
The Death Of Expertise - ot
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise
======
EvanMiller
I think what the author misses is the large institutional structure that
restricts the supply of experts and (as a result) enhances their prestige.
These days, with the growing availability of technical information, existing
systems of licensure, credentialing, and professionalization are breeding
resentment on both sides of the lectern.

The author's focus in the article is on the layman's resentment for the
expert. While most people would agree that experts are better qualified to
talk about something than Joe Blogger, I think the urge to disagree with the
expert is engendered by the larger power structure of expertise that has grown
up over the past 100 years.

To take a trivial example, I wear contact lenses. While I agree that an
optometrist knows a lot more about vision correction than I do, I resent the
fact that I have to pay a lot of money to sit in a chair in a dark room and
wait for The Expert to deliver his Opinion about whether I need the -4.5's or
-5's.

The author of the article feels like he is the victim of resentment at the
hands of his students (references to "intellectual valet" and so forth). I
don't think students are necessarily in the wrong -- most are probably in
college to get a job, and they're right to resent the stranglehold that
universities have on social prestige and career respectability. They end up
taking it out on the professors, because, well, they're stuck in class
listening to The Expert for hours a day because of this or that degree
requirement.

The experts then start to resent the laymen for failing to pay what they feel
is a proper amount of respect for the superior state of their knowledge. They
conclude that the solution is to come up with ways to enhance their prestige
even more, for example by writing articles like this one that talks about how
great experts are. I'm afraid this will only poison relations between laymen
and experts even more.

What I love about computer programming is that basically all you need to be an
expert on something is time, persistence, and an Internet connection. Contrary
to the author's claims, the alternative to institutionalized expertise is not
that "Everyone is an expert". It's that "You don't have to go to a prestigious
university to become an expert". Sure, there are a lot of charlatans running
around in the programming world, but the free exchange of knowledge and the
absence of licensure has led to both a flowering of human creativity as well
as (outside of San Francisco) non-resentful relationships between experts and
laypeople.

~~~
Brian-Puccio
> To take a trivial example, I wear contact lenses. While I agree that an
> optometrist knows a lot more about vision correction than I do, I resent the
> fact that I have to pay a lot of money to sit in a chair in a dark room and
> wait for The Expert to deliver his Opinion about whether I need the -4.5's
> or -5's.

People resent taking their car in for maintenance only to be told that they
need to pay $110/hour to fix a problem or two and it will cost them several
hundred dollars at the end. The reset that The Expert (a man covered in oil
and grease stains who probably hasn't even attained the same level of formal
education as them) is charging so much money as well.

People often resent plumbers, electricians, computer technicians, etc, etc ...
anyone they have to pay three figures an hour to help them do something they
are so dependent on, many times citing that the work they do isn't complex or
difficult and that their annual salary divided by the hours they work per year
works out to nowhere close to these workers' rates.

This resentment often falls into one of two categories, either "I don't know
how to do this myself" (which is the lack of expertise) or "I don't want to do
this so I'll hire someone" (which often is associated with the "this work is
beneath me, I can't believe these people charge this, I guess I'll have to
pay" idea).

When you say that you resent this experience with your optometrist, is it the
first type of resentment, the "I don't know how to get to the right
prescription strength myself" idea?

I think a lot of this stems from gross oversimplifications of other fields.
For example, you wear contact lenses to correct your vision. But there's more
than just near-sightedness here. Do you have astigmatism and if you did would
you consider toric lenses? How's the shape and fit of your current lens, maybe
that needs to be adjusted? Keratitis because you sleep with them in too much?
Any signs of glaucoma? There should be a whole host of things checked, not
simply just bumping the strength another notch.

This same oversimplification happens with technology so often. I'm sure
everyone here has plenty of anecdotes of "hey, my son showed me his WordsPass
blog yesterday and it got me thinking how much easier it is to get a web
presence these days, you work in web development, do you think you could show
me how to make an online store for my business next weekend?". PCI compliance,
merchant solutions, inventory software integration, SSL certificates,
redundancy and backups, custom shopping cart workflows, search engine
optimization, etc, etc never enter their mind. They think you can whip
something together after the BBQ on Saturday. "Hey, my computer is acted
funny, I get this message that I need to send some guy bitcoins to get my
files back, could you just uninstall that for me?"

I tried explaining to a lawyer once why his company was migrating from WinXP
to Win7. He didn't believe me that a software company wouldn't support a
product for at least 20 years. He said it would be like buying a car and then
ten years later not being able to get any parts. (!) Then he didn't believe me
that Windows had millions of lines of code and that it needed to be extremely
precise, that if I were to edit the code and type in a few random characters
in a few random places, it's possible that large portions would completely
stop working. "You see, Brian, this is why computers will never work out,
there's got to be something wrong if it takes millions of fragile lines to do
this!" as he gestures at his monitor with a few icons on the desktop.

Here's a lawyer, An Expert, whose field has chosen to artificially limit the
number of experts (because there's too many of them), who resents the computer
on his desk, Bill Gates, An Expert who has personally wronged him thanks to
any and every incarnation of Windows, his company's system administrators
(Experts) and tech support (Experts) and anyone else associated with the
machine.

Yet, despite the resentment, the attorney hasn't switched back to a typewriter
or a stack of reference books. Similarly, I'm assuming you still, despite the
resentment, let The Expert tell you exactly what type of contact lenses you
need.

> What I love about computer programming is that basically all you need to be
> an expert on something is time, persistence, and an Internet connection.
> Contrary to the author's claims, the alternative to institutionalized
> expertise is not that "Everyone is an expert". It's that "You don't have to
> go to a prestigious university to become an expert". Sure, there are a lot
> of charlatans running around in the programming world, but the free exchange
> of knowledge and the absence of licensure has led to both a flowering of
> human creativity as well as (outside of San Francisco) non-resentful
> relationships between experts and laypeople.

The problems is charlatans do harm. A charlatan doctor will kill people. A
charlatan optometrist will have you going through life blurry (and possibly
killing people as you drive on a sidewalk instead of a street). A charlatan IT
person can "do no harm"?

healthcare.gov [0]

Target [1]

Patriot Missles [2]

Therac-25 [3]

Starbucks [4]

So we're back to the issue of how do we prove not just competence but
excellence in a field? I get why academia has their method and the trades have
their method. I'm not sure I have better systems to replace these. But I
disagree with the idea that just letting some programmers/IT people take their
best shot at things is an OK thing.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare.gov#Launch_and_techn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare.gov#Launch_and_technical_problems)

[1] [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/target-
hack/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/target-hack/)

[2]
[http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-05-20/news/1991140090_...](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-05-20/news/1991140090_1_scud-
saudi-arabia-radar-system)

[3] [http://www.ccnr.org/fatal_dose.html](http://www.ccnr.org/fatal_dose.html)

[4] [http://mashable.com/2014/01/16/starbucks-mobile-passwords-
pl...](http://mashable.com/2014/01/16/starbucks-mobile-passwords-plaintext/)

~~~
lstamour
> So we're back to the issue of how do we prove not just competence but
> excellence in a field?

See, that's what bugs me about this article. Not once did it address this most
relevant of topics head on. It skirts it, suggesting that people don't even
want to consider how someone becomes an "expert" to the point where the word
"expert" is used insultingly. But I think part of it, a larger part, is simple
cynicism stemming from the awareness we all now have that: with greater access
to information, the world is less one-sided and more complicated than we
expect. As we get more adjusted to having the Internet, we realize that anyone
can "sound like an expert" and so -- to come back to my original point --
proof is important. I'm not saying "prove it," as the author did, for I'm just
as willing to hear someone's backstory and trust via third-parties. But ...
when it comes to what's on the news, to politics, to business, services,
almost any point where an expert can be useful -- there's a sense of "if you
do a good job, we'll trust you" that now more than ever withholds trust unless
you can also be charming. Sadly, in news cycles especially, if you're doing a
good job, no one will notice you or your "proof" until you screw up. And being
an effective personality doesn't require expertise to have opinions.

------
drewcrawford
The trouble I had was in the first sentence:

> I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but in a
> particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public
> policy.

At least as far as the US is concerned, public policy encompasses everything.
So as far as I can tell, this person really _is_ claiming to be an expert on
everything.

"Social science" does not fair much better. NOAD helpfully supplies "the
scientific study of human society and social relationships". That seems to be
a substantially broad claim, on the level of claiming to be an expert in, say,
physical science. While there certainly are a few people who might make a
competent application for that title (Feinman comes to mind), it seems to
stretch the meaning of "expert", as Feinman's expertise in, say, biology, is
of a substantially different sort than his expertise in particle physics.

I think the author may be falsely attributing his frustration about being
heard to the "generational" "disregard for experts" instead of his own
inability to defend an overly broad claim of expertise. If this article was "I
am an expert in how much money we should be spending on space exploration and
nobody is listening to me" then that would be an interesting, and entirely
different, discussion. As it stands it's just tilting at windmills.

~~~
blhack
Here: [http://www.usnwc.edu/Academics/Faculty/Thomas-M--
Nichols,-Ph...](http://www.usnwc.edu/Academics/Faculty/Thomas-M--
Nichols,-Ph-D-.aspx)

>Thomas M. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs in the National
Security Decision Making Department, where is also the Course Director for
Security, Strategy, and Forces. A former Secretary of the Navy Fellow at the
Naval War College, he previously taught international relations and
Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. He is a
former chairman of the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War
College, for which he was awarded the Navy Civilian Meritorious Service Medal
in 2005. He holds a PhD from Georgetown, an MA from Columbia University, the
Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union
at Columbia, and a BA from Boston University.

I think the definitions of [1]"public policy" and [2]"social science" here are
meant strictly, not as generalities.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science)

~~~
barrkel
Read some of his blog.

From a cursory glance, I think he believes Snowden is a misguided traitor,
Manning should spend the rest of his life in solitary, and Wikileaks is a
Russian-funded intelligence front.

These are strong opinions with, IMO, a heavy political slant. Nothing wrong
with that in and of itself, even when I disagree with him. But now it seems
like he's complaining about not getting enough respect and attention. But with
his political bias, I don't think he deserves that kind of respect. His
writing is too off-the-cuff and opinionated, lacking in two-dimensional
treatment of what he talks about, never mind analysis.

In short, I think he's a right wing blowhard making a fuss about too much
questioning of his authority.

~~~
phaus
>From a cursory glance, I think he believes Snowden is a misguided traitor,
Manning should spend the rest of his life in solitary, and Wikileaks is a
Russian-funded intelligence front.

He's a professor at a military school, I'm not the least bit surprised that he
thinks that way. I agree completely that it limits the extent to which we can
trust him as an authority.

Manning's conviction was actually pretty fair IMO. He was acquitted of leaking
the video evidence of a government hiding illegal activity; he was also
acquitted of aiding the enemy because that assertion was ridiculous. He was
rightly held to account for releasing close to three quarters of a million
classified documents that contained no instances of illegal activity. Had he
done his due diligence like Snowden, he should have (but probably wouldn't
have) walked away. That being said, I would be happy if they paroled him ASAP.
I don't think we should take some kid's life(35 years will destroy your life
just as surely as a lethal injection) away for making a stupid decision when
it didn't cause much demonstrable harm.

What I find most entertaining about this article is that his argument is
basically "Young people have an inflated sense of entitlement and that's why
they don't worship the ground I walk on."

~~~
gamerdonkey
I think the author's biggest problem is laid out right in the article, though
he attributes it to his "layman" adversary.

 _> They are instead rejecting anything that might stir a gnawing insecurity
that their own opinion might not be worth all that much._

------
na85
The claim that "expertise" is going by the wayside is absurd. What's gone by
the wayside is the automatic acceptance of anything a self-proclaimed expert
says as fact.

Yes, wide access to Google and Wikipedia have aided this trend, and raised the
layperson's knowledge level. These things have also raised the burden of proof
of expertise. I've never even heard of Tom Nichols; I'm not apt to take what
he says as fact just because his blog says he's an expert in public policy.

I will, however, trust the opinion of e.g. Bruce Schneier because he has
consistently demonstrated that he _knows what he 's talking about_. If Tom
Nichols aka Random McBlogger wants to be viewed as an expert, it's up to him
to prove his expertise to his audience.

The first thing I did after reading this article was to google "Tom Nichols".
The first few results were a horribly-amateurish blog, presumably by the same
Tom Nichols (though no picture, so who knows?) and some wikipedia articles
about a music producer and soccer player of the same name. As far as I can
tell from a cursory google search, Tom Nichols is a nobody.

~~~
Niten
Apologies, but you're displaying precisely the kind of aggressive and arrogant
ignorance that this article highlights.

You trust Bruce Schneier because he's a popular figure. You said it yourself:
"Tom Nichols is a nobody" due to a fatal lack of PageRank not helped by a non-
unique name. While I admire Schneier greatly and am thankful that there is
somebody like him working to popularize cryptography, computer security, and
related social issues, there are countless others equally or better qualified
to speak out on topics of cryptographic theory whom you (and I) wouldn't
recognize at all – but actual domain experts would.

I hope I do not really need to spell out why popularity contests in the court
of public opinion are not a reliable avenue for deriving knowledge.

As for Tom Nichols?

 _> Thomas M. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs in the
National Security Decision Making Department, where is also the Course
Director for Security, Strategy, and Forces. A former Secretary of the Navy
Fellow at the Naval War College, he previously taught international relations
and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. He
is a former chairman of the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War
College, for which he was awarded the Navy Civilian Meritorious Service Medal
in 2005. He holds a PhD from Georgetown, an MA from Columbia University, the
Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union
at Columbia, and a BA from Boston University._

\- [http://www.usnwc.edu/Academics/Faculty/Thomas-M--
Nichols,-Ph...](http://www.usnwc.edu/Academics/Faculty/Thomas-M--
Nichols,-Ph-D-.aspx)

\-
[http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/1818/thomas_m_ni...](http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/1818/thomas_m_nichols.html?page=1)

But hey, what worth is the combined judgment of the peers who bestowed these
positions and honors upon Nichols, against the opinion of one armchair
epistemologist on Hacker News who makes astute verdicts based upon the
appearance of one's blog and how well one ranks on Google...

~~~
na85
Bruce Schneier is more than a celebrity (though I did use him as an example
because he's somewhat famous). He consults for Congress and is the author of
multiple widely-used cryptographic algorithms (thinking here of Blow/twofish).
He's an expert who also happens to be a celebrity, but I can still cite him as
an expert without conflating the two.

>there are countless others equally or better qualified to speak out on topics
of cryptographic theory whom you (and I) wouldn't recognize at all – but
actual domain experts would.

If that's true, then I ought to be able to find talks these people have given,
or papers they've written. Based on a quick google search, I concluded the
author of this blog post appears to only write short, shallow blog posts.

Now, that might not be the case. You obviously dug a little deeper and found
some more info. But that simply goes back to what I was saying in my previous
comment. There is an _increased burden of proof_ in a world where anyone can
say anything on the internet. Nichols wrote a blog post claiming to be an
expert? Okay, why is there no quick link to a summary of his qualifications in
direct support of the article's central premise?

Who knows, maybe he's a public policy expert but a lousy writer.

Either way, my argument stands: On the internet, if you don't have name
recognition and want to be taken seriously you have to demonstrate your
expertise, because any layperson can quote a wiki article. It takes more than
simply saying "I am an expert".

~~~
Niten
I agree that Schneier is clearly an expert; it's the way you've reached that
conclusion which I disagree with, as it could easily lead you to the wrong
answer in any case where celebrity and actual expertise are not so happily
aligned.

 _> Based on a quick google search, I concluded the author of this blog post
appears to only write short, shallow blog posts. [...] Okay, why is there no
quick link to a summary of his qualifications in direct support of the
article's central premise?_

Well, there was this at the bottom of the article: "Tom Nichols is a professor
of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an adjunct at
the Harvard Extension School." Anybody interested in evaluating or expanding
upon these credentials could do so with (not to be trite) a quick Google
search.

 _> Either way, my argument stands: On the internet, if you don't have name
recognition and want to be taken seriously you have to demonstrate your
expertise, because any layperson can quote a wiki article. It takes more than
simply saying "I am an expert"._

Your mistake is to look for demonstrations of expertise in the form of Google
rank and other manifestations of popularity. That's not what actual
demonstration of expertise looks like. Laypeople like us (relative to the
field of public policy) have two options for evaluating domain expertise: (1)
expend the significant effort required to become actual experts in those
fields ourselves, or (2) accept the collective opinion of the larger body of
experts in that field. The latter generally takes the form of academic
credentials, professional awards, CVs, and the like – and as undemocratic as
it may feel to yield to the judgment of a bunch of ivory tower elites, as
laypeople it's all we have to go by if we value truth.

PageRank is a popularity contest. It answers neither (1) nor (2) above.

~~~
na85
>I agree that Schneier is clearly an expert; it's the way you've reached that
conclusion which I disagree with, as it could easily lead you to the wrong
answer in any case where celebrity and actual expertise are not so happily
aligned.

I fail to see how; it's exceedingly rare to find true experts who haven't got
publications of one sort or another to their name.

>Well, there was this at the bottom of the article: "Tom Nichols is a
professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an
adjunct at the Harvard Extension School." Anybody interested in evaluating or
expanding upon these credentials could do so with (not to be trite) a quick
Google search.

Well again, maybe he _is_ an expert and merely a lousy writer. But none of
this contradicts my point that his article's central premise (being an expert)
needs to be clearly supported. That's like first-year undergraduate essay
writing 101.

>Your mistake is to look for demonstrations of expertise in the form of Google
rank and other manifestations of popularity. That's not what actual
demonstration of expertise looks like.

Your mistake is interpreting what I wrote as conflating popularity with
expertise. For the third time: I didn't choose Schneier as an example because
he was popular. I stated outright my google search was cursory. You're missing
the point.

~~~
yourdumb
You are dumb

~~~
na85
Keep novelty accounts to reddit, please.

------
kazagistar
He mentions that people are not equipped to judge evidence properly, which is
often true. However, people are also not well equipped to judge expertise
either.

In the past few decades, we have witnessed what appears to be massive failure
of experts on a number of fronts. In the media, people who certainly look like
experts turn out to be con men... when well dressed "doctors" and "scientists"
lie and trick people into making terrible choices, we grow suspicious. Anyone
can pretend to know what they are doing, and blind trust of such people is a
dangerous path to follow. Even the antivax people have what appears to a
layman to be experts backing their side of the story.

Further, specifically in the areas of social policy, finance, and politics,
the past decade or more seems to many to have been a disaster. Thousands of
experts missed the financial disaster, and, from what the story looks like to
many, bungled the recovery. The news that sells is all about disaster and the
unexpected; things that experts failed to predict.

In is unsurprising, given these circumstances, that the title of expert is
viewed not with blind respect, but with suspicion. If you claim to be an
expert, then you are instantly placed in the same category as people who just
want to exploit me for a quick buck.

I don't have a solution, but it is an explanation, and "trusting experts more"
is not going to happen.

~~~
iconjack
The blame resides on the media and its partnership with an undiscerning
public. Time after time, the same experts are trotted out, no matter how awful
their track record. This is at its worst when it comes to politics,
unsurprisingly.

As a prime example, remember all the experts who got Iraq wrong? They were
wrong about everything: WMD, cost, duration, effects, etc. Fast forward to the
brink of the next war—instead of hearing from the people who were right, we're
once again bombarded with the opinions of the wrong. Cheney and Rumsfeld were
both on tv constantly spouting their expertise on Libya, Syria etc.

This happens in just about every field, time after time. It's no wonder people
don't care what the so-called experts think.

------
SiVal
Death of expertise? Not of _real_ expertise.

This author intentionally conflates his expertise in "public policy" with
expertise in other fields such as science, and concludes that a failure to
acknowledge his authority is no different from rejecting the authority of a
real scientist. Like the proof that 0 = 1 by including a step where you divide
by zero, his argument relies on the fallacy that expertise is all the same
regardless of what you are an expert in.

Expertise in physics, engineering, or programming is qualitatively different
from expertise in astrology, theology, or "public policy," in my opinion, and
skepticism of the authority of the latter is not tantamount to skepticism of
the former.

Someone with a PhD in physics or EE got it by proving that he could make
things that worked. I'm satisfied that there is something real in expertise
that has been repeatedly validated by voltmeter.

Someone with a PhD in divinity or public policy has not proven to my
satisfaction that life would be better if we just let him make our decisions
for us, even if the degree is from Harvard. Sorry. It's just not the same.

~~~
nlew
When you refuse to acknowledge the value of expertise in a field, you are
effectively discrediting the entire field. You really think you know just as
much as someone who has studied it for their entire adult life? The only way
that can possibly be is if there's nothing to be learned about it.

You may think you understand a topic, but you really have a narrow view of it.
You understand your own point of view, but not necessarily others. Or the
breadth and depth of consequences to a decision. How can you expect equally
valid results through a narrower lens?

~~~
yetanotherphd
Well it's possible for people to obtain negative learning, e.g. learning
things that are false.

I would consider anyone who studies Marxism to be in this category.

For most people, it is a blend of positive knowledge, and the political
prejudice of their discipline, so one should neither reject or blindly accept
the views of an "expert" in the social sciences.

My PhD is in economics, and I would love to be able to pull rank on people who
talk about "buying locally" or putting people before profits. But there is no
way to consistently enable such rank pulling, since there is a Professor of
Marxist Economics somewhere would could accuse me of being ignorant of 100
years of Marxist thought, and give me 1000 books to read before I'm qualified
to speak on the topic.

So the only way forward is to reach out to the public and convince them that
one's discipline knows the truth.

~~~
WalterBright
I've seen a Harvard PhD in economics espouse on TV the false cost-push theory
of inflation. It made me wonder what is taught in Harvard econ classes.

Further undermining the credibility of econ degrees is an econ professor from
my college stating that he believed in the free enterprise system, and the
equal distribution of all income. The contradiction didn't seem to bother him
in the slightest.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I hadn't heard of cost-push inflation before, and I didn't specialize in
macro-economics. Who discredited this theory? The Wikipedia article says that
according to Keynsians (and most modern economists are neo-Keynsians who
beleive in sticky prices), prices are sticky downwards and so a supply shock
to a single good would cause inflation. This seems to be an issue that could
be resolved empirically. Are you familiar with the empirical evidence?

On your second point, perhaps your professor meant that he believed in free
enterprise, but wanted to use the taxation system to make post-tax income much
more equal? If so, there is no contradiction.

~~~
WalterBright
> I hadn't heard of cost-push inflation before, and I didn't specialize in
> macro-economics. Who discredited this theory?

Cost-push is described in Reisman's tome "Capitalism" and is shown why it is a
false theory starting on pg. 907.

> perhaps your professor meant that he believed in free enterprise, but wanted
> to use the taxation system to make post-tax income much more equal? If so,
> there is no contradiction.

I quoted his exact words, and he did not qualify them. In particular he did
not say "more equal", he said "equal". I remember it to this day because I was
astonished.

~~~
yetanotherphd
>Cost-push is described in Reisman's tome "Capitalism" and is shown why it is
a false theory starting on pg. 907.

I couldn't understand that. One difficulty is that not only do Austrian
economists use a different language to describe things, but it seems to be
arguing against a traditional Keynesian viewpoint. Right now PhD programs
don't teach any traditional Keynsian econ, (undergrad programs teach a bit),
they skip straight to neo-Keynsianism, which only keeps a few ideas from the
original Keynes (e.g. sticky prices). So I don't really understand what the
article is arguing against.

I already gave a description of what I thought the sticky-prices based
argument for cost-push inflation was. Can you explain in your own words how
this particular argument is refuted?

Re the professor, I guess I'll just chalk that up to a bad professor.

------
tikhonj
Sure, you're an expert.

Which means you should have sound reasoning behind your position. And you
should be able to _explain_ your reasoning to somebody else. If you can't
really explain your reasoning, it's likely that you did not think everything
through--and if you did not think everything through, being an expert does not
mean you're right!

I think of this just in terms of _myself_. If I hold a position but I can't
explain it, it means I need to rethink it. If I've put some thought into a
position--which is my goal for everything important--then explaining myself is
just a matter of voicing my existing rationale.

So I think you should never be offended at having to explain something: at the
very least, it's a way to clarify your own thinking and highlight assumptions.
And if you're making good decisions anyway, it's easy!

~~~
Fomite
There are times when, to be blunt, you (hypothetical you) don't have the
background for me to explain my reasoning - and certainly not in the timeframe
of a conversation when I need to catch you up on potentially decades worth of
research. It is possible, especially if you're not willing to either take some
things as given, that you are not qualified to understand my reasoning.

 _Because you are not an expert_

And that's fine. There are things about which I am not an expert, to which the
same principles apply. Computer science among them. Along with particle
physics, Russian literature and modern cars.

~~~
allochthon
Taken in sufficient context, I think your point is a good one. But I get the
sense that this is not the main thing bugging the author; what seems to be
bugging him is that he is under pressure to justify his positions to a broader
audience than would have existed in the past, and he may be having a hard time
doing that.

If he's making a point during a conversation with other experts about the
cumulative costs in litigation of a certain policy implemented in some state
in 1979, he's the boss. But if he's making a broad point about the welfare
state, he's got a larger group of (well-informed) interlocutors to deal with
and convince. I suspect he wants his expertise to carry weight on these larger
questions as well.

------
3pt14159
> Second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after
> reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine.

This claim was originally by an _expert_ doctor.

> Which is why articles and books are subjected to “peer review” and not to
> “everyone review,”

Peer review struggles to correct inaccuracies and by failing to share the
underlying data behind the assertions made, and especially in Tom Nichols'
area of expertise (public policy) the data is the only way of invalidating
claims (as opposed to abstract mathematical concepts, like machine learning).
Further more, most peer review journals are behind paywalls of some kind.

Contrast this to the accuracy of Wikipedia (where, yes peers review the
knowledge, but so can the general public) or the increasing support behind
open peer review
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review))
and the open research movement in general
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_research](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_research))
it is at least questionable to argue that closed peer review implies a
standard of truth.

> but don’t tell that to someone hectoring you about the how things really
> work in Moscow or Beijing or Washington.

It is funny he brings this up because Beijing is rife with academic dishonesty
to the point where if the exact steps / data to reproduce aren't explicitly
mentioned in the paper, I don't even read it.

> [A large, large amount of opinionated elitism ending with a call for the
> return of the days of gatekeepers]

Gatekeepers impede scientific inquiry. It wasn't until 1957 that we seriously
started examining human sexual response. This is 100% due to gatekeepers. By
advancing the case for open data, open methods, and open journals we may
suffer more fools' opinion's on global warming, but it is far more worth it.

The reason I suspect that this author is especially angry is that public
policy _is_ politics in declarative form. "We will use one school of 500 kids
vs five schools of 100 kids" has far reaching consequences that spill into the
political sphere. The reason public policy is hard to take a seriously as a
scientific endeavour is that it isn't often provable, although with open data
would certainly improve it.

~~~
rglovejoy
>> Second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after
reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine.

>This claim was originally by an expert doctor.

Andrew Wakefield was no expert. He was found guilty of research fraud and is
no longer allowed to practice medicine.

~~~
3pt14159
Right, with hindsight we can clearly see that he wasn't an expert, just like
all experts that turn out to be wrong.

------
alexRohde
I believe the author misses the point consistently in many ways.

Paragraph 2 - Straw man argument. People's resentment for authority has
nothing to do with democracy, it's about all the false positives we
consistently see ("experts" who are trusted to say make healthcare.gov but are
not experts, economists who cannot predict anything about our economy).

He then argues that trusting "experts" is phased out in favor of google and
wikipedia. He claims this is bad because "doctors, whatever their errors, seem
to do better with most illnesses than faith healers or your Aunt Ginny and her
special chicken gut poultice." another straw man argument. Wikipedia will not
promote faith healing, it will lead you to the same and maybe newer medical
journal articles than your doctor has read. Somehow he argues, trusting
Wikipedia and google is, "Fundamentally, ... a rejection of science and
rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself."

Then he goes on to cite a litany of false-negatives, cases when people don't
trust current experts and presumably are wrong. Okay. But he hasn't really
done anything here. Because he hasn't answered all the false positives (false
"experts").

The real question here is how to differentiate between an expert and a non-
expert. When is it a case of hubris and group think among an elitist circle of
self-proclaimed experts, and when is it true?

Unfortunately this piece provides no advancement to this question, other that
pointing out one more false positive, the author.

~~~
mjn
That brings up one common conflation that I see a lot: equation of Wikipedia
and "popular wisdom". People assume that because "anyone can edit" Wikipedia,
it must be some kind of average of everyone's views, the "wisdom of crowds".
But Wikipedia is really not a reflection of the average opinion. A huge
percentage of Americans might believe in creationism or think that vaccines
cause autism, but Wikipedia articles, despite a plurality of en.wikipedia
being written by Americans, pretty solidly side with the expert consensus on
those points. That might be due to demographics, due to the requirement for
"reliable sources", or due to who knows what else, but the results are pretty
different.

That doesn't mean Wikipedia is always good, and the very fact that its
viewpoint is often unrepresentative of the views of the population at large
might sometimes be bad (though other times it's good). But I think whether
Wikipedia is good or bad, and whether the opinions of randomly selected
individuals who think they know better than experts are good or bad, are
pretty different questions that should be investigated separately, since
Wikipedia is not saying the same things that a randomly chosen person at your
local bar is saying, on almost any subject where there's a difference of
opinion.

I can see why they get connected, because both things are bypassing
gatekeepers in a way. But Wikipedia is doing it in a more complicated way,
particularly because while the form of the encyclopedia bypasses gatekeepers
(free, no bylines, no credentials needed to participate), the _content_ of the
encyclopedia puts a heavy value on citing sources, along with an ethos of
trying to make sure the sources aren't kooks, which tends to attribute quite a
bit of weight to experts' views on things.

------
pragmar
I'll gladly defer to an astrophysicist on matters of the universe, a plumber
on piping, or a mechanic on auto repair. I think the problem is the field of
social sciences is kind of a wasteland. While I can respect the skills and
analysis of someone in the field, it's highly nuanced material with plenty of
room for debate. I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

~~~
derefr
But social scientists _know_ that. The astrophysicist, and the plumber, have
many hard rules, and because of this, there are many situations where their
training will force them to shout "No! Stop!" at something you're doing.

Social scientists, by-and-large, don't have very many hard rules... and so
they _don 't_ often shout "No! Stop!"

They are aware, far more than the members of the hard sciences (who are used
to most things they deal with being either hard rules, or debunked nonsense),
exactly how vaguely-implied or well-proven each of their theorems are; how
controversial or universal each stance is. And because of this, when a social
scientist is tapped _on practical matters of public policy_ , they will more
than anything be _hedging_ , not strengthening, the prior stances held by the
policy-makers, by reminding them of all the things we _can 't_ assume and
_aren 't_ sure will work.

(On the other hand, when social scientists are tapped by journalists, or when
they write twee little NYT bestsellers, the result is more an exposure of the
scientist's personal position in debates _internal to the academic sphere_.
This has nothing to do with what a social scientist would give you if you paid
them to _do social science_ for you.)

The most useful thing a person with training in the social sciences can tell
you, of which the general population isn't aware, is _what you should be less
sure of_. No matter where a social scientist falls in matters of their own
field's debates, they'll know which things _are_ debated, and therefore can
shout "No! Stop!" when you're about to base a policy decision on, for example,
"the proven effect of Keynsian stimulus." (This is closely related, I think,
to being trained in _impossibility results_. It takes you a computer scientist
to tell you that, no, your new database can't be C, A, and P.)

~~~
pixl97
>The most useful thing a person with training in the social sciences can tell
you, of which the general population isn't aware, is what you should be less
sure of

I'd say that is true for any expert in any complicated field. Almost any
engineer will tell you a system made of a few simple components will have a
much higher probability of being deterministic then a system of many complex
components. Being that social sciences deal with the most complex creatures in
existence they should damn well know determining anything with a high rate of
probability is near impossible.

------
joe_the_user
_There’s also that immutable problem known as “human nature.” It has a name
now: it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which says, in sum, that the
dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb._

The usual - social science gets disrespected, blogs that world is ending...

He'd have more credibility if he didn't quote Dunning-Kruger as if it was a
law rather a debatable, sometimes observed effect. With blanket appeals to
"human nature", you'll need more than some degrees to present your claims as
fact. We can see where this is going. Indeed, I'm hopeful that this blog will
shoot a few holes in his apparently rather thin credibility.

------
ElDiablo666
This is the same alarmist nonsense that's been floating around since forever
under one or another banner. This time it's expertise; last time it was "the
end of intellectualism" and next time it'll be "Are we heading toward a chasm
at full speed because PhDs aren't choosing the president?"

It's mostly intellectually embarrassing foolish nonsense. There's a
significant difference between experts like developers, doctors, and
engineers, and lawyers, sociologists, and anthropologists. The former group is
composed of technical expertise that is necessary for performing the applied
functional area of knowledge while the latter group is solely trained in the
arena of thoughtfulness.

Want to lament the fact that social science isn't appreciated as it should be?
Completely fine. But let's not pretend that understanding how to organize an
economy is expertise nor that having such knowledge privileges anyone to make
socio-economic decisions for anyone else. If ordinary people weren't the best
at understanding how to organize their own lives, traitors wouldn't pay
trillions to delude and manipulate them constantly.

~~~
cashmonkey85
As someone who studied economics I believed I had well thought out positions
before studying and wasn't sure how my opinions were going to change. It
turned out all my theories were worthless compared to the combined knowledge
of the field and the genius observations over the centuries. So your example
of not needing economists is unconvincing. We do need to check up on them
frequently though and no one should get a free pass.

~~~
ElDiablo666
>So your example of not needing economists is unconvincing.

I don't need to convince anyone of needing economists. Economists need to
convince the world of their necessity and have never done so, nor could they
ever. Human beings don't need economists to tell them how to live their lives
and until economists come up with a good argument for their authority, no one
ought to do anything other than listen to what they have to say and possibly
give it some thought.

Remember, none of this has anything to do with you and your theories and
whatever else you think has any bearing on the structure of societies. This is
about general human necessity. People don't need economists or any other
social scientists. The best we can do is be helpful participants and try to
use our knowledge to help those who might lack it.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Yes, because all big, incredibly complex things are just too damned hard to
study or understand and thus we should instead just guess our way through
problems. In economics, this is known as the Austrian school.

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go out into the woods and try to kill
animals with rocks and pray to the gods for fire.

------
julie1
I am an expert ts bullshiting and being infatuated with myself, and this guy
is worst than an ass he is a pure ass.

Why did Feynman said Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts?

For the same reason this bitch is crying: because the truth does not belong to
a minority of self decreted "savants", "erudits" or "experts", but it is the
result of a fruitful dialog amongst people which purpose is the emanation of
truth. The ethic of discussion is purely "anti-religous", it states no one
knows the Truth and only logic, and dialog on a peer relationship can work.

Well, experts raise themselves above the crowd as if they were a hierarchy in
a dialog. As if authority counted. They are wrong. If you cannot make a
consensual point whether you are wrong or right does not count, because if
people cannot accept your point, your point will never be accepted.

People average education raised. Average jobs now include a high level of
autonomy, design and thinking.

Even Mc Do's jobs are more creative than you think : they have to deliver
unique menus (watch at the combinatory of items) in standardized way (time and
tools) and they must plan new supply chain for each customers.

Expert are now not the only one to have to use their brain at high level every
days.

The should stop insulting people's education and call themselves our peers; we
all are experts and I don't know for you but I recognize one and only one
hierarchy: not the one based on status (expert) but the one based on ability.

Knowledge is not a state: it is a fucking process.

So I am thrilled to hear this guy acknowledge we don't need him around.

The expertise is dead, long live to the knowledge

------
ISeemToBeAVerb
Interesting comments. I was surprised to see so much dissension.

I'm in agreement with the author on the idea that expertise has been cheapened
by our culture.

I like to use the term "mastery" over "expertise" because I think the concept
of mastery better embodies what a true expert brings to the table.

To me, a true expert (master) is someone who has deep knowledge in a given
domain (or set of related domains).

You can't fake mastery. Mastery is, in part, the ability to produce
consistent, high-quality results over time.

Anyone can get lucky once, or even a few times, but a master can deliver
superior results more consistently than anyone else in that domain.

The issue now, as I see it, is what the author calls entitlement. I would add
to that, impatience.

People want to be masters (experts) now, not later. We want to hack our
educations and get results faster than the 1000's of people who came before
us.

In the process of our impatience and unwillingness to submit to the rigors of
craft, we, instead, settle for the illusion of expertise.

It's strange to me that people think a deep level of knowledge can come from
anything other than a lifetime of hard work and dedication to a given subject.

Yet, we still kid ourselves into thinking that being the next Picasso, Sergey
Brin, or Yo Yo Ma is just a matter of reading a few books and blogs.

An expert spends a lifetime learning a few things deeply. A dilettante knows a
little about a lot.

------
mkhattab
> There was once a time when presidents would win elections and then scour
> universities and think-tanks for a brain trust; that’s how Henry Kissinger,
> Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski and others ended up in government
> service while moving between places like Harvard and Columbia.

I find it interesting that he mentions these controversial figures. It seems
to me while he does present interesting arguments for the resentment shown
towards experts, I think it's far more pertinent to discuss the greater death
of ethics among experts. I think this is the primary cause, the lack of
ethics, of distrusting experts when I speak to relatives and friends.

People, experts and laymen, obviously can't study all fields of knowledge so
they put their "faith" in others. An expert in Biology is most likely a layman
in Physics, so they implicitly trust their Physicists friends when relaying
scientific progress. A physician is obviously an expert at medicine but most
likely a poor software developer so they implicitly trust their software
developer friends to advise them.

Perhaps I'm conflating institutional expertise with a mastery of one's field.
However, the ethical issue still exists.

~~~
Perceval
On ethics and international relations, my previous post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7071033)

------
yetanotherphd
The problem with this article is that the author's field is full of experts
who have wildly different opinions. There is no way to appeal to expertise in
this situation. For example, he says

> The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways
> in which we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it’s a
> rejection of science and rationality, which are the foundations of Western
> civilization itself. Yes, I said “Western civilization”: that paternalistic,
> racist, ethnocentric approach to knowledge that created the nuclear bomb,
> the Edsel, and New Coke, but which also keeps diabetics alive, lands mammoth
> airliners in the dark, and writes documents like the Charter of the United
> Nations.

But there are many experts in sociology who would ask us precisely to reject
science, rationality and Western Civilization.

I think a far better approach is to educate all people better, so they are
able to properly appreciate the knowledge of experts because they understand
the field. One aspect of this would be teaching a lot more statistics,
although the classical fields of debate and critical reasoning are also
important.

Another problem is that many people, especially academics, think it is more
important to push a particular agenda, than to make the public more informed
in general. Hence people who want to promote gay rights, for example, don't
want people to know that the probability getting AIDS from heterosexual
intercourse with a White woman is extremely low. But in order to do this, they
have to actively _lower_ people's understanding of probability and statistics.
They have to teach people to _ignore_ their (admittedly imperfect) intuition
about conditional probability.

~~~
makomk
The funny thing is, you're even more guilty of caring more about pushing a
particular agenda than actually informing people. Whilst the probability of
getting AIDS from heterosexual intercourse with a white woman is indeed
extremely low, what matters is not that the sex is heterosexual but that it's
with a white woman. Lesbian intercourse with a white woman is actually safer,
whereas heterosexual intercourse with a white man is more dangerous. Of
course, saying that wouldn't have helped push your anti-gay-rights agenda.

What's more, the qualifier that it has to be with a _white_ woman is
important. While heterosexual vaginal sex has a lower risk of HIV transmission
than anal, it's not low enough to provide useful protection on its own. The
main reason sex with white women is safe is because few of them have AIDS,
which in turn is partly a result of all the high-risk heterosexual communities
being very careful to protect against HIV transmission since very early on. If
you look at somewhere like Africa where people weren't taught to take those
precautions, the HIV infection rate from heterosexual sex is terrifying.
Again, though, this contradicts your agenda of portraying HIV as a gay disease
that heterosexuals are only taught to protect against in order to promote gay
rights at their expense.

~~~
yetanotherphd
You claim that only the sex of the other person involved is relevant, and not
whether the intercourse is with someone of the same or opposite sex.

This is wrong, and shows precisely the lack of understanding of conditional
probability that I described. I am especially shocked by your use of lesbian
intercourse as an example, since everyone knows the issue is men-who-have-sex-
with-men. Lesbians are completely irrelevant to this debate.

Let us compare the probability of a man getting AIDS from having sex with a
random man, vs a random woman. As you say, these are probably similar.
However, it might be very hard for a man to convince another random man to
have sex with him! So what we really want to calculate is the probability of
getting AIDS from a random, actually occurring, sexual encounter (not with a
prostitute) between a man and a woman, and a man and another man. This is what
the statistic is intended to mean, and how people will interpret it, even if
it is not always properly qualified. In this case, the probability of the man
who has sex with a man getting AIDS is much higher, because gay men have a
much higher incidence of AIDS than heterosexual women.

So we could add the following useless disclaimer to my earlier claim: if you
are a man, sex with a _randomly chosen_ man (including straight men) is not
especially dangerous. It's only when you condition on that man being gay that
it becomes statistically more dangerous.

Of course, this disclaimer would still be wrong since the sex with the man
would probably be anal, which is inherently more likely to spread AIDS.

>What's more, the qualifier that it has to be with a white woman is important.
That's why I included it :)

I can't comment on why AIDS is higher for heterosexuals in Africa than the US.
I don't necessarily accept your claims about it. But that is not the issue
here. I am talking about the probability of getting AIDS given the current
situation, not any inherent link between being gay and AIDS. The actual cause
is not relevant.

The best that you could say, is that the reason for these misleading
statistics is not to promote gay rights, but to scare people into taking
precautions that are good for society as a whole.

------
jcape
There is so much weapons grade arrogance in this essay, I wouldn't be
surprised if Hans Blix bought a house nearby to cut time from his commute.

Seriously, it's a link of this:

"Oh my goodness, Google University means people are now increasingly
questioning experts, like me! And doctors!"

"What are you an expert in?"

"History. I teach at the War College and write about nuclear weapons. For
example, I just republished an essay I wrote 14 years ago on how responsible
documentaries of the Cold War must necessarily exclude examinations of Soviet
motivations, because Stalin was the bad guy."

"...Yes, it's truly a wonder why anyone could fail to trust your proclamations
of genius."

------
tga_d
Is this supposed to be satire? I can't really tell. On the one hand, it looks
like he's legitimately trying to defend these views, but on the other, when
you step back and look at them, they're so obviously faulty that I can't
really interpret it as anything other than parody. Take this sentence for
example:

"Fundamentally, it’s a rejection of science and rationality, which are the
foundations of Western civilization itself."

There are so many things wrong with this sentence it leads me to believe that
he's not being serious. "Ad Hominem" is one of the most well-known (if
misused) logical fallacies in existence, and nowhere in the scientific method
is "trustworthiness of the scientist" a factor (instead, the ability to
reproduce results is of the utmost importance). The fact that "Western
civilization" relies on experts is a notable rejection of purely rational or
scientific views, not a foundation of them. This rejection is necessary to
live in Western society (I'll get a lot farther trusting textbooks are
correct, and verifying as need be, than giving similar credence to a mad man's
rantings), but it is a rejection of rationality and science nonetheless.

As somebody who is clearly well educated, he must know this. But then he goes
on to defend Western civilization as part of his argument, and it puts me at a
complete loss as to who this is attempting to parody. One of the final points,
as well, makes it read like a parody of authoritarian arguments that simply
don't exist in any major discourse I've seen:

"And yes, your political opinions have value. Of course they do: you’re a
member of a democracy and what you want is as important as what any other
voter wants. As a layman, however, your political analysis, has far less
value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you
think it is."

So your point is that democracy wants our opinions, but our reasons for our
opinions are worthless? Who could think that makes any sense? The whole piece
is full of these sort of bizarre statements. Who is this "expert"?

" _Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval
War College_ "

Oh. Turns out, sometimes the character of the person making the argument is
relevant: He probably does believe this.

~~~
monochr
That he could write this:

> after weeks of really having to watch them[Manning and Snowden], they’re
> both increasingly looking too weak, too stupid, and too easily manipulated
> to be conscious traitors. Rather, they seem to be narcissistic and naive
> pawns used by Wikileaks, and thus in turn by whoever is pulling Julian
> Assange’s strings these days. (Hint: It begins with “R” and ends with
> “ussia.”)

[http://tomnichols.net/blog/2013/08/02/snowden-manning-and-
sc...](http://tomnichols.net/blog/2013/08/02/snowden-manning-and-screwtape/)

Does really lead me to believe he is an incompetent buffoon who does not
realize just how out of touch with reality he is. What upset people like him
is that thanks to google instead of rolling over and taking whatever he says
as gospel people can call him out for being wrong at the stroke of a few keys.

For example, did he know that Snowden has not released a single file through
wikileaks?

------
6d0debc071
You notice it's rarely the physics professors, or the (good) programming
teachers, or the medical profs going, 'Our students don't respect our
expertise any more'?

Expertise needs to grant you a visible advantage in some way, or of course
people aren't going to respect it. You can respect experts with computers very
easily, they can do things you can't, or they can do things you can much more
easily.

Expertise in other areas is similar. Trained doctors produce measurably better
outcomes than laymen and the system in which they're trained is trustable
enough, and the systems they practice in are generally well designed enough,
that it's pretty common wisdom to trust doctors. Of course not everyone does,
but then again people have believed in crap like homeopathy for a long time,
that's nothing new.

Experts in philosophy? Social science? English? That's a lot harder to
measure, and to then be sure that you've got someone who's a well-vetted
member of the expert group, rather than someone with a degree who's spamming
noise is harder still. Not that I'm saying that they are, just that the
visible manifestations of their expertise are very hard for the average person
to see in some areas.

And let's face it, as students - by and large - aren't expected to do
particularly hard things any more in most subject areas, that provides less
and less opportunity for the expert to demonstrate their skill even when
someone has the rare opportunity of interacting with them.

###

\----------------------

 _> Once upon a time — way back in the Dark Ages before the 2000s — people
seemed to understand, in a general way, the difference between experts and
laymen. There was a clear demarcation in political food fights, as objections
and dissent among experts came from their peers — that is, from people
equipped with similar knowledge. The public, largely, were spectators._

\----------------------

And thus you can't say either way whether they respected you enough to change
their opinion, at least not based solely on that observation. Their thoughts
simply weren't on display.

~~~
nlew
It's hard to take your claim seriously that people readily respect technical
expertise, when I see "Twitter is just caching" repeated on this very site all
the time.

~~~
6d0debc071
I've not seen it said once, and based on a quick search -

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&start=0&q=t...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&start=0&q=twitter+caching)

I've not been able to find a great many massively uninformed comments about
it. Admittedly I only went two pages back, but it was starting to get to the X
years ago stuff, so... I lost interest at that point ^^

Do you have a significant number of sources?

------
forgottenpass
The author talks about the death of gatekeepers, but in a few ways I think
that some people with platforms to speak are not entirely blameless for the
way things went after the gatekeeper disappeared. People with a platform did,
and continue to, set the temperature of conversations that take place in
general.

This might not be the greatest example to build my point on, but in the
article he mentions the lack of respect given to professors so lets roll with
that. Lets say gatekeepers still existed, there are plenty of professional
bloviators with platforms that have been shitty on academics in general for as
long as I can remember. If you don't know what I mean, Colbert has done some
good bits on the popular "east coast ivory tower elitist eggheads" dismissal;
the university system is a wellspring of education, but it is not tailored
100% towards being a employee-creator or doing all of an industry's heavy
lifting for them, so they get trashed on. Is it any surprise that if students
have a "get in, fuck this guy just pass his tests for a diploma, get out"
attitude towards higher ed?

As I said, not the greatest jumping off point, but basically my point being
that if you want the unwashed masses to act like X, then at a minimum you have
to get the people with a platform to act like X.

edit/side note: OFC this is a small point w/r/t the article, not everything
there. And this article itself is probably touching on a larger trend less
about experts in specific and more about our culture's widespread individual
narcissism.

------
spullara
To me, the problem is that the expert, especially in things like social
science and public policy, may be hugely biased. The very fact that experts in
these fields often have diametrically opposed viewpoints do not engender trust
when it comes experts in these fields.

------
anaphor
I find it kind of ironic that he cites Dunning-Kruger. In my experience the
D-K effect is something people love to use to pretend they're experts at
psychology, without realizing how hard it really is to correctly interpret
studies like this.

------
kenjackson
I agree with the gist of the article, but it I noticed it didn't mention the
research that some classes of experts actually make worse predictions than a
class of generalists... I think referred to as wolves and foxes, but I can't
remember.

~~~
secretasiandan
I think you're thinking of Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox)

If you like that, you might also like the book Expert Political Judgement by
Philip Tetlock which uses the Hedgehog and Fox metaphor to analyze people's
political judgements.
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=expert+political+judgement](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=expert+political+judgement)

~~~
badsock
Also, for anyone interested, one of my favourite talks is about a study of
political forecasters and their accurancy over the years, seen from this
perspective: (the video is paywalled, but the audio is free):

[http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jan/26/why-foxes-are-
bette...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jan/26/why-foxes-are-better-
forecasters-than-hedgehogs/)

------
PeterWhittaker
This recalls a recent article that made the rounds of various news sites: A
1929 book perfectly captures the distrust of authority, the distrust of elites
we so clearly see in our modern, digital society.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/05/the-
smartes...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/05/the-smartest-
book-about-our-digital-age-was-published-in-1929.html)

~~~
DenisM
It's a great article, thanks for that. The book itself can be found here:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007SXHWKI](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007SXHWKI)

------
jqm
Personally I think he hit it right on the head in the second paragraph...

“appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious
effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real”
democracy.

Yep. Public policy makers who consider themselves "experts".

Not to say that some people don't know more about world affairs than others.
But my view is that this crowd are generally too caught up in their
"expertise" to do what is proper. Witness the recent NSA behavior. They are
"experts" in what we all need. Never mind that their expertise is dangerous,
expensive and hasn't done much good.

Now hard science is a different matter. But this case isn't that at all. There
may be some knowledge of world affairs but it is intrinsically linked with
ideology and OPINION. Another "soft science" guy crying he just don't get no
respect. And possibly a would-be dictator who isn't getting what he wants.

------
return0
I 'm not an expert but i do know that there are a lot more experts today than
before, and that it's easier for an intelligent person to become an expert
much quicker than the time it took in the past to acquire the required
experience. I also know how one can become an expert, you just need a good
understanding of the scientific method and access to information.

I think the author is just lamenting on the lost prestige and authority of
experts. It was inevitable to happen, as knowledge is cheapening. I would like
to say i sympathize with him, but i don't, there's no evidence that the
experts of yesterday were any better than the experts of today.

The real thing to lament about is how expertise has been superseded by
popularity.

------
WalterBright
> People in political debates no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong”
> from the phrase “you’re stupid.”

I wonder just when there allegedly was a golden age of politics where the
issues of the day were discussed politely and with mutual respect.

------
jasonzemos
It seems pretty clear the author has been biased by the area he works in.
Public policy may or may not be some type of objective science, but it's
certainly under the influence of politics: which means he's subjected
regularly to the most arbitrary unscrupulous insanity from random laymen. PG
wrote[1] well about how when it comes to this area, people with absolutely no
qualifications at all not only give an opinion, but _actually consider
themselves the expert_. I have no doubt the author is subjected to this _ad
nauseam_.

1: [http://paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://paulgraham.com/identity.html)

------
tomphoolery
I believe that the layman resents someone who is either introduced or makes
himself known to be an expert, without any empirical evidence pointing to that
fact. What makes this "Tom Nichols" guy an expert in social sciences? Why is
he considered that? Does he have any interesting views on the subject?

What this "death of expertise" has brought us is not a closing door into a
world of knowledge, but rather an empowerment of common humanity, so that
anyone has access to the same information that "experts" have.

------
socialist_coder
This just screams out at me "Fox News"!. The only way they can push their
normally brain dead agenda as hard as they do is to ignore mounds of
literature and opinions from the scientific, intellectual, and other subject
matter experts on the basis of "opinions" and "freedom of speech". If 99% of
people with actual knowledge of the issue disagree, not to worry, 99% of the
fox news viewership does agree so obviously the experts are wrong.

------
johnminter
Informed analyses are the goal, and extensive study in an area is a benefit.
That said, "experts" can and do have bias and conflicts of interest (funding,
prestige, acquiring tenure...) so their analyses require scrutiny as well. I
would note that inappropriate appeal to authority is recognized as a logical
fallacy. I would also note that we live at a time when there is unprecedented
access to informations, so credentials alone are not the best measure of an
argument.

I think we benefit most from scholarly debate of different models/analysis
where the different sides adjust their position based on the criticism. I
would also note that both credentialed and non credentialed people can be
stubborn...

------
vinceguidry
I think true expertise is probably harder to come by than it used to be. It's
like when I hear old-school bloggers say it's easier now to succeed as a
blogger now than it was when they were starting out. It's hard to believe. The
amount of effort it takes to stand out from the crowd would seem to dwarf
anything else. You have to be really sharp, really focused, Early bloggers had
timing on their side, and that counts for a lot.

The barrier to knowledge has gotten much lower, so any would-be expert has to
have a ready answer to the question, "why am I listening to you rather than
just looking up whatever facts I need from Wikipedia?"

------
FrankenPC
As a layman, my opinion has little value apparently. Apologetics aside, I have
noticed a massive cultural shift to computerized expert systems. These systems
are systematically replacing live human experts in many mundane but important
ways. And I believe we need to keep going in this direction. Paying homage to
a human expert when IN SOME CASES their knowledge can be sucked into a program
that can be distributed widely for low cost and very rapid consumption just
makes sense. What are the ramifications of this new digital expert culture?
Heavy reliance on automation which appears to lead to somewhat dull thought
processes.

------
ds9
The most egregious flaw in this guy's argument is that, contrary to his
disclaimer about not advocating a technocracy, he's deceptively arguing that
people should trust experts beyond their respective areas of expertise.

To see this, consider some points that should not be controversial:

1\. Experts, properly identified, have much more factual knowledge in their
respective fields than others who are laypeople in relation to those fields
(the only thing the author gets right).

2\. Being an expert in facts related to a particular topic does not mean that
the person is truthful, benevolent, unbiased, or candid with the public; nor
that his/her intentions, goals or ideology align with those of anyone who is
asked to "trust" the expert.

3\. Expertise makes one better qualified than others to make value judgments,
only to the extent that the value judgments depend closely on factual issues.
In other words, if A and B agree that X is a good policy if proposition P is
true, but a bad policy if P is false, then the expert in the intellectual area
covering P is better qualified to decide the right conclusion - but if A or B
claims that X is a good or bad policy for reasons unrelated to P, then that
expertise is irrelevant, and a false basis for following the expert's
recommendation.

Keeping these points in mind, there is no such thing as an expert in "public
policy". Someone may be an expert in factual issues that are considered
relevant to policies, but making policy decisions intrinsically and
pervasively involves value judgments and ideologies, regarding ends as well as
means, and therefore is not properly conceived as a realm of expertise
comparable to, say, bridge design, reducing infectious disease or conducting
accurate polls.

Thus, for example, on views like the author's, if you can't recite the
statistics about gun-involved deaths and injuries, you're unqualified to have
an opinion on gun laws - but this is a gross fallacy unless you've agreed in
advance that the right policy depends on those stats. But the latter is a
value judgment, not a matter of expertise.

In this way he tries to parlay a sort of snobbery about expertise (he's
obviously very proud of having been consulted by political leaders) into
something like "you're anti-rational unless you shut up and obey". A real
expert who's worthy of trust will instead present the facts, as well as
possible to a lay audience, including the likely consequences of policy
choices, and then defer to the public and a democratic process for decisions.

------
justintocci
I remember the moment when I opened my mind to the possibility that some
immunizations may not be right for my family. It was when I found out doctors
get paid to push them.

It used to be you were the only one paying your professional.

Now when I go to see a professional I can't be passive. I have to participate
and be active in every decision. Because now I never know if I'm the only
customer or if there is some other party to the transaction.

I want to be the only one influencing the behavior of the professional but
even a paying customer can't be confident anymore.

------
mathattack
My professional experience has been the opposite. Over the course of my
career, I've seen a steady decline in leadership, project management and
general management. The return on skill has gone up. If you are the best in
the world at your topic, the world is your oyster. Things turn around so
quickly today, that specialists who can stay current can extract a ton of
value quickly. It's tougher for leaders and managers.

------
iaygo
Opposing an "appeal to authority" is not the claim that "all opinions have
equal weight", it's that "all opinions should be _heard_." Ideas aren't
weighed, anyhow, they're either falsified, or not.

If you cannot explain your idea to an intelligent layman then this is prima
facie evidence that you do not understand it yourself.

~~~
cashmonkey85
Like when that pseudointellectual tried to explain the theory of relativity.
Anyone with intuition would know it was bullshit.

~~~
iaygo
It's hardly fair to allude to one of the deepest theories we have. Besides
which, in all such cases, there are many popular works available for
explanatory purposes.

------
gcb0
"people who want to punish Congress for this or that law can’t name their own
member of the House."

If he really was an expert, he would see the underlining problem in this,
instead of hatting the consequences of that problem.

Maybe if he was an expert in any engineering field he would know how to
identify a problem instead of generating bigotry on the consequences.

~~~
nlew
He's not generating bigotry. He is saying that people who are uneducated in
politics _on a fundamental level_ are trying to make the rules that govern us
all. Not that they are valueless, or are in any way worse; just that they have
no idea what they're talking about.

You wouldn't ask a 6 year old how the government ought to be run. Why should
you value the opinion of a 30 year old who hasn't actually learned any more
about the topic in the intervening 24 years?

~~~
ahomescu1
> Why should you value the opinion of a 30 year old who hasn't actually
> learned any more about the topic in the intervening 24 years?

Because in many cases it's not about opinions, but about decisions that affect
that 30-year old. For example, every citizen should get a say in whether taxes
get raised, I really wouldn't leave that up to the experts.

------
bayesianhorse
I don't think "Expertise" is dead. But in a society where information is
everywhere, and almost every one matters at least a little, people have
ideologies and demand proper explanations.

Experts today better understand the former and provide the latter.

------
admstockdale
I'm surprised by the reaction -- I thought more people would be in support of
this.

Since I'm from the U.S., I'm curious what the attitude is around the world.
Does the layman have a lot of resentment towards the "expert" in other
countries?

~~~
ahomescu1
I wouldn't call the sentiment "resentment", but rather "skepticism".

------
memracom
There is a really great movie on this topic from 2006 called Idiocracy.

Note that the death of expertise may only be something that applies to the
culture of the USA, not other countries. Or at least, not most other
countries.

------
turbojerry
I'll start with the articles bullet points -

1\. We can all stipulate: the expert isn’t always right.

All humans are fallible, including "experts", such as Albert Einstein, who
famously rejected Quantum Mechanics.

2\. But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are. On a question
of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn’t engender insecurity or
anxiety to think that an expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than
yours. (Because, likely, it is.)

There are "experts" in things that have no basis in anything other than the
expressions of other people which may have no or very limited evidence to
support them, priests, Marxist historians, Freudian psychoanalysts etc. Is
their "expertise" of any actual value to the rest of humanity? What about
"experts" in subjects that we as a species do not have a good understanding
of? Does the conflating of those subjects with those that we have much better
understanding of, for example conflating public policy with engineering
disciplines, help or hinder this discussion?

3\. Experts come in many flavors. Education enables it, but practitioners in a
field acquire expertise through experience; usually the combination of the two
is the mark of a true expert in a field. But if you have neither education nor
experience, you might want to consider exactly what it is you’re bringing to
the argument.

If the "field" is nothing more than some ideology, not backed by evidence,
then any "education" in it seems to be open to challenge.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it."

Upton Sinclair

4\. In any discussion, you have a positive obligation to learn at least enough
to make the conversation possible. The University of Google doesn’t count.
Remember: having a strong opinion about something isn’t the same as knowing
something.

Do I need to know the 12 Astrological Houses to reject astrology? Do I need to
know the King James Bible to reject Christianity? Do I need to know Mein Kampf
to reject Nazism? Do I need to know the Talmud to reject Zionism?

5\. And yes, your political opinions have value. Of course they do: you’re a
member of a democracy and what you want is as important as what any other
voter wants. As a layman, however, your political analysis, has far less
value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you
think it is.

So if someone wanted to bring about the destruction of humanity, that would be
of equal value to someone who does not? Perhaps an Orwell quote would help
here-

"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure
wind."

Okay, so how about trying to find out what is actually happening? I would
posit the following-

1\. The Internet has allowed the dissemination of both fact and fiction,
evidence and opinion.

2\. Critical thinking, the use of evidence and reasoning seems to be lacking
from most educational systems. A population that can be swayed with propaganda
rather than evidence and logic is more pliable to the will of the political
class and therefore this state of affairs seems unlikely to change.

3\. The rise of "Truthiness" as a consequence of 2.

4\. The speed of scientific and technological progress is now so great that
expertise in these fields has become much narrower and the ability to
communicate this effectively to the non-experts in a timely fashion has gone
down.

5\. The lack of progress in understanding of the complex social, political and
economic systems we inhabit while simultaneously an increase in that
complexity.

6\. The increasing perception of many people that the current political,
economic and social systems are overly beneficial to an increasingly small
number of people and those, like the author of this piece are no more than
courtiers to the beneficiaries. As this idea becomes more prevalent, the
courtiers must defend themselves and so they try to convince the rest of us
that they are experts who have the same precise answers that engineers could
give.

7\. There is no ideological solution to 6.

8\. People in forums like HN who do have the ability to think critically
increasingly critique articles like this and hopefully spur some critical
thinking in others, this is then twisted by some, like the author into an
attack on all "experts".

~~~
rapala
> Do I need to know the 12 Astrological Houses to reject astrology? Do I need
> to know the King James Bible to reject Christianity? Do I need to know Mein
> Kampf to reject Nazism? Do I need to know the Talmud to reject Zionism?

Well, that is the catch. You don't need to know anything to reject something.
But to argue against something, to have a discussion, requires you to know
what you are arguing against. But things like Christianity and Nazism are poor
examples. Christianity is not factual, it's personal and spiritual, unless you
want to talk about theology. And about Nazism I know too much.

~~~
turbojerry
My point was that there are things that are not worth arguing against as there
is a prima facie against them. So those arguing for those positions are either
ignorant of the prima facie case or are trying to deceive, sometimes
themselves as well as you and me. If you want a more current example take
Irans nuclear program, I have people try to tell me that Iran is working on a
nuclear weapon, I used to point out that all 17 US intelligence agencies have
said this is false, I have since stopped bothering and just avoid those people
now.

~~~
rapala
Yeah, I agree that not every subject is worth arguing about. But if discussion
is what you are after, then you need to know what you are talking about, or
against. The nuclear program of Iran is a great example. You have done the
research to know that those who are experts in the matter don't think Iran has
a nuclear weapon program. The others are not prepared for the discussion.

(This certainty about Iran was actually news to me.)

~~~
turbojerry
The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate is where the Iran information
originated, nothing has changed in the subsequent years.

'Mr Bush expresses anger that US intelligence agencies played a role in
removing the option of military action against Iran over its nuclear
programme.

He describes the "eye-popping declaration" in the 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) judging with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear
weapons programme.'

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-11722375](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11722375)

Comparing the factual analysis to the propaganda whether on Iraq WMD before
the invasion or Irans nuclear programme now is certainly an interesting
exercise.

------
MatthiasP
I can't be the only one who immediately thought of this xkcd comic when
reading the article: [http://xkcd.com/451/](http://xkcd.com/451/)

------
wanda
As soon as I see an article entitled "the death of _x_ " or " _n_ _x_ s that
_y_ " I just skip it. Not everything is worth reading.

------
rogerthis
I'd recommend, on the same subject, the book The Revolt of the Masses, by José
Ortega y Gasset.

------
shmerl
The author is wrong by blaming anything at Wikipedia and etc. This sounded
more than weird.

------
badman_ting
I think I have read too much Taleb to be able to agree.

~~~
nickff
Taleb's writings do not contradict this article, as the experts are often
right; (my take on) Taleb's criticism of experts is that being right most of
the time is not good enough when there are long-tailed distributions.

~~~
badman_ting
In "The Black Swan" he does talk about the importance of experts' error rate,
but the larger point is that only fields which do not rely on prediction of
the future, or "do not move" as he phrases it, can have true experts.
Medicine, hard science, games, accounting, agricultural stuff.

------
michaelochurch
The most dangerous thing to be is an expert on something most people consider
trivial, or in an arena dominated by fear. Data and general knowledge won't
prevent you from getting run over.

The first (something considered trivial) is Parkinson's Law of Triviality,
also known as the parable of the bike shed. I ran into this at Google in the
Real Games debate. It's useless to get into the details, but this was an area
where I _was_ the expert, but because everyone thought "games are trivial"
(mostly based on exposure to shitty games) there was an incredible amount of
product-manager-style bikeshedding, with the actual experts aggressively
pushed back. (Google may be a weird case. If a company thinks that engineering
is Smart People Stuff and design, product management, and HR are Stupid People
Stuff, what kind of product management is it going to get?)

The second and more dangerous case is the one where anxiety (especially
involving children) comes into play. There's no good reason to think that
vaccines cause autism, or are in any way more dangerous than not having them,
but because the stakes are so high, people feel a need to "do something" and
take charge, but often end up making bad decisions. I think the insanity
around expensive, private pre-schools ($40k per year, from preschool to
college) in Manhattan and San Francisco is the same thing. It seems like a
wasteful expense, and expectancy-wise it probably is, but when you consider
the extreme stakes and what happens to people without connections, it's easy
to see why people incinerate so much money on the hoity-toity private schools
(most of which aren't even that good).

------
mudil
Excellent essay. Made me think why my comments on HN get constantly downvoted.
I love HN, but for all its greatness, an average user here is neither an
expert in practically anything, nor likely a productive member of society. He
is just a contrarian with no knowledge. 100 years ago he would have been a
peasant in Ohio.

~~~
nickff
Maybe if you were a touch less condescending and arrogant, and refrained from
making baseless judgments, you would get more up-votes.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that the "average user here is neither an
expert in practically anything, nor likely a productive member of society"? I
disagree with many users, but have no reason to indict them.

~~~
mudil
"if you were a touch less condescending and arrogant, and refrained from
making baseless judgments, you would get more up-votes."

That's exactly why you are wrong. In your world, upvotes are based on niceties
and political correctness, but in my world that should be based on experience
and expertise.

~~~
kazagistar
In your posts, you demonstrated neither category of qualities, and thus
deserve to be down-voted in either "world". (The real world is in between
anyways, and it is the only world that counts.) The only expertise you
demonstrate is in being a prick.

~~~
untilHellbanned
"..demonstrate is in being a prick.." i'm willing to bet your downvote of
@mudil was due to this emotion rather than @mudil failing to demonstrate his
expertise on HN culture

