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Agreed 100%. You should only be considered an expert if you can make expert predictions. In physics or engineering that's damn near trivial; for anything that

Agreed 100%. You should only be considered an expert if you can make expert predictions. In physics or engineering that's damn near trivial; for anything that the layman might want to know I can provide him with quite a good answer. In the social sciences nobody actually KNOWS anything with any degree of certainty. And as for which policy is best, you might be able to give an answer that's good in aggregate or agreeable to the majority, but definitely not an optimal answer or something that everyone will agree with. The problem is not that we don't trust the experts. We absolutely do. Experts have built the modern world in a very literal sense through science and engineering and skilled labor and whatnot. The problem is that he's a pseudo-expert and the laymen can sense that in their gut even if they can't clearly articulate it.

shanusmagnus 13y ago
I've been thinking about the parent and grandparent comments for the last hour, and the longer I do, the wiser I think they are, as in one fell swoop you get a tangible way to think about what you should be able to expect from experts and their expertise. If you study a topic for twenty years, and even after this twenty years of study you are unable to predict fundamental and crucial phenomena related to that field (a global financial meltdown, say) then your "expertise" is of minimal value, however painfully it was acquired; similarly, if using your wide-ranging armchair internet quarterbacking you're able to do things (predictively; via engineering; whatever) that other people cannot do, then you're as much an expert as could reasonably be hoped for. While I share the OA's disillusionment with a culture that seems to pride itself on stupidity, and to resent the hell out of expertise as traditionally defined, I think that the instinct can be thought of as a kind of intellectual and memetic antibody that has, for the most part, served this country well. A lot of the things that many of us value (GNU software; Linux; Wikipedia; Apple Computer) owe their existence to people who, by socially normative standards, had 'no business' doing what they were doing in the first place.

shanusmagnus 13y ago

I've been thinking about the parent and grandparent comments for the last hour, and the longer I do, the wiser I think they are, as in one fell swoop you get a tangible way to think about what you should be able to expect from experts and their expertise. If you study a topic for twenty years, and even after this twenty years of study you are unable to predict fundamental and crucial phenomena related to that field (a global financial meltdown, say) then your "expertise" is of minimal value, however painfully it was acquired; similarly, if using your wide-ranging armchair internet quarterbacking you're able to do things (predictively; via engineering; whatever) that other people cannot do, then you're as much an expert as could reasonably be hoped for. While I share the OA's disillusionment with a culture that seems to pride itself on stupidity, and to resent the hell out of expertise as traditionally defined, I think that the instinct can be thought of as a kind of intellectual and memetic antibody that has, for the most part, served this country well. A lot of the things that many of us value (GNU software; Linux; Wikipedia; Apple Computer) owe their existence to people who, by socially normative standards, had 'no business' doing what they were doing in the first place.