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>>I believe in listening to experts (but ultimately making an informed decision). The problem for the most part in all industries is we have moved from a syste

>>I believe in listening to experts (but ultimately making an informed decision). The problem for the most part in all industries is we have moved from a system of experts to a system of credentials. Now one would say that in order to get a credential in something one must be an "expert" but this is far far from the truth, there are all kinds of competing incentives to ensure an ever increasing supply of "credentialed" professionals that have nothing to do with validation of their expertise in a given field or subject. It does not matter if it something like an electrician, or brain surgeon, from teaching, to physics, and everything in between including medicine, we favor credentials now not expertise Largely the consumer public simply looks to see if this person as the correct credential. license, etc for the given job... Consumers often lack the resources, information, or decisions tree in most instances to look for any indicators of actual knowledge in the field beyond that credential

tomsmeding 3y ago
> Consumers often lack the resources, information, or decisions tree in most instances to look for any indicators of actual knowledge in the field beyond that credential This is true. I have no clue how to check the expertise of my dentist, apart from using my own mental bullshit detector (of limited use here) and reading reviews by others (also of questionable use, because who reviews their dentist? And where?). The analogous problem exists for certain kinds of expensive products with the property that they usually work well, but sometimes become flaky. Think a washing machine. Who posts a review about their washing machine four years post-date that it's still going strong? And absence of base rate information makes absolute numbers of bad reviews mostly meaningless.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>expensive products with the property that they usually work well, but sometimes become flaky. Think a washing machine. that is a different problem, consumerism killed that. There used to be several media companies that focused on long term durability of "durable goods" like washing machines and such But today most people buy new appliances not when they fail but when they need to upgrade to the latest technology, or because new government regulations makes them unfeasible to use / service, or because the Calendar function on their smart fridge does not work with google cloud anymore (true story), etc...
  - gorbachev 3y ago
    That may be true for a lot of folks, but that's not the only issue. From my experience, the biggest issue is that a lot of the appliances and other gadgets we have these days are very complex. You have to be an electrical engineers, software engineer and a mechanical engineer, or a big service company that employs all three, to be able to fix anything. Additionally it's sometimes really difficult to find service manuals for a lot of these things. If your doodat is flashing error code E-71-X1-C and the user manual you have just says "call for service", what are you going to do about it? You typically need pretty serious google-fu magic to find enough information to start figuring out what's wrong. When my dryer broke several years ago I think I found the proper service manual for it on a site that looked exactly like a SEO spam site and seriously sketchy. Downloading the PDF I was praying my anti-virus application was up-to-date.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > If your doodat is flashing error code E-71-X1-C and the user manual you have just says "call for service", what are you going to do about it? Call for service.
api 3y ago
Systems of experts are hard to scale since you need experts that you know are experts to vouch for experts. Systems of credentials that are at least theoretically assigned by experts are the next best thing, but obviously not ideal. It’s at least better than the populist solution of anti-experts chosen on the basis of charisma or “truthiness.”
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  your last part is a false dilemma, because there are methods that do not required a system of credentials and also do not require populism Your first part is more challenging because what you find is the people with true expertise in their field are often far to busy and/or have no interest in validating other experts so the people doing the validation at best are on the lowest end of the spectrum of "experts" which naturally causes the spectrum to expand. Further you will find in many many many fields the method of obtain a credential is has no connection to another expert vouching for you, it is matter of simply passing some kind of standardized test, and completing a required amount of training For example one that has been in the recent news is Airline Pilots where you have to have a fix number of flight hours to be a commercial pilots, many pilots get those hours by fly pipe or other utility line check operations which is done a clear day, fixed altitude, fixed path and with limited deviation. So the value of those hours would be far less than the same person flying in varied conditions, in varied locations, etc.

tomsmeding 3y ago

> Consumers often lack the resources, information, or decisions tree in most instances to look for any indicators of actual knowledge in the field beyond that credential This is true. I have no clue how to check the expertise of my dentist, apart from using my own mental bullshit detector (of limited use here) and reading reviews by others (also of questionable use, because who reviews their dentist? And where?). The analogous problem exists for certain kinds of expensive products with the property that they usually work well, but sometimes become flaky. Think a washing machine. Who posts a review about their washing machine four years post-date that it's still going strong? And absence of base rate information makes absolute numbers of bad reviews mostly meaningless.

phpisthebest 3y ago
>>expensive products with the property that they usually work well, but sometimes become flaky. Think a washing machine. that is a different problem, consumerism killed that. There used to be several media companies that focused on long term durability of "durable goods" like washing machines and such But today most people buy new appliances not when they fail but when they need to upgrade to the latest technology, or because new government regulations makes them unfeasible to use / service, or because the Calendar function on their smart fridge does not work with google cloud anymore (true story), etc...
- gorbachev 3y ago
  That may be true for a lot of folks, but that's not the only issue. From my experience, the biggest issue is that a lot of the appliances and other gadgets we have these days are very complex. You have to be an electrical engineers, software engineer and a mechanical engineer, or a big service company that employs all three, to be able to fix anything. Additionally it's sometimes really difficult to find service manuals for a lot of these things. If your doodat is flashing error code E-71-X1-C and the user manual you have just says "call for service", what are you going to do about it? You typically need pretty serious google-fu magic to find enough information to start figuring out what's wrong. When my dryer broke several years ago I think I found the proper service manual for it on a site that looked exactly like a SEO spam site and seriously sketchy. Downloading the PDF I was praying my anti-virus application was up-to-date.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > If your doodat is flashing error code E-71-X1-C and the user manual you have just says "call for service", what are you going to do about it? Call for service.

api 3y ago

Systems of experts are hard to scale since you need experts that you know are experts to vouch for experts. Systems of credentials that are at least theoretically assigned by experts are the next best thing, but obviously not ideal. It’s at least better than the populist solution of anti-experts chosen on the basis of charisma or “truthiness.”

phpisthebest 3y ago
your last part is a false dilemma, because there are methods that do not required a system of credentials and also do not require populism Your first part is more challenging because what you find is the people with true expertise in their field are often far to busy and/or have no interest in validating other experts so the people doing the validation at best are on the lowest end of the spectrum of "experts" which naturally causes the spectrum to expand. Further you will find in many many many fields the method of obtain a credential is has no connection to another expert vouching for you, it is matter of simply passing some kind of standardized test, and completing a required amount of training For example one that has been in the recent news is Airline Pilots where you have to have a fix number of flight hours to be a commercial pilots, many pilots get those hours by fly pipe or other utility line check operations which is done a clear day, fixed altitude, fixed path and with limited deviation. So the value of those hours would be far less than the same person flying in varied conditions, in varied locations, etc.