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This is what happens in a world where “experts” are merely those with “certifications at the expert level” and not people with actual knowledge and experience.
by opportune 3y ago
This is what happens in a world where “experts” are merely those with “certifications at the expert level” and not people with actual knowledge and experience.
That kind of world is an inevitable outcome of large bureaucracies and over-reliance on qualifications. You don’t just get idiocracy, you get Untruths and policies oriented around expanding the bureaucracy rather than addressing problems. See also: Lysenkoism in the USSR, EU’s model of funding startups through grants.
I honestly think this one of the things the US does way, way better than other developed countries. We pay a price in cronyism and corruption, but we actually let industry experts with real experience both advise on policy and take key government positions. We don’t pretend you need a PhD in X to be knowledgeable about X to nearly the same extent as Canada and the Eu.
You can’t just stick a midwit in a university for 10 years and expect them to be anything other than a midwit, and you can’t expert an organization that values compliance and internal politics more than performance and effectiveness to produce performant or effective leaders. You can’t bureaucracy your way into a free market either.
- vasco 3y agoA bunch of people with the wrong assumptions who don't understand the core mechanics of a situation surely won't improve things I agree with you on that. Calling them midwits with no prospects, on the other hand, says more about you than them.
- opportune 3y agoThere is nothing wrong per-se with being a midwit; most people are midwits and I never said they have “no prospects”. What I take issue with is the kind of idiocracy you get when experts are identified according to “an uninformed person’s idea of an expert” rather than actual expertise. Bureaucracies’ ideas of expertise are usually “objective” like a degree or certification. The thing about degrees and certifications is that they are not nearly as difficult to get or indicative of knowledge/intelligence as an average person thinks they are. Especially with regard to more practical degrees like business and engineering, they simply cannot really teach you the same kinds of things you learn from actually working in the field.
- drno123 3y agoAs someone living in the EU, I can say your comparison between Lysenkoism and EU grants is fantastic.