solid their monopoly is, the more employees will be focused on internal politics rather than value production.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  > the new problem that our industry is facing now is Goddamn but that's a good observation. Upvotes to you!

rapind 6y ago

Many of us were told growing up that we were a special snowflake. Not sure there's correlation (not sure how you'd prove it), but I have my suspicions. IMO we're in the age of individualism. Hopefully it's just a cycle. The real kicker is it seems to be self-fulfilling. If experts are no longer trusted or respected, the market / margin for expertise shrinks. You get lots of self-proclaimed experts to fill in the gaps with less investment (lower margin == lower investment, clickbait), and then the individual is justified in thinking most expertise is crap... because it is now crap (advertiser supported business model). Maybe we wake up some day and say "Holy shit, it's all just bullshit!" and then expertise can again attract an audience that's willing to pay for it.

andreilys 6y ago
You can always rely on the Lindy effect in times like these. Except for technical books, I try not to read any book that have been published in the last 20 years. Old books that are still read will continue to be relevant while the current NYT best seller is more likely to fall into obscurity.
frequentnapper 6y ago
How would the non-experts differentiate between true expertise and self-proclaimed one?
- rapind 6y ago
  Lack of consensus I suppose, but that can also be a false positive.

XelNika 6y ago

> Call me a cynic, but the whole "think critically and figure it out for yourself" solution is inefficient at best, harmful at worst. Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts. I don't think that's true. Lots of global warming sceptics point to some subset of experts who are themselves sceptics. Even subject matter experts have biases. If we ignored those, we'd probably still be unlikely to find many global warming sceptics who had done their own in-depth research. It seems to me that most people in this category (whether it's global warming scepticism, anti-vax, 5G death rays or something else) merely seek to confirm already held beliefs and end up rejecting the opinions of actual experts in favour of misinformation from the kinds of people the blog post is talking about. Beyond that there are also people with deeper issues than just a disregard for subject matter experts. If you look to extremes (e.g. flat Earth believers), some won't change their mind even when they do the experiments themselves and find proof to the contrary.

whack 6y ago
> Lots of global warming sceptics point to some subset of experts who are themselves sceptics Yes, this is exactly why you should: 1. Consult more than one expert, until you've found a clear majority. And then trust in that majority 2. Pick either a couple experts who are the most highly regarded in their field. Or use random sampling to pick a couple experts from among a pool of equally qualified experts As you yourself pointed out, people who fall for fallacies often form their own judgement first, and then cherry-pick experts to lend more support to their argument. This is precisely the danger in telling lay people to trust in their own judgement. Cherry-picking of experts is the opposite of expert-guided decision making, because the cherry-picking part is being driven by lay judgement, not expert recommendation. A truly expert-driven approach would rely either on the most highly regarded experts, or random sampling from a pool of equally qualified experts. This leaves minimal room for cherry-picking and confirmation bias.

dredmorbius 6y ago

I'm working on a reply to another HNer on just this point.

cryptica 6y ago

There are too many bullshitters in the software industry. Years of experience helps but it's not sufficient to be a good developer. There are many terrible developers with 20+ years of experience and there are some great developers with only 10 years of experience. The number one characteristic that makes a developer great is their critical thinking ability. These developers don't blindly adopt tools and business processes based on popularity. They are always able to justify their decisions with strong arguments which convincingly explain why their chosen option is better than all the other possible options. This applies to every decision they make. Writing software is more like chess than checkers - You need to consider every reasonable option many steps ahead. IMO software development is a complex area - Following common industry patterns and best practices without thinking about whether or not they actually apply to your particular use case is almost always the wrong approach. There are nuances in essentially every single software project which would warrant deviating from industry norms in at least some ways. To always follow best practices blindly without questioning them or adapting them to your use case is in itself a terrible practice. Also, the problem with trusting experts in complex domains is that the line between an expert and snake oil salesman is incredibly blurry. Sometimes even moderately skilled insiders with domain expertise don't know how to tell apart an expert from a conman. The software industry has grown extremely fast and now the situation is that there are a huge number of highly vocal novices who pose as experts and who are silencing the real experts.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
Median competency in most professions will typically be quite low. In software this is exacerbated by the high pay, which attracts a lot of charlatans, and the fact that our industry has almost no professional standards (unlike say structural engineering). I’ve never thought it was much of a problem though, because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves.
- cryptica 6y ago
  >> because it just makes it easier for the sufficiently competent to distinguish themselves Having worked in the blockchain space... I have seen seen the future and it looks nothing like you think. When a company has too many conmen. The most rewarded skill becomes conmanship.

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> Global warming skepticism is exactly the kind of thing that often occurs when people trust their own judgement more than that of subject matter experts. Except that the "subject matter experts" have a horrible track record. Also, global warming proponents misrepresent the skepticism. Nobody is really questioning the warming of the earth. People are questioning how much man is responsible for it. After all, the "globe" has been warming for thousands of years before industrialization. There are "subject matter experts" who believe the warming is mostly a natural phenomenon. There are even fringe "subject matter experts" who believe the earth will cool. You aren't a cynic, you are just agenda driven. > Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Where and which ones? The one's that say you don't need to wear masks or the one's that say you need to wear masks? I won't bother with the rest. All you are saying is believe and trust authority. But the problem with that was a time when "experts" believed in global cooling, medical experts believed in blood letting, political experts believe in racism, financial experts believe in subprime loan derivatives, etc. Blindly believing authority also tends to cause a lot of problem. The problem with the "experts" in your list is that it has become so politicized and corporaticized that one has to be skeptical by default.

yawaramin 6y ago

All of that sounds good in theory until we reach this point: > Looking for good software engineering advice? Do the same thing with developers. Which brings us back to the OP: > Most tech content is bullshit So we've now come full circle. Hence I would point you to another post that came out recently that would be useful to understand what you wrote: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...

someguydave 6y ago

Humans have only been writing software for less than a century, mostly the last 50 years. That's nothing like other professions like blacksmithing or writing. It will take centuries until people learn how to write software well.

goatinaboat 6y ago
Humans have only been writing software for less than a century, mostly the last 50 years 50 years ago was the beginning of Unix sure but programmable computers were already 25 years old by then, and the concepts were even older.

klibertp 6y ago

> with minimal effort on your part. Want to get good medical advice? Find two highly regarded medical specialists and ask them independently for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Not two doctors next door. Not two doctors who published random blogs. Two doctors who are highly regarded by their peers and by the wider industry. This is a tangent, but I'm currently in the situation where I really need to find these two doctors, after years of suffering from a rare (combination of) medical issues. I've been searching for a doctor who has experience with treating my (or similar) conditions, for decades now, and I just can't seem to find it. Meanwhile, my problems become more and more disturbing, with me being unable to work anymore in the near future. So please, if you know how to find the "highly regarder medical specialists", please tell me. Especially if it would take "minimal effort", because I'm steadily losing strength and soon the minimal effort will be the most I can exert.

xpaqui 6y ago
Clearly it was an general example with limited life application. The expert doctor problem is a good example of this. So is the expert financial advisor, etc. In your case I would ask doctors for doctors recommendations, and test alternatives - through recommendation only - outside of the common doctor. The former since doctors know other doctors, the latter due to most alternatives being non invasive, and with no side effects except the perpetual disappointment you've experienced so far.

trianglem 6y ago

Absolutely. It’s question everything. Not question everything and replace the explanations you don’t like with personal, gut-feel views.