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In this age of endless expertise, it's easy to be fooled into thinking someone is a true authority until you hear them speak on a topic you know well. There's a

In this age of endless expertise, it's easy to be fooled into thinking someone is a true authority until you hear them speak on a topic you know well. There's a certain thrill in getting a glimpse behind the curtain, seeing the man (or woman) behind the rhetoric. While I tell myself that 40% of what they say is just made up or misinterpreted, I can't help but keep listening, captivated by the illusion of insight. Even when we know better, the siren song of perceived wisdom is hard to resist. At the end of the day, true expertise is rarer than we'd like to admit - but the fantasy is always enticing.

swyx 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
- deskr 2y ago
  Wow, I didn't know this effect had a name. I've experienced it so many times. I've also seen how politicians lie and tell half truths about stuff, where I know the full story like them.
  - TApplencourt 2y ago
    It was in the article...
    - deskr 2y ago
      Shows that it's not safe to assume that a random Besserwisser on HN has read the article. In my defence I did skim through it though.
- musicale 2y ago
  I consider it the cost of information rather than amnesia. When I read articles about something that I don't know much about, I usually don't have time to fact-check everything individually if it's not obviously wrong and seems to be plausibly presented, so I use it as a base theory until I receive evidence to the contrary - while knowing that it is likely still full of errors.
uh_uh 2y ago
These guys are clearly at least somewhat intelligent and have brought up arguments in the past that I, in my infinite wisdom, haven’t considered. It’s up to me whether I take those arguments onboard after a sufficient amount of research. So I don’t think we should not listen at all. We should just not be all-in.
seadan83 2y ago
Totally. Combine with a nice sweater, a headset mic, a giant screen behind them, an audience and boom! Insta credibility. Looking like it is a TED talk is just as good as being a TED talk - and of course then all true! Deep expertise.. (maybe not these guys in particular. Just musing on some very good looking disinfi. Same thing as dressing people up in lab coats)
bko 2y ago
I think vibes are underrated. The smart people can easily mislead you because they're smart. So you can cover things up with "official statistics", maliciously or by accident. For instance, inflation is a big one. I remember during the first spike in inflation (2021 I believe), I started nothing prices have gone up between 25-50%. We've been told at the time inflation was something like 7% but that would mean paying $5.35 for something that used to cost $5, which was obviously not what was happening. In short, they play games with the numbers. Bezos was on Fridman talking about something similar. He learned that Amazon’s metrics said typical wait time less than 1 min to reach customer service. But everyone complained about how long it took. So in a meeting he called Amazon’s customer service line and was put on hold for over 10 minutes, far exceeding the promised wait time. He stated, “When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right." All in goes off vibes and try to tie it to reality but sometimes miss the mark. But I think the vibes are often more right than the data.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Why did vibes take over from "gut feeling" I wonder
  - jrussino 2y ago
    Every new generation reinvents slang. "Politically correct" became "woke". "Hip" became "cool" became "fire" or whatever the kids are saying these days.
- cywick 2y ago
  > I think vibes are underrated. The smart people can easily mislead you because they're smart. So you can cover things up with "official statistics", maliciously or by accident. > For instance, inflation is a big one. I remember during the first spike in inflation (2021 I believe), I started nothing prices have gone up between 25-50%. We've been told at the time inflation was something like 7% but that would mean paying $5.35 for something that used to cost $5, which was obviously not what was happening. In short, they play games with the numbers. When there is a mismatch between your personal gut feeling and some official number or alleged fact in the world, there are different ways you can react: A) You could think "Hmm, that's weird, is it possible that I'm missing something?" B) You default to thinking that clearly you are right, so this is just another case of those so-called experts lying to you. Had your response been A), you would have looked a bit more into it and realized that the overall inflation number is not based just on a subset of a few grocery items, but based on all different kinds of living expenses that people have. Many of those prices increased much less in 2021 than the overall 7% inflation rate (e.g., prescription drugs, cell phone plans, airline fares, motor vehicle insurance), so naturally, inflation in other categories was much higher to result in an overall rate of 7%. If your gut feeling also tells you to doubt the inflation numbers for individual item categories released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ([1]), you can get the raw data for those too, if I remember correctly. One problem with your gut feeling is that it's very susceptible to various biases. For instance, the price of one grocery item increasing by 30% will be much more noticeable to you than the price of another item staying the same. It's also very easy to not realize that you are comparing the current price to the one from two years ago or so, thereby dramatically overestimating the yearly inflation rate. I didn't mean to single you out, but the tendency by so many people to have overconfident knee jerk reactions to various information, instead of at least considering that they might have unknown unknowns or things they don't fully understand, is something that really concerns me. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-price-index-2021-in-review.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-price-index-2021-...
sporkland 2y ago
I remember them talking about self driving and the tesla's being so far ahead and then not being able to tell the difference between Cruise and Waymo. Waymo is so far ahead of everyone else as someone that uses them in SF it's not even funny. It definitely was my Gell-Mann amnesia moment with them.

swyx 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

deskr 2y ago
Wow, I didn't know this effect had a name. I've experienced it so many times. I've also seen how politicians lie and tell half truths about stuff, where I know the full story like them.
- TApplencourt 2y ago
  It was in the article...
  - deskr 2y ago
    Shows that it's not safe to assume that a random Besserwisser on HN has read the article. In my defence I did skim through it though.
musicale 2y ago
I consider it the cost of information rather than amnesia. When I read articles about something that I don't know much about, I usually don't have time to fact-check everything individually if it's not obviously wrong and seems to be plausibly presented, so I use it as a base theory until I receive evidence to the contrary - while knowing that it is likely still full of errors.

uh_uh 2y ago

These guys are clearly at least somewhat intelligent and have brought up arguments in the past that I, in my infinite wisdom, haven’t considered. It’s up to me whether I take those arguments onboard after a sufficient amount of research. So I don’t think we should not listen at all. We should just not be all-in.

seadan83 2y ago

Totally. Combine with a nice sweater, a headset mic, a giant screen behind them, an audience and boom! Insta credibility. Looking like it is a TED talk is just as good as being a TED talk - and of course then all true! Deep expertise.. (maybe not these guys in particular. Just musing on some very good looking disinfi. Same thing as dressing people up in lab coats)

bko 2y ago

I think vibes are underrated. The smart people can easily mislead you because they're smart. So you can cover things up with "official statistics", maliciously or by accident. For instance, inflation is a big one. I remember during the first spike in inflation (2021 I believe), I started nothing prices have gone up between 25-50%. We've been told at the time inflation was something like 7% but that would mean paying $5.35 for something that used to cost $5, which was obviously not what was happening. In short, they play games with the numbers. Bezos was on Fridman talking about something similar. He learned that Amazon’s metrics said typical wait time less than 1 min to reach customer service. But everyone complained about how long it took. So in a meeting he called Amazon’s customer service line and was put on hold for over 10 minutes, far exceeding the promised wait time. He stated, “When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right." All in goes off vibes and try to tie it to reality but sometimes miss the mark. But I think the vibes are often more right than the data.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Why did vibes take over from "gut feeling" I wonder
- jrussino 2y ago
  Every new generation reinvents slang. "Politically correct" became "woke". "Hip" became "cool" became "fire" or whatever the kids are saying these days.
cywick 2y ago
> I think vibes are underrated. The smart people can easily mislead you because they're smart. So you can cover things up with "official statistics", maliciously or by accident. > For instance, inflation is a big one. I remember during the first spike in inflation (2021 I believe), I started nothing prices have gone up between 25-50%. We've been told at the time inflation was something like 7% but that would mean paying $5.35 for something that used to cost $5, which was obviously not what was happening. In short, they play games with the numbers. When there is a mismatch between your personal gut feeling and some official number or alleged fact in the world, there are different ways you can react: A) You could think "Hmm, that's weird, is it possible that I'm missing something?" B) You default to thinking that clearly you are right, so this is just another case of those so-called experts lying to you. Had your response been A), you would have looked a bit more into it and realized that the overall inflation number is not based just on a subset of a few grocery items, but based on all different kinds of living expenses that people have. Many of those prices increased much less in 2021 than the overall 7% inflation rate (e.g., prescription drugs, cell phone plans, airline fares, motor vehicle insurance), so naturally, inflation in other categories was much higher to result in an overall rate of 7%. If your gut feeling also tells you to doubt the inflation numbers for individual item categories released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ([1]), you can get the raw data for those too, if I remember correctly. One problem with your gut feeling is that it's very susceptible to various biases. For instance, the price of one grocery item increasing by 30% will be much more noticeable to you than the price of another item staying the same. It's also very easy to not realize that you are comparing the current price to the one from two years ago or so, thereby dramatically overestimating the yearly inflation rate. I didn't mean to single you out, but the tendency by so many people to have overconfident knee jerk reactions to various information, instead of at least considering that they might have unknown unknowns or things they don't fully understand, is something that really concerns me. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-price-index-2021-in-review.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/consumer-price-index-2021-...

sporkland 2y ago

I remember them talking about self driving and the tesla's being so far ahead and then not being able to tell the difference between Cruise and Waymo. Waymo is so far ahead of everyone else as someone that uses them in SF it's not even funny. It definitely was my Gell-Mann amnesia moment with them.