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"Trust the experts" has been the motto going around for a while now. It makes it easy to outsource your own critical thinking by letting the "experts" do it.

"Trust the experts" has been the motto going around for a while now. It makes it easy to outsource your own critical thinking by letting the "experts" do it. The experts should just be one data point not THE SOURCE OF ULTIMATE TRUTH.

jpgvm 5y ago
If you aren't a doctor your "own critical thinking" will have little bearing on the correct treatment or prevention of a disease/illness/injury, doubly so for complex ailments for viruses, cancers and genetic diseases. Pretty much the same goes for civil engineering, particle physics and any other highly trained field that requires vast quantities of knowledge to even intuit probable outcomes. Why is economics any different? I don't believe it is, I would say economics falls into a similar bucket as weather science where there are always large unknowns that make broad predictions imprecise but that doesn't invalidate their expertise and ignoring it is definitely foolish. Experts are experts for a reason. If you could intuit all difficult problems as a layman we would have already advanced science far beyond where we currently stand.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  Skepticism of medical practice isn't a stupid Steve-Jobs-like trust in woo over science. It's getting multiple opinions, reading the underlying papers, asking "does this explanation make sense?", and checking for obvious mistakes --- as medicine, like any other human endeavor, is full of human error. Plenty of people have found cures for their medical problems only after they kept doggedly pressing medical people for things that made sense and actually worked for them. Something didn't seem right to them, and they pulled and pulled at threads to find out what it was. You don't need a medical degree to do that: you just need a brain. It's gravely concerning to see hostility directed at people who tell others to think for themselves, question experts, and adopt a general attitude of informed skepticism. Too many people get genuinely offended when you indicate that you're going to do your own thinking and not just follow "experts". They bring out cliches like "experts are experts for a reason" and "look at this one guy who did something stupid" and neglect, or even suppress, the idea that we at all, each and every one of us, scientists of our lives and competent to make our own decisions and form our own opinions.
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. In a vacuum, yes. Skepticism isn't just healthy, it's what powers science itself. However this isn't a vacuum and most people that "question the experts" aren't doing so in good-faith. Your ability to question an existing theory is proportional to your understanding the problem space itself and knowledge of the existing facts. Basically in order to question an expert realistically you need to be an expert yourself. This shouldn't be controversial, but for some reason it is. :/
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      >There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. There's a current trend with labeling people who disagree with your narrative as 'rejecting expertise'. People aren't rejecting expertise. They're following different experts than the one's you approve of. Descarte's, maybe you've heard of him, rejected the expertise that the sun revolved around the Earth despite all of the mainstream experts disagreement. This pattern has repeated countless times throughout history: labotomies, thalidomide, antiseptic procedure...that's just science...god knows the number of people executed for going against the expertise backed narrative that a dictatorship is not an ideal form of government. The problem with 'trusting experts' (which is a classic logical fallacy)...is WHICH EXPERTS? At the end of the day it's all a narrative and you pick the narrative you wish to follow backed by the experts that support your narrative. It's disengenous to claim otherwise. And that's literally a politician or leaders job is to sift through all of the experts and all of the other bullshit and try to pull a good decision out of it. And as a human being, that should be your job as well.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    > It's gravely concerning to see hostility directed at people who tell others to think for themselves, question experts, and adopt a general attitude of informed skepticism. This trend of blind trust has been extremely alarming to me as well these days! Lobotomies won the Nobel prize in the early 20th century championed by experts! Experts aren't immune to agendas, or corruption, or any of the human vices. Appeal to authority is a literal logical fallacy but it's lost on people. Scary world we're in.
- triceratops 5y ago
  I agree re: medicine or physics because you can perform (in most cases) controlled, repeatable experiments. That's not really true for economics. I do feel the field is on much shakier ground than other sciences. EDIT: Add on also that economics is one of the few fields where what you learn changes the field itself. Gravity didn't start working differently because Newton figured out the laws of gravitation. But if one economic theory holds up in a particular economic cycle, people will adjust their behavior so that it doesn't work anymore. In that way, it's really like psychohistory.
- rytcio 5y ago
  I remember growing up looking at adults, parents, professional computer science people, politicians, etc. as people who were way more knowledgeable and experienced than I. Once I became an adult and worked jobs, I realized that everyone is really not that smart and are mostly just winging it.
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    There are definitely people winging it but that doesn't account for the engineers that designed your iPhone, airliners, rockets that are capable of autonomous landing. Scientists that designed and built mRNA vaccines that use your bodies own infrastructure to synthesis molecules at the target site, managed to replicate fusion ignition on the surface of earth, smashed atoms together at multiple TeV. Sure. Not everyone in every field is smart but experts are a real thing and they know vastly more about their field than you do. I think when you achieve mastery in some field then it becomes a lot easier to appreciate this. Maybe that is part of the problem. The vast majority of people aren't being offered the opportunity to achieve mastery and thus they don't have this critical grounding.
    - DrJones1098 5y ago
      I don't think you're a master in your field until you realize just how much you don't know. It's Dunning Kruger otherwise.
    - rytcio 5y ago
      Sure, there are people who have achieved mastery in their field and are very knowledgeable and experienced within their area of focus. My personal opinion is that fewer and fewer people are actually at that level. Even less likely that those people are in a position of influence. The decline of education quality, the instant gratification era brought on by the internet, nonstop sensationalism, politics and social issues being forced into every aspect of our lives. I lean towards experts being the unknown and unheard people, while the people who have a voice and power to influence something just played politics right, knew the right people, and kissed the right butts.
- myfavoritedog 5y ago
  You don't have to be an expert to ask questions, and to learn the basics to be able to distinguish bs from actual expertise. You don't have to be an expert in order to be able to look at the predictions of some experts and compare them with reality. For example, I'm not an expert in psychology - but I know that psychologists have a huge problem reproducing their own studies. That leads me to believe that I should basically ignore most trendy psychological studies while the news media is oohing and ahhing over them. Economists aren't much better. They're never held to their predictions in a meaningful way. Otherwise, Krugman would have been booted a long time ago.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Doctor is a PERFECT example of when not to trust the experts. Lobotomies won the Nobel prize in the early 1900's. Literally the first thing people tell you to do with doctor's is get a 'second opinion'....why? Because with something as important as your DEATH...everyone knows... it's stupid to trust a single expert as the single source of truth. An expert is merely a single data point in making your OWN DECISION. It's called critical thinking. It's difficult, granted, but essential to living an independant self-sufficient life. I could go on but you get the idea...hopefully, if the lobotomy expert didn't get to you first. ;)
micromacrofoot 5y ago
It's still true a lot of the the time.

jpgvm 5y ago

If you aren't a doctor your "own critical thinking" will have little bearing on the correct treatment or prevention of a disease/illness/injury, doubly so for complex ailments for viruses, cancers and genetic diseases. Pretty much the same goes for civil engineering, particle physics and any other highly trained field that requires vast quantities of knowledge to even intuit probable outcomes. Why is economics any different? I don't believe it is, I would say economics falls into a similar bucket as weather science where there are always large unknowns that make broad predictions imprecise but that doesn't invalidate their expertise and ignoring it is definitely foolish. Experts are experts for a reason. If you could intuit all difficult problems as a layman we would have already advanced science far beyond where we currently stand.

quotemstr 5y ago
Skepticism of medical practice isn't a stupid Steve-Jobs-like trust in woo over science. It's getting multiple opinions, reading the underlying papers, asking "does this explanation make sense?", and checking for obvious mistakes --- as medicine, like any other human endeavor, is full of human error. Plenty of people have found cures for their medical problems only after they kept doggedly pressing medical people for things that made sense and actually worked for them. Something didn't seem right to them, and they pulled and pulled at threads to find out what it was. You don't need a medical degree to do that: you just need a brain. It's gravely concerning to see hostility directed at people who tell others to think for themselves, question experts, and adopt a general attitude of informed skepticism. Too many people get genuinely offended when you indicate that you're going to do your own thinking and not just follow "experts". They bring out cliches like "experts are experts for a reason" and "look at this one guy who did something stupid" and neglect, or even suppress, the idea that we at all, each and every one of us, scientists of our lives and competent to make our own decisions and form our own opinions.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. In a vacuum, yes. Skepticism isn't just healthy, it's what powers science itself. However this isn't a vacuum and most people that "question the experts" aren't doing so in good-faith. Your ability to question an existing theory is proportional to your understanding the problem space itself and knowledge of the existing facts. Basically in order to question an expert realistically you need to be an expert yourself. This shouldn't be controversial, but for some reason it is. :/
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    >There is a big difference between thinking for ourselves and the sort of broad rejection of expertise we are seeing, especially in the US. There's a current trend with labeling people who disagree with your narrative as 'rejecting expertise'. People aren't rejecting expertise. They're following different experts than the one's you approve of. Descarte's, maybe you've heard of him, rejected the expertise that the sun revolved around the Earth despite all of the mainstream experts disagreement. This pattern has repeated countless times throughout history: labotomies, thalidomide, antiseptic procedure...that's just science...god knows the number of people executed for going against the expertise backed narrative that a dictatorship is not an ideal form of government. The problem with 'trusting experts' (which is a classic logical fallacy)...is WHICH EXPERTS? At the end of the day it's all a narrative and you pick the narrative you wish to follow backed by the experts that support your narrative. It's disengenous to claim otherwise. And that's literally a politician or leaders job is to sift through all of the experts and all of the other bullshit and try to pull a good decision out of it. And as a human being, that should be your job as well.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  > It's gravely concerning to see hostility directed at people who tell others to think for themselves, question experts, and adopt a general attitude of informed skepticism. This trend of blind trust has been extremely alarming to me as well these days! Lobotomies won the Nobel prize in the early 20th century championed by experts! Experts aren't immune to agendas, or corruption, or any of the human vices. Appeal to authority is a literal logical fallacy but it's lost on people. Scary world we're in.
triceratops 5y ago
I agree re: medicine or physics because you can perform (in most cases) controlled, repeatable experiments. That's not really true for economics. I do feel the field is on much shakier ground than other sciences. EDIT: Add on also that economics is one of the few fields where what you learn changes the field itself. Gravity didn't start working differently because Newton figured out the laws of gravitation. But if one economic theory holds up in a particular economic cycle, people will adjust their behavior so that it doesn't work anymore. In that way, it's really like psychohistory.
rytcio 5y ago
I remember growing up looking at adults, parents, professional computer science people, politicians, etc. as people who were way more knowledgeable and experienced than I. Once I became an adult and worked jobs, I realized that everyone is really not that smart and are mostly just winging it.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  There are definitely people winging it but that doesn't account for the engineers that designed your iPhone, airliners, rockets that are capable of autonomous landing. Scientists that designed and built mRNA vaccines that use your bodies own infrastructure to synthesis molecules at the target site, managed to replicate fusion ignition on the surface of earth, smashed atoms together at multiple TeV. Sure. Not everyone in every field is smart but experts are a real thing and they know vastly more about their field than you do. I think when you achieve mastery in some field then it becomes a lot easier to appreciate this. Maybe that is part of the problem. The vast majority of people aren't being offered the opportunity to achieve mastery and thus they don't have this critical grounding.
  - DrJones1098 5y ago
    I don't think you're a master in your field until you realize just how much you don't know. It's Dunning Kruger otherwise.
  - rytcio 5y ago
    Sure, there are people who have achieved mastery in their field and are very knowledgeable and experienced within their area of focus. My personal opinion is that fewer and fewer people are actually at that level. Even less likely that those people are in a position of influence. The decline of education quality, the instant gratification era brought on by the internet, nonstop sensationalism, politics and social issues being forced into every aspect of our lives. I lean towards experts being the unknown and unheard people, while the people who have a voice and power to influence something just played politics right, knew the right people, and kissed the right butts.
myfavoritedog 5y ago
You don't have to be an expert to ask questions, and to learn the basics to be able to distinguish bs from actual expertise. You don't have to be an expert in order to be able to look at the predictions of some experts and compare them with reality. For example, I'm not an expert in psychology - but I know that psychologists have a huge problem reproducing their own studies. That leads me to believe that I should basically ignore most trendy psychological studies while the news media is oohing and ahhing over them. Economists aren't much better. They're never held to their predictions in a meaningful way. Otherwise, Krugman would have been booted a long time ago.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
Doctor is a PERFECT example of when not to trust the experts. Lobotomies won the Nobel prize in the early 1900's. Literally the first thing people tell you to do with doctor's is get a 'second opinion'....why? Because with something as important as your DEATH...everyone knows... it's stupid to trust a single expert as the single source of truth. An expert is merely a single data point in making your OWN DECISION. It's called critical thinking. It's difficult, granted, but essential to living an independant self-sufficient life. I could go on but you get the idea...hopefully, if the lobotomy expert didn't get to you first. ;)

micromacrofoot 5y ago

It's still true a lot of the the time.