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This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed

by brabel 5y ago

This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed and advice that was good in their own "time" is no longer good... however, that's an obvious remark: as another commenter pointed out, people almost always tend to think "this time it will be different" and choose to ignore the experts... I would say more useful advice would be that you do that at your own peril: most of the time, nearly always, the experts will be right... the occasions where things really will be different are rare and far between. Eventually, a lucky kid will do well by ignoring the experts, but only after thousands before them failed doing the same thing.

IncRnd 5y ago
You missed about half the article. There was this part (along with lots of examples), "Some expertise is timeless. A few behaviors always repeat. They’re often the most important things to pay attention to."
- brabel 5y ago
  I didn't miss it, just ignored it because no one, not even the experts, konw which part of their expertise is "timeless" and which isn't (otherwise the problem wouldn't exist in the first place).
- ghaff 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's so much about timelesss expertise (Although that exists as well). Rather, the advice is probably something along the lines that when experts tell you that some form of the thing you're doing has been tried half-a-dozen times in the past and has failed--it probably will fail this time too. However, sometimes the difference from what was done in the past is sufficient to make it work this time. Or the surrounding technology ecosystem is qualitatively different. So it's worth considering what it is in today's environment that would invalidate the expert opinion.
efitz 5y ago
And what if the opportunity cost lost retrying something that didn’t work over and over? Maybe it will eventually succeed but what else could have happened with the same effort?
FormerBandmate 5y ago
This article strikes me as the height of overconfidence tbh. The experts are frequently wrong but they're also usually right, and just blindly ignoring them usually leads to easily avoidable mistakes. You weigh the opinions of experts and then discount them when they're wrong, but only when you're really sure
- bratwurst3000 5y ago
  How come they are very often two experts with opposite opinion? Whoever is right can only be proven by time and mostly by realizing the wrong choice was made.
paulpauper 5y ago
If half the experts say to buy stocks and the other half say to sell, who is right? Aat some point, you have to decide. I have observed this a lot with finance. Listening to the wrong experts would have meant missing out on the biggest bull market ever (2009) or selling during the lows of the 2020 covid crash.
- brabel 5y ago
  Finance is a discipline where expertise is really, really difficult to judge. You mention two extraordinary events though. Perhaps even in finance, on normal circumstances, i.e. 99.9% of the time, you would be wise to follow the experts, but on extremely rare events like a pandemic or the recovery period following a once-in-a-decade crash, no one, not even the experts, can predict what's going to happen (let alone you or me)?!

by brabel 5y ago

IncRnd 5y ago

You missed about half the article. There was this part (along with lots of examples), "Some expertise is timeless. A few behaviors always repeat. They’re often the most important things to pay attention to."

brabel 5y ago
I didn't miss it, just ignored it because no one, not even the experts, konw which part of their expertise is "timeless" and which isn't (otherwise the problem wouldn't exist in the first place).
ghaff 5y ago
I'm not sure it's so much about timelesss expertise (Although that exists as well). Rather, the advice is probably something along the lines that when experts tell you that some form of the thing you're doing has been tried half-a-dozen times in the past and has failed--it probably will fail this time too. However, sometimes the difference from what was done in the past is sufficient to make it work this time. Or the surrounding technology ecosystem is qualitatively different. So it's worth considering what it is in today's environment that would invalidate the expert opinion.

efitz 5y ago

And what if the opportunity cost lost retrying something that didn’t work over and over? Maybe it will eventually succeed but what else could have happened with the same effort?

FormerBandmate 5y ago

This article strikes me as the height of overconfidence tbh. The experts are frequently wrong but they're also usually right, and just blindly ignoring them usually leads to easily avoidable mistakes. You weigh the opinions of experts and then discount them when they're wrong, but only when you're really sure

bratwurst3000 5y ago
How come they are very often two experts with opposite opinion? Whoever is right can only be proven by time and mostly by realizing the wrong choice was made.

paulpauper 5y ago

If half the experts say to buy stocks and the other half say to sell, who is right? Aat some point, you have to decide. I have observed this a lot with finance. Listening to the wrong experts would have meant missing out on the biggest bull market ever (2009) or selling during the lows of the 2020 covid crash.

brabel 5y ago
Finance is a discipline where expertise is really, really difficult to judge. You mention two extraordinary events though. Perhaps even in finance, on normal circumstances, i.e. 99.9% of the time, you would be wise to follow the experts, but on extremely rare events like a pandemic or the recovery period following a once-in-a-decade crash, no one, not even the experts, can predict what's going to happen (let alone you or me)?!