9 ms·

Experts vs. Imitators

326 points by harperlee 2y ago

skybrian 2y ago
This is a harder test to pass and I recommend it, but bear in mind its limitations. Without actual subject knowledge, it could be gamed too.
jasonlhy 2y ago
I think the real difference is experts can tell you what he is good at and admits what he is not good at but imitators cannot
topologie 2y ago
Good news is, if the imitator is smart enough, they can become experts... (see "Ripley Underground" by Patricia Highsmith for more info...) :)
incognito124 2y ago
That was on a today's newsletter
garciasn 2y ago
Imitators may get frustrated by the need to go deep with others because they can’t, but to say that experts don’t share that same frustration is nonsense. There are many audiences who want you to go deep, but are not capable of a necessary level of understanding. In fact, these audiences are the ones who become what the author claims are imitators; pretending to understand when they do not. Experts are experts not because they’re teachers; they’re experts because they’re experienced and are executionally excellent.
- nickelpro 2y ago
  In my career I've at times been a leading expert on, as is the way of these things, a couple niche technologies. I'm speaking from that perspective. While certainly there are those who struggle to connect with layman audiences, especially in academia, a complete inability to communicate the challenges and successes of a technology, technique, or theory to laymen is a huge demerit against a claim of expertise. There's a huge difference between walking through technical and theoretical mechanical specifics, and being able to communicate about a subject at different levels of abstraction. The greatest experts can often walk with a laymen right down to and rub against the jargon-filled specifics in a way that leaves no doubt they're able to step over that line without problem. This is important because we don't perform ideation, architecture, or structural problem solving in the terms of white papers and technical specifications. If an expert does not have an abstract internal narrative with which to navigate the mechanics of the subject, they are likely not an expert at all.
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    This isn't really true for anything but the basics. If you're having a conversation with someone who asks more than surface-level questions, but hasnt more than surface-level knowledge, the answers can require many years of study -- or, at least, hours of conversation to get anywhere. This situation is incredibly frustrating if you're an expert, often because these question-askers aren't at all willing to listen to hours of you explaining many things to them. Consider a person who says, "I heard rust was better than python because its safe" -- where would one even begin? Suppose now you're dealing with a person who knows enough to make the claim, but isnt patient enough to have memory safety, garbage collection, interpreters, etc. explained This is often the situation experts are in. Indeed, it's a majority of hackernews threads.
    - Espressosaurus 2y ago
      It's easy. "Rust is better for safety than C because it makes it harder or impossible to make certain kinds of mistakes that are easy to make than C." "What kind of mistakes?" "There are times when you need to acquire some shared resource. Let's say memory. In Rust, it's easy to ensure you return that memory when you're done with it. In C, it's easy to forget to return that memory when you're done with it. This is called a memory leak, and you might find that eventually there's not enough memory for other programs to run." "What's memory?" "Think of a program as a recipe you're performing. Memory then is like working space. Like your counter space in your kitchen. If you run out of counter space, you don't have room to chop up more vegetables or temporarily store your cooked meat or what-have-you. Maybe you ran out of counter space because you left last night's dirty dishes on it. Rust automatically puts the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. In C, you have to remember to do that yourself, and sometimes you forget to." And so on. There's an easy explanation as long as you're not expecting them to perform detailed analysis. And I'm not. edit: eventually you'll get to your limit of simplicity, things like "what is fire?" and maybe you need to say "I don't know, let's find out together!" We all have limits to our expertise, after all.
      - hurril 2y ago
        This hinges on a thorough understanding of safety. It also does not even mention trading things off. Both of which are topics that will require further clarifications. And as it were: and so on.
- zh3 2y ago
  Indeed, this article could easily - and possibly should have - equate imitators to current AI (which tend to fail on deep knowledge, and - unlike experts - show inflexibility when challenged). Which is not to say that shallow knowledge (whether AI or human) is a bad thing. I'm very happy to be helped out by ChatGPT in places where I'd be in the shallow knowledge ('imitator') camp. Still, the limitations of current AI seem quite similar to the 'imitators' described here (noting that plenty of humans aren't above making stuff up either).
- Justsignedup 2y ago
  What I found as an interesting point is the concept that an imitator can't really tell it a different way, because to explain something from a different angle requires you to see it as a 3d object, and not as a flat painting just seeing the result, not everything that goes behind it. Thinking up how to use that.. How to use the concept of explain something to me, and me not understanding to see how deeply they get it.
- qp11 2y ago
  Worth also pointing out as Rate of Change around the Expert increases they become executionally non excellent, while still being called Experts. So that kind of confuses everyone including the experts. Network growth, trade growth, capital growth, info growth all are happening faster than expert growth.
swayvil 2y ago
Experts may have a deep understanding etc but it's the imitators that you want to invite to the party.
- yonz 2y ago
  Party maybe, your company hard no.
- jdlshore 2y ago
  I think you’re implying that imitators are more interesting or fun, but I disagree. I’m in a field that became very popular and lucrative. It has far more imitators than experts. Some of them are interesting and fun, but a lot are shallow snake-oil salesmen. Namedropping and self-promotion abounds.
- thot_experiment 2y ago
  100% disagree, often I meet bullshitters and I think, well this is a person I would never invite to anything.
- Espressosaurus 2y ago
  Why?
yonz 2y ago
I love fs.blog, a relevant one for this is the chauffeur test from https://fs.blog/two-types-of-knowledge/ https://fs.blog/two-types-of-knowledge/
glutamate 2y ago
"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few" (Shunryū Suzuki) Not always bad not to be an expert. And it's fairly rich to start with an example from asset management, which is an industry that habitually mistakes luck for expertise.
stanleykm 2y ago
This is better off as a linkedin post.
demondemidi 2y ago
[flagged]
- flappyeagle 2y ago
  Why
  - demondemidi 2y ago
    The author barely eked out 500 words, claiming to be an authority on the subject, and offered brief platitudes and no depth. Literally what they are complaining about. The internet is just full of hastily written, vapid attempts at being an "expert" on something. lmfao.
    - arp242 2y ago
      Your comment barely ekes out 45 words; offers brief platitudes and not depth. Literally what you are complaining about. The internet is just full of hastily written, vapid comments. lmfao. There ya go; I can be a dismissive cynical asshole too, attacking the mere form of your post without even spending a single word on the content.
      - demondemidi 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - yellowapple 2y ago
      > claiming to be an authority on the subject Where did the author claim to be an authority on the subject?
mikemitchelldev 2y ago
I've heard some professors stop publishing once they receive tenure not wanting to risk losing the aura of being an expert with a low-quality research.
- a_wild_dandan 2y ago
  A more charitable explanation: universities use publication frequency as a proxy for your academic worth. Once the "publish or perish" pressure is released, you can focus on paper quality over quantity. Given the fire hose of trivial academic publications filling up journals, that's good news for everyone.
  - bonoboTP 2y ago
    It never ends. After tenure it's about getting grants to have resources (equipment etc) and to hire a large enough team of PhD students and postdocs. Universities cover some of this by default but they expect profs to draw in third party funding and without extra grants you can't really keep up with the competition. And for grants you needs lots of papers in good venues.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  tenure means you can just coast . the incentives are misaligned
- SubiculumCode 2y ago
  There are a lot of professors out there, so "some" doesn't really mean much by itself. Tenure allows lazy to be lazy, perhaps, but 'most' are not lazy by any reasonable standard. Tenure does allow tackling harder, more risky or non-normative research programs, which is probably a huge net positive
nimbius 2y ago
"If you want the highest quality information, you have to speak to the best people." what a silly thing to say. High quality information is derived from accurate sources subjected to scientific rigor over time. The best people? Best at what? Character and competence arent the same.
- skilled 2y ago
  High quality information comes from direct experience.
  - g4zj 2y ago
    So do anecdotes. How does one tell the difference?
    - oopsallmagic 2y ago
      Epistemology is not new.
    - richrichie 2y ago
      "anecdote" is a point in the sample. "knowledge" is the population statistic discerned from the sample.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  High quality information withstands the test of practice or evidence. It's not time, as bad practices can still persist a long time. It's more like, what produces the best results.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  it should be 'the people which can bridge your pov with the domain' .. a lot of advanced masters are incapable of matching impedance with most lay persons. Sometimes an intermediate craftsman can be a better catalyst here.
  - cutemonster 2y ago
doctorhandshake 2y ago
In my line of work, clients are often looking for something new - something that hasn’t been done before or is at least substantially novel in important ways. I’ve noticed that the difference between neophytes and experts in my biz is that amateurs say ‘I’ve never done that before but how hard could it be?’, whereas experts say ‘I’ve never done that before but I assume it’s full of unknowns and traps.’
- etbebl 2y ago
  There's something like this as well in academia or at least science: because only successful studies get published (the file drawer problem), it's easy for someone who's read a lot of papers but not gotten their hands dirty yet to think that a technique is much easier and less failure prone than it actually is. Of course it's necessary to try new things and every so often they succeed, but if there are 50 papers on some system and none of them have been able to answer a question that seems obviously important, there's probably a reason why. I realized this too late and am now dealing with the consequences as a senior grad student.
  - ramenbytes 2y ago
    Soon-to-be grad student here. Could you expand a bit? Is there anything you recommend doing ahead of time to weed out some of these tarpits, or is the already mentioned heuristic the best we've got so far?
    - etbebl 2y ago
      I think the best way is to seek out the advice of people familiar with what you're trying to do and learn from their past mistakes/take their thoughts on what is a good it bad idea very seriously. My main problem was that I was branching out into techniques that neither my advisor nor any of his collaborators was familiar with. I underestimated the importance of talking to and learning directly from the people who know how to do it. Later I tried to make contact with some of those people, but had limited success because they are protective of their time and expertise (though if you're lucky you might find someone who's unusually generous).
cess11 2y ago
It's just an ad? Anyway, doesn't work on me, I'm not afraid of not being able to tell bullshitters from people with experience, and I'm also not afraid of listening to bullshitters. As the Principia Discordia reminds us, "bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that is beautiful".
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  And nobody understands emperor Norton.
Tao3300 2y ago
This is an effect you see on Reddit a lot. The fitness sub used to have some pretty knowledgeable people in it, but over time it got clogged up with imitators who would just parrot answers from more credible accounts. It's one of the worst side effects of the dopamine rush from fake internet points. I haven't read it in probably a decade for that reason, but that's how it was at the time.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  Which fitness sub? there are so many of them
paulpauper 2y ago
I have basically been an imitator my whole life...being reasonably good at approximating an expert in certain domains but never quite reaching the levels of true expertise--except for maybe one or two things. As Covid showed in which experts could not decide what policy, if any worked, or endless forecasts of recession/crisis that are worse than flipping a coin, the value of expertise in many respects is overrated anyway. Think of all the money managers who borrow their talking points from Warren Buffett. They might sound like Buffett, but they don’t know how to invest the way Buffett does. They’re imitators. Charlie Munger once commented: “It’s very hard to tell the difference between a good money manager and someone who just has the patter down.” The best ones will not take your money, or there is no easy way to invest (e.g. Renaissance Technologies) . the bad ones are practically begging for clients and spend lots of $ on advertising. Also, performance metrics...
upmind 2y ago
>> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level Not sure about others but I feel like most engineers (I know) only learn what they need, are these engineers all imitators? How does one become an expert?
- pojzon 2y ago
  You become an expert by spending absurd amounts of time on something practicing it and having a specific set of additional characteristics that help you get to that level like excellent memory, excellent analytical thinking, excellent ppl skills. A real expert is extremely rare to find. Ppl who think and present themselves as experts in the field is plently. You will know you met a real expert when you talk to them long enough. Ive met few, the knowledge difference was a canyon the approach to solving problems was superb. I try to keep contact with those ppl coz out of few hundred devs I met I considered only 3-5 a real expert.
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
The article is conflating buzzword laden hype-cycles with qualitative artifacts. It takes experience to recognize most software is still garbage, but more importantly determine which parts of the garbage heap is useful. The primary problem is the very definition of any unique terminology or product is distorted by the industry itself to fit a marketing niche. After a few years people sound like they had a stroke, and bought a Turbo Encabulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag
- paulpauper 2y ago
  yeah I m not sure why that blog is so popular. A lot of its analysis is shallow and easily countered. It subscribes to a view that it's possible to reduce the world to logical heuristics. This works sometimes but often fails greatly too.
tlogan 2y ago
Nonsense post. If you are not familiar with the area there is no way distinguish experts vs. imitators. In order words, imitators are not stupid: they are just not expert in the field.
- yellowapple 2y ago
  Asking "why?" seems to be a good way to distinguish experts v. imitators without needing to be an expert yourself. As a bonus, if the other person is an expert, you'll get good answers to those "why?" questions and end up knowing more than you did before. That's indeed what the post's linked article on first principles covers. Yeah, the author's a bit high on Elon's Musk in that article, but the premise and conclusion seem pretty sound: it's hard to expand your knowledge of a topic if you're unwilling to acknowledge the limits of that knowledge. On the other hand, that differentiation strategy is vulnerable to the "Calvin's Dad" gambit: an expert imitator tends to be good at coming up with bullshit on the fly to generate plausible yet inaccurate answers to those "why?" questions.
pojzon 2y ago
I have met many engineers with senior and expert engineer titles. I can count on a single hand the number of ppl I considered experts in their field. Titles are not given based on expertise but how many years of experience you have and how many ppl you know.
- arp242 2y ago
  The problem is that if you're using a reasonable and modest way to describe your level of knowledge, then that's a good way to shaft yourself over if the other guy is bullshitting with titles like "senior" and "expert", either in terms is salary or not getting the job at all.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  "Senior" engineer is a meaningless title consider most companies mark that as ~5 YOE.
begueradj 2y ago
That's one of the consequences of the popular advice: "Fake it till you make it".
deleted 2y ago
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michaelhoney 2y ago
Buffett this, Buffett that. People could do better than idolise someone whose wealth came from parasitic speculation on productive activity.
- wudangmonk 2y ago
  I got a chuckle out of having the 'expert' be Buffet and the subject be finance. I don't think there is a worse example of a subject that lacks first principles and where vocabulary is used to obfuscate and give it a veneer or credibility. Why not pick astrology? those guys will give insight and agree with each other at a higher rate than anyone in economics.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Buffett is rich precisely because he’s not just running off with a fraction of a percent stolen from real investors. He’s the real investor. His strategy is to take a controlling stake in a struggling company with good fundamentals but poor management. Then he’ll “fix up” the small problems and return the company to profitability. How exactly is that parasitic?
  - risenshinetech 2y ago
    > How exactly is that parasitic? Because shallow dismissals of wealthy / successful people is all the rage. Surely none of these people can actually have any talent. They're all just lucky or irredeemably evil, right?
    - zelphirkalt 2y ago
      If we all did what they did, who would do the actual work?
      - lesuorac 2y ago
        > https://buffettfaq.com/#what-are-the-risks-in-the-financial-system-2005 https://buffettfaq.com/#what-are-the-risks-in-the-financial-... > CM: what if we had no manufacturing and our only businesses were hedge funds?] Buffet is very aware of that thinking. Even if CM is Charles Munger (VP of Hathaway).
fullstackchris 2y ago
sounds like every AGI huckster out there vs those who have been in the weeds with ML / NLP since 2010s but yes AGI will be here in 2 years... if only I was an expert and could know this for sure!!! :D
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Is "AI" an imitator or an expert? It is performing mimicry. What happens when people try to "learn" from imitators.
motohagiography 2y ago
to add, an imitator can't tell the difference between the questions, "do you know this?" and "is this knowable?"
breck 2y ago
It's a great post. However, I don't think I've ever met someone who was _trying_ to be an "imitator". Keep in mind that the majority of the world's population grow up in places with little access to the information one needs to be exposed to to become an "expert". So go easy on imitators. Help guide them to enlightenment. Don't flip the bozo bit.
sarreph 2y ago
I find it kind of ironic that an article about misperceiving expertise fails to mention the Dunning-Krueger effect[0], especially with passages like: > Imitators don’t know the limits of their expertise. Experts know what they know, and also know what they don’t know. [...] Imitators can’t. They can’t tell when they’re crossing the boundary into things they don’t understand. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- paavope 2y ago
  IMO Dunning-Krueger has become such a cliche that it’s more refreshing to _not_ read a reference to it in a piece where one could’ve been made. Kinda like quantum mechanics and that stupid cat in a box.
  - yellowapple 2y ago
    Agreed. In a bit of an ironic twist, the various folks I've encountered falling victim to the Dunning-Kreuger effect are themselves often eager to accuse others of being subject to it, as a sort of preemptive defense mechanism when an actual expert inevitably starts deconstructing the misinformation coming from the imitator.
- LegionMammal978 2y ago
  I don't think that D–K really has much to do with it: as originally presented, it predicts that the worst performers tend to think of themselves as close-to-average performers, not as the best performers. (In particular, there's no "U curve" of self-assessment.) Imitation of expertise is more of a kind of personal bravado.
  - dustincoates 2y ago
    This is the funny thing about people who mention Dunning Kruger: they are often getting it wrong themselves. The actual definition is what you said, while the popular definition is that the worst performers think they're experts.
deleted 2y ago
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bjackman 2y ago
I think a positive sign of expertise is when you question someone and they go "oh right, I neglected to establish this foundational concept before making my main point". Or "oh right, let me step back and answer the question again from a different angle". Basically, sometimes if you bounce your ignorance off a true expert you can see it reflected back in a positive light as they try to massage ideas into your perspective. Bullshitters aren't able to do this.
dmitrijbelikov 2y ago
> Real experts have earned their expertise and are excited about trying to share what they know. Depends on a lot of things. Preferably not for free.
User23 2y ago
How does this relate to imposter syndrome?
steelframe 2y ago
Because I'm a senior engineer I am giving a lot of "Expertise" interviews for my company. Recruiters tend to presume that seniority implies broad expertise. In my case it doesn't. There's really only one subject that I feel I'm qualified to assess for expertise, but hardly anyone who interviews at the company claims anything about that subject on their resume. Ninety percent of the time when I interview on that subject the candidate ends up getting a "hard no" from me just based on the first ~10 minutes of the interview, but on a very rare occasion I run across someone who's actually an expert in the field. I'll know because we'll quickly blast past all of the "<subject> 101" questions in the first 5 or 6 minutes, and then I can quickly adapt to deep-dive into technical details, giving them what I know to be fairly novel problems in the domain and then seeing how they apply first principles to tackle them. The "interview" ends up looking more like a collaborative brainstorming session at that point. It's incredible when that happens, which sadly is only maybe once or twice a year. But usually I end up giving an "Expertise" interview for whatever it is they claim expertise in, whether I myself possess expertise in that subject or not. For the past several months the most prominent subject on literally every single resume has been AI/ML. I certainly don't claim expertise in that field, although I did take a graduate course on computational machine learning theory at university. That gives me "just enough" of a handle to not come across as a completely incompetent interviewer, but it feels like a farce. With all this AI/ML hype I feel like the "Expertise" interview just ends up being someone pretending to have expertise in AI/ML being interviewed by someone pretending to be able to assess expertise in AI/ML.
- beacon294 2y ago
  What is your expertise?
edgarvaldes 2y ago
Related, a long time ago: Are You An Expert? (2009) https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-an-expert/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-an-expert/
richrichie 2y ago
>Think of all the money managers who borrow their talking points from Warren Buffett. They might sound like Buffett, but they don’t know how to invest the way Buffett does. Bad analogy. There are domains that admit experts e.g. numerical methods for partial differential equations. Investment management is not one of them. There is way too much luck involved and in Buffet like cases, size and reflexivity confound the matters more. Often, we look for experts in fields that do not admit experts and come away disappointed.
newzisforsukas 2y ago
> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level. Specific knowledge is earned, not learned, so imitators don’t fully understand the ideas they’re talking about. Their knowledge is shallow. As a result, when you ask about details, first principles, or nonstandard cases, they don’t have good answers. Uh, or they just don't have answers to things off hand. A college professor who lectures every semester multiple times about something is very good at reproducing knowledge and fielding questions on that knowledge. However, someone whose expertise is largely procedural will have difficulty fielding answers to "deep questions".
whartung 2y ago
In my experience, the aspect that delineates an expert is that experts can fix things. Gaining knowledge isn’t particularly difficult. But expertise comes from actually applying that knowledge in the real world. The real world is messy and chaotic. It’s also multidisciplinary. Acquired knowledge tends to be limited to the topic at hand. We find topics we like and learn more about them. But the rough edges where disparate disciplines meet is where expertise grows.
elbear 2y ago
A different way to put it: many people understand the what some understand the how fewer understand the why Or, put in a different way: many people understand the API; some understand the implementation, and fewer understand the constraints that shaped everything.
rramadass 2y ago
The article is simplistic with too many assumptions. There are no "Experts" but only "Levels of Expertise"; and the only way to identify the correct level of someone is to be at a particular level yourself based on a objective and honest appraisal of your own knowledge in that domain. Both the perceiver and the perceived are factors to be considered. In common parlance the title "Expert" is bestowed on somebody (usually to the bemusement of that person) when a sizable group of the population acknowledges (not necessarily logically since we have Marketing/PR/Spin/Propaganda/etc. involved) him/her to be at a higher-rung in the knowledge-ladder then themselves in a particular domain. The caveat is that given the complexity/depth of any domain today the vast majority of the population are not to be trusted in their opinions. You can only trust somewhat the judgement of the "peers" of the "Expert" in that particular domain. Knowledge is gained only through a) Direct Perception, b) Logical Inference and c) Valid/Authentic Testimony and all play a part here.
tpoacher 2y ago
Plot twist: the person who wrote this is not an expert.
move-on-by 2y ago
> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level. Specific knowledge is earned, not learned, so imitators don’t fully understand the ideas they’re talking about. Their knowledge is shallow. As a result, when you ask about details, first principles, or nonstandard cases, they don’t have good answers. I disagree. Successful imitators are highly skilled at misdirection and will be able to come up with good-sounding answers. Experts on the other hand might not have the best answers ready at hand. What the author is describing is simply an interview, and we all know interviewing is a skill on its own.
wesleyd 2y ago
To this I would add: Not everyone who claims not to be an expert ... isn't. As you practice a craft, you build up positive knowledge - what works. And you build up negative knowledge - what doesn't work. But you also build up humility; the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. Knowledge increases sub-linearly, assuming a modicum of curiosity, but humility is like a parabola. The "experts" of this article are those at the bottom of the humility parabola. They have quite a bit of positive knowledge, some negative knowledge, but they don't really know yet what they don't know. _Many "experts" don't consider themselves experts._ They all too often say "Hmm, interesting question, I don't know, but...". They are defined by humility and curiosity. Imagine the question "Why is the sky blue?". Somebody who has just finished an undergraduate degree in theoretical physics and happens to have learnt learnt about Rayleigh scattering will sound much more like an expert than somebody who says "Hmm, interesting question, I don't know, but..." and then spends fifteen minutes figuring it out on the spot. Like the phenomenon of the newish driver: nobody seems more of an expert driver than somebody who passed their test three months ago. They have learnt all the rules, they think they know everything, they often don't have much curiosity, and they have yet to learn humility. Of course, this often doesn't matter. Many people don't want an actual expert - they want somebody who sounds like an expert _to other people_. Oracle don't advertise to people who buy software. They advertise to the people who second guess the people who buy software. To quote a wonderful ex-co-worker, "Most people need a generalist. But they want - and are willing to pay for - a specialist."

326 points by harperlee 2y ago

This is a harder test to pass and I recommend it, but bear in mind its limitations. Without actual subject knowledge, it could be gamed too.

jasonlhy 2y ago

I think the real difference is experts can tell you what he is good at and admits what he is not good at but imitators cannot

topologie 2y ago

Good news is, if the imitator is smart enough, they can become experts... (see "Ripley Underground" by Patricia Highsmith for more info...) :)

incognito124 2y ago

That was on a today's newsletter

garciasn 2y ago

Imitators may get frustrated by the need to go deep with others because they can’t, but to say that experts don’t share that same frustration is nonsense. There are many audiences who want you to go deep, but are not capable of a necessary level of understanding. In fact, these audiences are the ones who become what the author claims are imitators; pretending to understand when they do not. Experts are experts not because they’re teachers; they’re experts because they’re experienced and are executionally excellent.

nickelpro 2y ago
In my career I've at times been a leading expert on, as is the way of these things, a couple niche technologies. I'm speaking from that perspective. While certainly there are those who struggle to connect with layman audiences, especially in academia, a complete inability to communicate the challenges and successes of a technology, technique, or theory to laymen is a huge demerit against a claim of expertise. There's a huge difference between walking through technical and theoretical mechanical specifics, and being able to communicate about a subject at different levels of abstraction. The greatest experts can often walk with a laymen right down to and rub against the jargon-filled specifics in a way that leaves no doubt they're able to step over that line without problem. This is important because we don't perform ideation, architecture, or structural problem solving in the terms of white papers and technical specifications. If an expert does not have an abstract internal narrative with which to navigate the mechanics of the subject, they are likely not an expert at all.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  This isn't really true for anything but the basics. If you're having a conversation with someone who asks more than surface-level questions, but hasnt more than surface-level knowledge, the answers can require many years of study -- or, at least, hours of conversation to get anywhere. This situation is incredibly frustrating if you're an expert, often because these question-askers aren't at all willing to listen to hours of you explaining many things to them. Consider a person who says, "I heard rust was better than python because its safe" -- where would one even begin? Suppose now you're dealing with a person who knows enough to make the claim, but isnt patient enough to have memory safety, garbage collection, interpreters, etc. explained This is often the situation experts are in. Indeed, it's a majority of hackernews threads.
  - Espressosaurus 2y ago
    It's easy. "Rust is better for safety than C because it makes it harder or impossible to make certain kinds of mistakes that are easy to make than C." "What kind of mistakes?" "There are times when you need to acquire some shared resource. Let's say memory. In Rust, it's easy to ensure you return that memory when you're done with it. In C, it's easy to forget to return that memory when you're done with it. This is called a memory leak, and you might find that eventually there's not enough memory for other programs to run." "What's memory?" "Think of a program as a recipe you're performing. Memory then is like working space. Like your counter space in your kitchen. If you run out of counter space, you don't have room to chop up more vegetables or temporarily store your cooked meat or what-have-you. Maybe you ran out of counter space because you left last night's dirty dishes on it. Rust automatically puts the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. In C, you have to remember to do that yourself, and sometimes you forget to." And so on. There's an easy explanation as long as you're not expecting them to perform detailed analysis. And I'm not. edit: eventually you'll get to your limit of simplicity, things like "what is fire?" and maybe you need to say "I don't know, let's find out together!" We all have limits to our expertise, after all.
    - hurril 2y ago
      This hinges on a thorough understanding of safety. It also does not even mention trading things off. Both of which are topics that will require further clarifications. And as it were: and so on.
zh3 2y ago
Indeed, this article could easily - and possibly should have - equate imitators to current AI (which tend to fail on deep knowledge, and - unlike experts - show inflexibility when challenged). Which is not to say that shallow knowledge (whether AI or human) is a bad thing. I'm very happy to be helped out by ChatGPT in places where I'd be in the shallow knowledge ('imitator') camp. Still, the limitations of current AI seem quite similar to the 'imitators' described here (noting that plenty of humans aren't above making stuff up either).
Justsignedup 2y ago
What I found as an interesting point is the concept that an imitator can't really tell it a different way, because to explain something from a different angle requires you to see it as a 3d object, and not as a flat painting just seeing the result, not everything that goes behind it. Thinking up how to use that.. How to use the concept of explain something to me, and me not understanding to see how deeply they get it.
qp11 2y ago
Worth also pointing out as Rate of Change around the Expert increases they become executionally non excellent, while still being called Experts. So that kind of confuses everyone including the experts. Network growth, trade growth, capital growth, info growth all are happening faster than expert growth.

swayvil 2y ago

Experts may have a deep understanding etc but it's the imitators that you want to invite to the party.

yonz 2y ago
Party maybe, your company hard no.
jdlshore 2y ago
I think you’re implying that imitators are more interesting or fun, but I disagree. I’m in a field that became very popular and lucrative. It has far more imitators than experts. Some of them are interesting and fun, but a lot are shallow snake-oil salesmen. Namedropping and self-promotion abounds.
thot_experiment 2y ago
100% disagree, often I meet bullshitters and I think, well this is a person I would never invite to anything.
Espressosaurus 2y ago
Why?

yonz 2y ago

I love fs.blog, a relevant one for this is the chauffeur test from https://fs.blog/two-types-of-knowledge/ https://fs.blog/two-types-of-knowledge/

glutamate 2y ago

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few" (Shunryū Suzuki) Not always bad not to be an expert. And it's fairly rich to start with an example from asset management, which is an industry that habitually mistakes luck for expertise.

stanleykm 2y ago

This is better off as a linkedin post.

demondemidi 2y ago

[flagged]

flappyeagle 2y ago
Why
- demondemidi 2y ago
  The author barely eked out 500 words, claiming to be an authority on the subject, and offered brief platitudes and no depth. Literally what they are complaining about. The internet is just full of hastily written, vapid attempts at being an "expert" on something. lmfao.
  - arp242 2y ago
    Your comment barely ekes out 45 words; offers brief platitudes and not depth. Literally what you are complaining about. The internet is just full of hastily written, vapid comments. lmfao. There ya go; I can be a dismissive cynical asshole too, attacking the mere form of your post without even spending a single word on the content.
    - demondemidi 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - yellowapple 2y ago
    > claiming to be an authority on the subject Where did the author claim to be an authority on the subject?

mikemitchelldev 2y ago

I've heard some professors stop publishing once they receive tenure not wanting to risk losing the aura of being an expert with a low-quality research.

a_wild_dandan 2y ago
A more charitable explanation: universities use publication frequency as a proxy for your academic worth. Once the "publish or perish" pressure is released, you can focus on paper quality over quantity. Given the fire hose of trivial academic publications filling up journals, that's good news for everyone.
- bonoboTP 2y ago
  It never ends. After tenure it's about getting grants to have resources (equipment etc) and to hire a large enough team of PhD students and postdocs. Universities cover some of this by default but they expect profs to draw in third party funding and without extra grants you can't really keep up with the competition. And for grants you needs lots of papers in good venues.
paulpauper 2y ago
tenure means you can just coast . the incentives are misaligned
SubiculumCode 2y ago
There are a lot of professors out there, so "some" doesn't really mean much by itself. Tenure allows lazy to be lazy, perhaps, but 'most' are not lazy by any reasonable standard. Tenure does allow tackling harder, more risky or non-normative research programs, which is probably a huge net positive

nimbius 2y ago

"If you want the highest quality information, you have to speak to the best people." what a silly thing to say. High quality information is derived from accurate sources subjected to scientific rigor over time. The best people? Best at what? Character and competence arent the same.

skilled 2y ago
High quality information comes from direct experience.
- g4zj 2y ago
  So do anecdotes. How does one tell the difference?
  - oopsallmagic 2y ago
    Epistemology is not new.
  - richrichie 2y ago
    "anecdote" is a point in the sample. "knowledge" is the population statistic discerned from the sample.
paulpauper 2y ago
High quality information withstands the test of practice or evidence. It's not time, as bad practices can still persist a long time. It's more like, what produces the best results.
agumonkey 2y ago
it should be 'the people which can bridge your pov with the domain' .. a lot of advanced masters are incapable of matching impedance with most lay persons. Sometimes an intermediate craftsman can be a better catalyst here.
- cutemonster 2y ago

doctorhandshake 2y ago

In my line of work, clients are often looking for something new - something that hasn’t been done before or is at least substantially novel in important ways. I’ve noticed that the difference between neophytes and experts in my biz is that amateurs say ‘I’ve never done that before but how hard could it be?’, whereas experts say ‘I’ve never done that before but I assume it’s full of unknowns and traps.’

etbebl 2y ago
There's something like this as well in academia or at least science: because only successful studies get published (the file drawer problem), it's easy for someone who's read a lot of papers but not gotten their hands dirty yet to think that a technique is much easier and less failure prone than it actually is. Of course it's necessary to try new things and every so often they succeed, but if there are 50 papers on some system and none of them have been able to answer a question that seems obviously important, there's probably a reason why. I realized this too late and am now dealing with the consequences as a senior grad student.
- ramenbytes 2y ago
  Soon-to-be grad student here. Could you expand a bit? Is there anything you recommend doing ahead of time to weed out some of these tarpits, or is the already mentioned heuristic the best we've got so far?
  - etbebl 2y ago
    I think the best way is to seek out the advice of people familiar with what you're trying to do and learn from their past mistakes/take their thoughts on what is a good it bad idea very seriously. My main problem was that I was branching out into techniques that neither my advisor nor any of his collaborators was familiar with. I underestimated the importance of talking to and learning directly from the people who know how to do it. Later I tried to make contact with some of those people, but had limited success because they are protective of their time and expertise (though if you're lucky you might find someone who's unusually generous).

cess11 2y ago

It's just an ad? Anyway, doesn't work on me, I'm not afraid of not being able to tell bullshitters from people with experience, and I'm also not afraid of listening to bullshitters. As the Principia Discordia reminds us, "bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that is beautiful".

datadrivenangel 2y ago
And nobody understands emperor Norton.

Tao3300 2y ago

This is an effect you see on Reddit a lot. The fitness sub used to have some pretty knowledgeable people in it, but over time it got clogged up with imitators who would just parrot answers from more credible accounts. It's one of the worst side effects of the dopamine rush from fake internet points. I haven't read it in probably a decade for that reason, but that's how it was at the time.

paulpauper 2y ago
Which fitness sub? there are so many of them

paulpauper 2y ago

I have basically been an imitator my whole life...being reasonably good at approximating an expert in certain domains but never quite reaching the levels of true expertise--except for maybe one or two things. As Covid showed in which experts could not decide what policy, if any worked, or endless forecasts of recession/crisis that are worse than flipping a coin, the value of expertise in many respects is overrated anyway. Think of all the money managers who borrow their talking points from Warren Buffett. They might sound like Buffett, but they don’t know how to invest the way Buffett does. They’re imitators. Charlie Munger once commented: “It’s very hard to tell the difference between a good money manager and someone who just has the patter down.” The best ones will not take your money, or there is no easy way to invest (e.g. Renaissance Technologies) . the bad ones are practically begging for clients and spend lots of $ on advertising. Also, performance metrics...

upmind 2y ago

>> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level Not sure about others but I feel like most engineers (I know) only learn what they need, are these engineers all imitators? How does one become an expert?

pojzon 2y ago
You become an expert by spending absurd amounts of time on something practicing it and having a specific set of additional characteristics that help you get to that level like excellent memory, excellent analytical thinking, excellent ppl skills. A real expert is extremely rare to find. Ppl who think and present themselves as experts in the field is plently. You will know you met a real expert when you talk to them long enough. Ive met few, the knowledge difference was a canyon the approach to solving problems was superb. I try to keep contact with those ppl coz out of few hundred devs I met I considered only 3-5 a real expert.

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

The article is conflating buzzword laden hype-cycles with qualitative artifacts. It takes experience to recognize most software is still garbage, but more importantly determine which parts of the garbage heap is useful. The primary problem is the very definition of any unique terminology or product is distorted by the industry itself to fit a marketing niche. After a few years people sound like they had a stroke, and bought a Turbo Encabulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag

paulpauper 2y ago
yeah I m not sure why that blog is so popular. A lot of its analysis is shallow and easily countered. It subscribes to a view that it's possible to reduce the world to logical heuristics. This works sometimes but often fails greatly too.

tlogan 2y ago

Nonsense post. If you are not familiar with the area there is no way distinguish experts vs. imitators. In order words, imitators are not stupid: they are just not expert in the field.

yellowapple 2y ago
Asking "why?" seems to be a good way to distinguish experts v. imitators without needing to be an expert yourself. As a bonus, if the other person is an expert, you'll get good answers to those "why?" questions and end up knowing more than you did before. That's indeed what the post's linked article on first principles covers. Yeah, the author's a bit high on Elon's Musk in that article, but the premise and conclusion seem pretty sound: it's hard to expand your knowledge of a topic if you're unwilling to acknowledge the limits of that knowledge. On the other hand, that differentiation strategy is vulnerable to the "Calvin's Dad" gambit: an expert imitator tends to be good at coming up with bullshit on the fly to generate plausible yet inaccurate answers to those "why?" questions.

pojzon 2y ago

I have met many engineers with senior and expert engineer titles. I can count on a single hand the number of ppl I considered experts in their field. Titles are not given based on expertise but how many years of experience you have and how many ppl you know.

arp242 2y ago
The problem is that if you're using a reasonable and modest way to describe your level of knowledge, then that's a good way to shaft yourself over if the other guy is bullshitting with titles like "senior" and "expert", either in terms is salary or not getting the job at all.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
"Senior" engineer is a meaningless title consider most companies mark that as ~5 YOE.

begueradj 2y ago

That's one of the consequences of the popular advice: "Fake it till you make it".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

michaelhoney 2y ago

Buffett this, Buffett that. People could do better than idolise someone whose wealth came from parasitic speculation on productive activity.

wudangmonk 2y ago
I got a chuckle out of having the 'expert' be Buffet and the subject be finance. I don't think there is a worse example of a subject that lacks first principles and where vocabulary is used to obfuscate and give it a veneer or credibility. Why not pick astrology? those guys will give insight and agree with each other at a higher rate than anyone in economics.
jiggawatts 2y ago
Buffett is rich precisely because he’s not just running off with a fraction of a percent stolen from real investors. He’s the real investor. His strategy is to take a controlling stake in a struggling company with good fundamentals but poor management. Then he’ll “fix up” the small problems and return the company to profitability. How exactly is that parasitic?
- risenshinetech 2y ago
  > How exactly is that parasitic? Because shallow dismissals of wealthy / successful people is all the rage. Surely none of these people can actually have any talent. They're all just lucky or irredeemably evil, right?
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    If we all did what they did, who would do the actual work?
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      > https://buffettfaq.com/#what-are-the-risks-in-the-financial-system-2005 https://buffettfaq.com/#what-are-the-risks-in-the-financial-... > CM: what if we had no manufacturing and our only businesses were hedge funds?] Buffet is very aware of that thinking. Even if CM is Charles Munger (VP of Hathaway).

fullstackchris 2y ago

sounds like every AGI huckster out there vs those who have been in the weeds with ML / NLP since 2010s but yes AGI will be here in 2 years... if only I was an expert and could know this for sure!!! :D

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Is "AI" an imitator or an expert? It is performing mimicry. What happens when people try to "learn" from imitators.

motohagiography 2y ago

to add, an imitator can't tell the difference between the questions, "do you know this?" and "is this knowable?"

breck 2y ago

It's a great post. However, I don't think I've ever met someone who was _trying_ to be an "imitator". Keep in mind that the majority of the world's population grow up in places with little access to the information one needs to be exposed to to become an "expert". So go easy on imitators. Help guide them to enlightenment. Don't flip the bozo bit.

sarreph 2y ago

I find it kind of ironic that an article about misperceiving expertise fails to mention the Dunning-Krueger effect[0], especially with passages like: > Imitators don’t know the limits of their expertise. Experts know what they know, and also know what they don’t know. [...] Imitators can’t. They can’t tell when they’re crossing the boundary into things they don’t understand. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

paavope 2y ago
IMO Dunning-Krueger has become such a cliche that it’s more refreshing to _not_ read a reference to it in a piece where one could’ve been made. Kinda like quantum mechanics and that stupid cat in a box.
- yellowapple 2y ago
  Agreed. In a bit of an ironic twist, the various folks I've encountered falling victim to the Dunning-Kreuger effect are themselves often eager to accuse others of being subject to it, as a sort of preemptive defense mechanism when an actual expert inevitably starts deconstructing the misinformation coming from the imitator.
LegionMammal978 2y ago
I don't think that D–K really has much to do with it: as originally presented, it predicts that the worst performers tend to think of themselves as close-to-average performers, not as the best performers. (In particular, there's no "U curve" of self-assessment.) Imitation of expertise is more of a kind of personal bravado.
- dustincoates 2y ago
  This is the funny thing about people who mention Dunning Kruger: they are often getting it wrong themselves. The actual definition is what you said, while the popular definition is that the worst performers think they're experts.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bjackman 2y ago

I think a positive sign of expertise is when you question someone and they go "oh right, I neglected to establish this foundational concept before making my main point". Or "oh right, let me step back and answer the question again from a different angle". Basically, sometimes if you bounce your ignorance off a true expert you can see it reflected back in a positive light as they try to massage ideas into your perspective. Bullshitters aren't able to do this.

dmitrijbelikov 2y ago

> Real experts have earned their expertise and are excited about trying to share what they know. Depends on a lot of things. Preferably not for free.

User23 2y ago

How does this relate to imposter syndrome?

steelframe 2y ago

Because I'm a senior engineer I am giving a lot of "Expertise" interviews for my company. Recruiters tend to presume that seniority implies broad expertise. In my case it doesn't. There's really only one subject that I feel I'm qualified to assess for expertise, but hardly anyone who interviews at the company claims anything about that subject on their resume. Ninety percent of the time when I interview on that subject the candidate ends up getting a "hard no" from me just based on the first ~10 minutes of the interview, but on a very rare occasion I run across someone who's actually an expert in the field. I'll know because we'll quickly blast past all of the "<subject> 101" questions in the first 5 or 6 minutes, and then I can quickly adapt to deep-dive into technical details, giving them what I know to be fairly novel problems in the domain and then seeing how they apply first principles to tackle them. The "interview" ends up looking more like a collaborative brainstorming session at that point. It's incredible when that happens, which sadly is only maybe once or twice a year. But usually I end up giving an "Expertise" interview for whatever it is they claim expertise in, whether I myself possess expertise in that subject or not. For the past several months the most prominent subject on literally every single resume has been AI/ML. I certainly don't claim expertise in that field, although I did take a graduate course on computational machine learning theory at university. That gives me "just enough" of a handle to not come across as a completely incompetent interviewer, but it feels like a farce. With all this AI/ML hype I feel like the "Expertise" interview just ends up being someone pretending to have expertise in AI/ML being interviewed by someone pretending to be able to assess expertise in AI/ML.

beacon294 2y ago
What is your expertise?

edgarvaldes 2y ago

Related, a long time ago: Are You An Expert? (2009) https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-an-expert/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-an-expert/

richrichie 2y ago

>Think of all the money managers who borrow their talking points from Warren Buffett. They might sound like Buffett, but they don’t know how to invest the way Buffett does. Bad analogy. There are domains that admit experts e.g. numerical methods for partial differential equations. Investment management is not one of them. There is way too much luck involved and in Buffet like cases, size and reflexivity confound the matters more. Often, we look for experts in fields that do not admit experts and come away disappointed.

newzisforsukas 2y ago

> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level. Specific knowledge is earned, not learned, so imitators don’t fully understand the ideas they’re talking about. Their knowledge is shallow. As a result, when you ask about details, first principles, or nonstandard cases, they don’t have good answers. Uh, or they just don't have answers to things off hand. A college professor who lectures every semester multiple times about something is very good at reproducing knowledge and fielding questions on that knowledge. However, someone whose expertise is largely procedural will have difficulty fielding answers to "deep questions".

whartung 2y ago

In my experience, the aspect that delineates an expert is that experts can fix things. Gaining knowledge isn’t particularly difficult. But expertise comes from actually applying that knowledge in the real world. The real world is messy and chaotic. It’s also multidisciplinary. Acquired knowledge tends to be limited to the topic at hand. We find topics we like and learn more about them. But the rough edges where disparate disciplines meet is where expertise grows.

elbear 2y ago

A different way to put it: many people understand the what some understand the how fewer understand the why Or, put in a different way: many people understand the API; some understand the implementation, and fewer understand the constraints that shaped everything.

rramadass 2y ago

The article is simplistic with too many assumptions. There are no "Experts" but only "Levels of Expertise"; and the only way to identify the correct level of someone is to be at a particular level yourself based on a objective and honest appraisal of your own knowledge in that domain. Both the perceiver and the perceived are factors to be considered. In common parlance the title "Expert" is bestowed on somebody (usually to the bemusement of that person) when a sizable group of the population acknowledges (not necessarily logically since we have Marketing/PR/Spin/Propaganda/etc. involved) him/her to be at a higher-rung in the knowledge-ladder then themselves in a particular domain. The caveat is that given the complexity/depth of any domain today the vast majority of the population are not to be trusted in their opinions. You can only trust somewhat the judgement of the "peers" of the "Expert" in that particular domain. Knowledge is gained only through a) Direct Perception, b) Logical Inference and c) Valid/Authentic Testimony and all play a part here.

tpoacher 2y ago

Plot twist: the person who wrote this is not an expert.

move-on-by 2y ago

> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level. Specific knowledge is earned, not learned, so imitators don’t fully understand the ideas they’re talking about. Their knowledge is shallow. As a result, when you ask about details, first principles, or nonstandard cases, they don’t have good answers. I disagree. Successful imitators are highly skilled at misdirection and will be able to come up with good-sounding answers. Experts on the other hand might not have the best answers ready at hand. What the author is describing is simply an interview, and we all know interviewing is a skill on its own.

wesleyd 2y ago

To this I would add: Not everyone who claims not to be an expert ... isn't. As you practice a craft, you build up positive knowledge - what works. And you build up negative knowledge - what doesn't work. But you also build up humility; the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. Knowledge increases sub-linearly, assuming a modicum of curiosity, but humility is like a parabola. The "experts" of this article are those at the bottom of the humility parabola. They have quite a bit of positive knowledge, some negative knowledge, but they don't really know yet what they don't know. _Many "experts" don't consider themselves experts._ They all too often say "Hmm, interesting question, I don't know, but...". They are defined by humility and curiosity. Imagine the question "Why is the sky blue?". Somebody who has just finished an undergraduate degree in theoretical physics and happens to have learnt learnt about Rayleigh scattering will sound much more like an expert than somebody who says "Hmm, interesting question, I don't know, but..." and then spends fifteen minutes figuring it out on the spot. Like the phenomenon of the newish driver: nobody seems more of an expert driver than somebody who passed their test three months ago. They have learnt all the rules, they think they know everything, they often don't have much curiosity, and they have yet to learn humility. Of course, this often doesn't matter. Many people don't want an actual expert - they want somebody who sounds like an expert _to other people_. Oracle don't advertise to people who buy software. They advertise to the people who second guess the people who buy software. To quote a wonderful ex-co-worker, "Most people need a generalist. But they want - and are willing to pay for - a specialist."