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> I think the bigger issue is that everyone feels they need to be an expert on every subject. I think people tend to view the world through the lens of their e

> I think the bigger issue is that everyone feels they need to be an expert on every subject. I think people tend to view the world through the lens of their experiences. Lots of us are basically technicians these days, even a good percentage(the majority maybe) of software "engineers". I think it's easy for people to achieve some mastery in a domain and begin to believe that other aspects of the world are also similarly mastered. I'll say that most of my life I fell into that camp. I'm somewhat gifted with technology and I let my successes in the simplistic world of programming(and it really is pretty simple if you're just following recipes and calling libraries) bias my view of the world. I think my descent into libertarianism in the 00's was largely fueled by that erroneous thinking. It's only after working on harder problems that I've come to appreciate the limits of my thinking, and the limits to which I can step into another domain and outthink the experts within it. I think there are a lot of folks who have never worked on something subtle and complex, and to them the world is just so simple. Certain people/substances/ideologies are just purely good and others are purely evil, with no thought to the complexity of the actual world we inhabit. > The problem isn't that the world is getting more complex. The problem is that we're unwilling to admit it. Exactly. We better learn quick or we'll be like a toddler holding a hand grenade.

godelski 5y ago
I think that's kinda the path I followed too. Once I started working on really hard problems that racked my brain (problems that take months to solve _after_ I've gained expertise in the area) I started thinking about the world differently and seeing how nuanced it is. That first order approximations weren't enough to make even remotely reasonable approximations. I remember in one of my jobs my friend told me "there's a book on o-rings that's over a thousand of pages. O-rings. Just one simple device." Nuance matters a lot. It's the difference between a space shuttle exploding and not. In a way, it is also liberating. I don't have to know everything. I can know to trust experts in the field. I know how to vet experts in fields adjacent to mine. And importantly, I know how to ask nuanced questions to people outside my field and to lean on them for help understanding problems I'm not an expert in. Not that I don't also get egotistical and overstep my bounds. I definitely do. But it no longer hurts (as bad) when someone calls me out on it. It is more about the passion to learn now and getting rid of bad habits. Being called out now is an opportunity to learn.

godelski 5y ago

I think that's kinda the path I followed too. Once I started working on really hard problems that racked my brain (problems that take months to solve _after_ I've gained expertise in the area) I started thinking about the world differently and seeing how nuanced it is. That first order approximations weren't enough to make even remotely reasonable approximations. I remember in one of my jobs my friend told me "there's a book on o-rings that's over a thousand of pages. O-rings. Just one simple device." Nuance matters a lot. It's the difference between a space shuttle exploding and not. In a way, it is also liberating. I don't have to know everything. I can know to trust experts in the field. I know how to vet experts in fields adjacent to mine. And importantly, I know how to ask nuanced questions to people outside my field and to lean on them for help understanding problems I'm not an expert in. Not that I don't also get egotistical and overstep my bounds. I definitely do. But it no longer hurts (as bad) when someone calls me out on it. It is more about the passion to learn now and getting rid of bad habits. Being called out now is an opportunity to learn.