4 ms·
That's a really long article to say what we already know: That "expert" means to know in detail a narrow thing. It hasn't been possible to be a true polymath i
by knorker 6y ago
That's a really long article to say what we already know: That "expert" means to know in detail a narrow thing.
It hasn't been possible to be a true polymath in like 500 years. Surely this isn't news to the author?
There's no such thing as "an expert on everything"? Yeah, no shit. It's almost tautology, due to the limitations on human brains and the advancement of science since the renaissance.
Another way I think this article misses the point is that they're not dragging Sundar in front of congress because he knows everything about Google (he can't), nor for the congresspeople to learn it (they can't, even if Sundar knew, and could convey, and had infinite time).
They do not start from "let's understand everything first", because they can't. They are dragging them in to answer a question.
You don't need to know the lunch schedule of the San Bruno office, or how many registers the x86 processor has, to answer the question of how political ads should look in today's world (or whatever the question is).
So the article doubly misses the point.
- Barrin92 6y agoYes. If you go to one of the first legal definitions of the term expert, that is what you get "person who, by virtue of special acquired knowledge or experience on a subject, presumably not within the knowledge of men generally, may testify in a court of justice to matters of opinion thereon, as distinguished from ordinary witnesses, who can in general testify only to facts" Regulators are not experts and they're not meant to be experts, they may consult experts if they require their knowledge. I'm also not sure what the point of the entire discussion is, I hope nobody believes that regulators somehow need to be quantum physicists and physicians and computer scientists and artists at the same time to make judgements about tech or anything else.
- grogenaut 6y agoHave you read any other wired articles in the last 10 years? They're all like this.
- alirsgp 6y agoPeople like von Neumann were considered polymaths
- echlebek 6y agoI also disliked the article. Systems are complex, so it's suddenly pointless to try to understand them? Or, if you don't understand every detail of a system, you don't understand the system? Give me a break. I suppose we may as well give up on trying to understand natural systems while we're at it. Maybe there's an alternative? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-syst...
- jacksonpollock 6y agofor other reasons, i do feel like we need a more digitally literate political leadership base