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Just because a group focuses on a topic does not mean that they possess any genuine expertise. Nobody rational would claim that we should listen to astrologers

Just because a group focuses on a topic does not mean that they possess any genuine expertise. Nobody rational would claim that we should listen to astrologers about fortune telling. A more prosaic example is that virtually zero mutual fund managers outperform the market. Pundits are not any better at forecasting political events than the average person. Experience alone is not enough. You must demonstrate evidence of actual expertise. Ethicists behave no more ethically than the average person[1], which strongly suggests that the entire field is worthless. A rational person should ignore the established field of bioethics. Maybe even take the opposite of their advice. [1]https://qz.com/1582149/ethicists-are-no-more-ethical-than-the-rest-of-us-study-finds/ https://qz.com/1582149/ethicists-are-no-more-ethical-than-th...

StavrosK 6y ago
> Ethicists behave no more ethically than the average person[1], which strongly suggests that the entire field is worthless. I don't see how that follows. We don't expect our ethicists to behave more ethically any more than we expect our aeronautics engineers to fly.
- graeme 6y ago
  But aeronautics engineers can’t fly. However all humans possess the capacity to behave ethically. We do generally expect a teacher to be able to explain a concept outside of their job, a writer to write a good note or letter, a photographer to take a good photograph when out casually with friends and family. Similarly we’d want people making moral judgement to demonstrate that capacity.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Ethicists study ethics. Per your example, I would expect an ethicist to be able to study ethics very well. You don't expect a teacher to know everything, or a writer to always speak with perfect eloquence, or a photographer to always take great photos. I don't understand why someone who studies ethics should behave better, any more than someone who studies the human musculature to be able to lift more weight.
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      You expect some correlation. Even 5%.
  - celticninja 6y ago
    But surely all you could expect is that they consider the ethics of the situation. Not that they always choose the the most ethically correct outcome. After all a writer might just need a shopping list, not a sonnet.
hntrader 6y ago
One nitpick. A huge number of mutual funds outperform the market. Something like 40 percent of them, which would be in the hundreds to thousands. It's the average over all of them (after accounting for survivorship bias) that underperforms. I otherwise wholeheartedly agree with everything you've written. Self-proclaimed expertise should be viewed with a very healthy scepticism, and the burden of proof isn't on you to show why they're wrong, it's on them to show why they're right without resorting to an argument from authority.
- Jeff_Brown 6y ago
  In a week? In a year? Over their entire existences? And by how much? Economic theory suggests that over a long window nobody beats it by very much.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    The fact is that many (hundreds) do beat benchmark - over years and decades - which is sufficient data to disprove the original assertion that I was contesting. "By how much?" - not relevant to the claim I was disputing. The reasons there are many outperformers are few fold. Firstly, failing funds often close up shop and start anew, which artificially inflates the N success metric. The average number of hedge funds that a current manager has run is 2, since they've closed one failure on average. Second, economic theory is a limiting condition, it's still remarkably easy to be lucky over a 5 year period given the low frequency nature of trades that many of these funds perform. It's not like a chronic gambler where the law of large numbers kicks in after two weeks. Third, professional fund managers still do have edge over all other parts of the market (this has been shown in academic research), it's just that this edge is less than their fees, but it tilts the small sample statistics towards showing a large N successes compared to what we'd expect if they were trading randomly.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    That economic theory is unfalsifiable. People do beat the markets for their entire lives.
tinus_hn 6y ago
What do you think about philosophers?
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  IMO I think philosophy has had a lot of major historic victories that prove the worth of the field. These often get overlooked, though. When a philosophy problem becomes well understood it tends to move into its own specialized field. For example the nascent fields of geometry, physics, and economics were all once part of philosophy. We get kind of a selection bias. Philosophers have a reputation for having their heads in the cloud, because we only think of the areas they've made the least progress in.
throwawayugh1 6y ago
Is it not desirable that ethicists are representative in their actions? If ethicists were more ethical than other humans, people here would be complaining that they are holier-than-thou and that they didn't represent the population's ethical wishes.
retsibsi 6y ago
> The one exception was vegetarianism: Ethicists were both more likely to say that it was immoral to eat meat, and more likely to be vegetarians themselves. Being less complicit in something that: - causes immense, horrific suffering; - has traditionally been, and still largely is, considered completely normal; - requires some personal sacrifice to forego; - happens because, and to the extent that, ordinary people continue to demand it seems like a pretty big win to me, and a good argument that philosophical contemplation of ethical issues can be worthwhile. (None of this implies that bioethics as a field is producing any value on net. Personally I'm unimpressed by what I've seen of it.)

StavrosK 6y ago

> Ethicists behave no more ethically than the average person[1], which strongly suggests that the entire field is worthless. I don't see how that follows. We don't expect our ethicists to behave more ethically any more than we expect our aeronautics engineers to fly.

graeme 6y ago
But aeronautics engineers can’t fly. However all humans possess the capacity to behave ethically. We do generally expect a teacher to be able to explain a concept outside of their job, a writer to write a good note or letter, a photographer to take a good photograph when out casually with friends and family. Similarly we’d want people making moral judgement to demonstrate that capacity.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Ethicists study ethics. Per your example, I would expect an ethicist to be able to study ethics very well. You don't expect a teacher to know everything, or a writer to always speak with perfect eloquence, or a photographer to always take great photos. I don't understand why someone who studies ethics should behave better, any more than someone who studies the human musculature to be able to lift more weight.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    You expect some correlation. Even 5%.
- celticninja 6y ago
  But surely all you could expect is that they consider the ethics of the situation. Not that they always choose the the most ethically correct outcome. After all a writer might just need a shopping list, not a sonnet.

hntrader 6y ago

One nitpick. A huge number of mutual funds outperform the market. Something like 40 percent of them, which would be in the hundreds to thousands. It's the average over all of them (after accounting for survivorship bias) that underperforms. I otherwise wholeheartedly agree with everything you've written. Self-proclaimed expertise should be viewed with a very healthy scepticism, and the burden of proof isn't on you to show why they're wrong, it's on them to show why they're right without resorting to an argument from authority.

Jeff_Brown 6y ago
In a week? In a year? Over their entire existences? And by how much? Economic theory suggests that over a long window nobody beats it by very much.
- hntrader 6y ago
  The fact is that many (hundreds) do beat benchmark - over years and decades - which is sufficient data to disprove the original assertion that I was contesting. "By how much?" - not relevant to the claim I was disputing. The reasons there are many outperformers are few fold. Firstly, failing funds often close up shop and start anew, which artificially inflates the N success metric. The average number of hedge funds that a current manager has run is 2, since they've closed one failure on average. Second, economic theory is a limiting condition, it's still remarkably easy to be lucky over a 5 year period given the low frequency nature of trades that many of these funds perform. It's not like a chronic gambler where the law of large numbers kicks in after two weeks. Third, professional fund managers still do have edge over all other parts of the market (this has been shown in academic research), it's just that this edge is less than their fees, but it tilts the small sample statistics towards showing a large N successes compared to what we'd expect if they were trading randomly.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  That economic theory is unfalsifiable. People do beat the markets for their entire lives.

tinus_hn 6y ago

What do you think about philosophers?

dcolkitt 6y ago
IMO I think philosophy has had a lot of major historic victories that prove the worth of the field. These often get overlooked, though. When a philosophy problem becomes well understood it tends to move into its own specialized field. For example the nascent fields of geometry, physics, and economics were all once part of philosophy. We get kind of a selection bias. Philosophers have a reputation for having their heads in the cloud, because we only think of the areas they've made the least progress in.

throwawayugh1 6y ago

Is it not desirable that ethicists are representative in their actions? If ethicists were more ethical than other humans, people here would be complaining that they are holier-than-thou and that they didn't represent the population's ethical wishes.

retsibsi 6y ago

> The one exception was vegetarianism: Ethicists were both more likely to say that it was immoral to eat meat, and more likely to be vegetarians themselves. Being less complicit in something that: - causes immense, horrific suffering; - has traditionally been, and still largely is, considered completely normal; - requires some personal sacrifice to forego; - happens because, and to the extent that, ordinary people continue to demand it seems like a pretty big win to me, and a good argument that philosophical contemplation of ethical issues can be worthwhile. (None of this implies that bioethics as a field is producing any value on net. Personally I'm unimpressed by what I've seen of it.)