I want to share this tid-bit. When I studied portfolio management, I had to learn not just how to talk to people about their risk tolerances, but how to ascerta

I want to share this tid-bit. When I studied portfolio management, I had to learn not just how to talk to people about their risk tolerances, but how to ascertain whether they knew their own tolerances. The concept was called "calibration" - or - how well is someone able to know that they are wrong/don't know something. Basically, "high calibration" is the opposite of Dunning-Kruger in my mind. The text cited a study that measured calibration by profession. The highest calibrated profession was meteorologists. It makes sense if you think about it: I prognosticate rain tomorrow, tomorrow comes and it's sunny - I am forced to confront the fact that my prognosis was wrong. So not only is there a way to know who's better and who's worse, but also constant reminder that "I can be wrong despite my best work" The lowest calibration profession was doctors. Which also makes sense. Imagine I am a doctor and I miss an early sign of a disease. The patient dies 5 years later - I may not even know, and even if I do, very unlikely am I confronted with the specific point in time 5 years prior where I made the wrong call. So the thing that matters with expertise is - how often is the person getting feedback. In the article they cite chess as having "real experts" - of course. Because a chess player gets feedback on how good they are every time they win or lose a match. On the flip side, how often is someone in a very soft field getting feedback? What's the way for an "expert" in say Gender Studies, to wake up in the morning and be confronted with "the thing I did yesterday didn't work?" The other thing about experts is they are optimizing for a single thing. Eg ask your compliance person at work if you can do something, the answer is "NO" because they are optimizing for not being sued, but in reality that's not the only concern. Or in the pandemic, ask the economist if we should lock down - they'll say no because they understand the financial consequences. Ask a medical person and they'll say yes because they are focused solely on the number of sick people. In reality the world is complex and there are tradeoffs. Related, experts are often concerned with high-impact issues which may be different from individual issues. EG: in the USA, by default, kids get the Hep B vaccine on their first day of life. On country level this makes sense because there are a lot of mothers out there who have Hep B and don't know it. But when my wife was giving birth, we knew to opt out despite the recommendation because we understood that the experts are optimizing for a thing that doesn't relate to us.