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Friday, January 9. 2009

Experts

"Ever done the opposite of what the experts say?"


Our friend Stumbling hits a handful of fallacies in a piece on experts. One quote:



...herein lies the purpose of experts. It’s to reinforce these mechanisms, to help people avoid the uncomfortable facts that the world is uncertain, that mistakes are inevitable, and that we are not as in control of things as we think.


Blaming experts for being wrong is like complaining that the economy is not yellow. It’s a category error so howling as to be nonsensical.


Posted by The Barrister in Fallacies and Logic at 05:44 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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I don't blame experts for being wrong. I blame them (or more specifically their sycophants) for telling me what is going to happen (which they can't possibly know) instead of telling me what they think is most likely to happen. "Reliable" experts are a subset of those who have been around a while. Those that have any sort of integrity know that they're only good at what they do because they're the ones most likely to be wrong less often than most of the uninformed (I think that actually makes sense if you read it reaaal sloooow). Of course we have a media culture to blame for thinking they themselves can tell us "what it all means" which they can't possibly know without consulting their "experts".
#1 KRW on 2009-01-09 09:20 (Reply)
"Those that have any sort of integrity know that they're only good at what they do because they're the ones most likely to be wrong less often than most of the uninformed."

I like that. I think we should put down, based on your definition, one thing that makes us "experts".

I'll go first. I'm an 'expert' in teaching teenagers. I have to add: I am also an expert in dealing with their parents.
`
#2 Meta on 2009-01-09 12:52 (Reply)

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