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Adding a bunch of letters to the end of your name doesn't make you less susceptible to the allure of fame and money. In fact the type of person to add alphabet

Adding a bunch of letters to the end of your name doesn't make you less susceptible to the allure of fame and money. In fact the type of person to add alphabet soup to the end of their name might be even more susceptible!

RicoElectrico 6y ago
Case in point: Andrew Wakefield of vaccines-cause-autism infamy.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  He was a medical doctor, right? I can't be bothered to argue it in public but I don't really listen to doctors on anything outside what they practice in - they aren't scientists and aren't trained as such.
fao_ 6y ago
Uhhh, yes. But only in fields where they are not already an expert. What you're referring to is Nobel Prize disease, and that is essentially the implicit human assumption that when you become an expert at one thing, you're an expert at everything. However it notably does not happen when someone is an expert at something, because well, they're an expert -- they know enough about the field to separate the wheat from the chaff https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease Like the parent says, I'm not sure why you'd rather believe a software engineer on Hacker News -- who unless they are unusual, has zero experience with archeology outside of watching Time Team occasionally -- versus someone who is actually qualified in that field. This is the kind of thinking that led to the catastrophe that was MetaMed -- software engineers and mathematicians not realising that they needed to actually learn things about other fields to be an expert in it (Unlike computer science where you can read a few well-curated blogposts and understand most of the problems in a week), and deciding to go into Medicine with that mindset (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed).
- f430 6y ago
  Likely parent was triggered by GP's comment and is now desperately downplaying expertise as "alphabet soup" and is now downvoting all the comments here Yes, somebody who sacrificed decades of their life attaining accreditations and studying said area of expertise clearly knows less than a software dev /s
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Well, the "kind of thinking" that only certified, acronym'd Domain Experts have useful knowledge to contribute about complicated problems has led us down a lot of fun paths in 2020: - No, definitely no need to worry about this novel virus in China - No, definitely no need to wear facial covering - No, definitely no aerosolized transmission - No, definitely no reason to violate protocol with a 1-dose regimin - No, definitely no evidence of lab-release accident (TBD) On each of these problems, attentive and interested non-experts called the correct answer months ahead of expert consensus. If your takeaway from 2020 is not "domain experts are always right, and there's no need for independent research from the outside"... you learned a really bad lesson.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    If your takeaway from 2020 is not "domain experts are always right, and there's no need for independent research from the outside"... you learned a really bad lesson. That most certainly is not my takeaway, but perhaps you mistyped. What I had reinforced in 2020, however, was that though domain experts occasionally make a bad call (including you, dear reader), I'd still take their opinion over some random jackass on the Internet spouting off about "yeah, but remember when they told us not to wear masks?"
  - fao_ 6y ago
    Most of those were political decisions, not ones made by domain experts. First, the delay of listening to domain experts (In america, the firing of any teams and staff that were trained in dealing with a pandemic, for example), and the delay in shutting down cross-country transportation as well as the delay in implementing social-distancing, led to the large spread of Coronavirus that is continuing to this day. Secondly, the reason people were informed not to wear masks initially was because there was a PPE shortage. Part of this was very likely related to the fact that I remember reports of people stealing boxes of masks from hospitals, and people stockpiling masks early on, which led to hospitals that were much less equipped to deal with the spread of it and led to higher deaths of healthcare workers. The reason Coronavirus got to the stage where it could mutate, at least in Britain, was because the Government instituted a policy of blatantly letting people die and assuming "herd immunity" would take hold, versus actually listening to the domain experts saying that was a shitty idea. If they had listened to them in the first place, and shut things down early on, the pandemic still wouldn't be going a year later. As you can see in China, Taiwan, etc.
danaliv 6y ago
The Brits absolutely love their post-nominals.

RicoElectrico 6y ago

Case in point: Andrew Wakefield of vaccines-cause-autism infamy.

mhh__ 6y ago
He was a medical doctor, right? I can't be bothered to argue it in public but I don't really listen to doctors on anything outside what they practice in - they aren't scientists and aren't trained as such.

fao_ 6y ago

Uhhh, yes. But only in fields where they are not already an expert. What you're referring to is Nobel Prize disease, and that is essentially the implicit human assumption that when you become an expert at one thing, you're an expert at everything. However it notably does not happen when someone is an expert at something, because well, they're an expert -- they know enough about the field to separate the wheat from the chaff https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease Like the parent says, I'm not sure why you'd rather believe a software engineer on Hacker News -- who unless they are unusual, has zero experience with archeology outside of watching Time Team occasionally -- versus someone who is actually qualified in that field. This is the kind of thinking that led to the catastrophe that was MetaMed -- software engineers and mathematicians not realising that they needed to actually learn things about other fields to be an expert in it (Unlike computer science where you can read a few well-curated blogposts and understand most of the problems in a week), and deciding to go into Medicine with that mindset (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed).

f430 6y ago
Likely parent was triggered by GP's comment and is now desperately downplaying expertise as "alphabet soup" and is now downvoting all the comments here Yes, somebody who sacrificed decades of their life attaining accreditations and studying said area of expertise clearly knows less than a software dev /s
bpodgursky 6y ago
Well, the "kind of thinking" that only certified, acronym'd Domain Experts have useful knowledge to contribute about complicated problems has led us down a lot of fun paths in 2020: - No, definitely no need to worry about this novel virus in China - No, definitely no need to wear facial covering - No, definitely no aerosolized transmission - No, definitely no reason to violate protocol with a 1-dose regimin - No, definitely no evidence of lab-release accident (TBD) On each of these problems, attentive and interested non-experts called the correct answer months ahead of expert consensus. If your takeaway from 2020 is not "domain experts are always right, and there's no need for independent research from the outside"... you learned a really bad lesson.
- mikestew 6y ago
  If your takeaway from 2020 is not "domain experts are always right, and there's no need for independent research from the outside"... you learned a really bad lesson. That most certainly is not my takeaway, but perhaps you mistyped. What I had reinforced in 2020, however, was that though domain experts occasionally make a bad call (including you, dear reader), I'd still take their opinion over some random jackass on the Internet spouting off about "yeah, but remember when they told us not to wear masks?"
- fao_ 6y ago
  Most of those were political decisions, not ones made by domain experts. First, the delay of listening to domain experts (In america, the firing of any teams and staff that were trained in dealing with a pandemic, for example), and the delay in shutting down cross-country transportation as well as the delay in implementing social-distancing, led to the large spread of Coronavirus that is continuing to this day. Secondly, the reason people were informed not to wear masks initially was because there was a PPE shortage. Part of this was very likely related to the fact that I remember reports of people stealing boxes of masks from hospitals, and people stockpiling masks early on, which led to hospitals that were much less equipped to deal with the spread of it and led to higher deaths of healthcare workers. The reason Coronavirus got to the stage where it could mutate, at least in Britain, was because the Government instituted a policy of blatantly letting people die and assuming "herd immunity" would take hold, versus actually listening to the domain experts saying that was a shitty idea. If they had listened to them in the first place, and shut things down early on, the pandemic still wouldn't be going a year later. As you can see in China, Taiwan, etc.

danaliv 6y ago

The Brits absolutely love their post-nominals.