Consistency

Additional thoughts on experts

I received a reply to last week’s essay which proposed that, “it is in consistency that the expert differs from the amateur.

I wanted to devote some time to this comment.

I don’t necessarily disagree with this claim about consistency. In fact, it demonstrates my point rather well. Measuring consistency depends on the type of expert and how much and how quickly they can get feedback from the environment. It's relatively easy to judge consistency in plumbing, piano tuning, air conditioning installation, poker playing, pedestrian bridge construction, and firearm repair. It is much much harder to judge consistency in fields that don't get immediate or consistent feedback from the environment. How can you judge the consistency of "experts" in fields that, by nature, do not come into routine contact with reality? How can you judge the consistency of a sociologist, macro-economist, public school curriculum designer, or public health official? I am not saying it's impossible, I am saying it is harder to measure and it takes far longer. They may be honest people making an honest effort, but it's hard to see how their "expertise" makes them valuable if there is no way to accurately judge their consistency. So, if the value of an expert can be found in consistency, then the laity ought to be very skeptical of some "experts" (those with little reality contact) and more trusting of other experts with more reality contact in which they can more easily measure consistency. 

Moreover, confidence in one's own abilities should be a product of feedback from the environment. It is much easier for a plumber to build confidence in his skills and expertise than someone who forecasts commodities prices 10 years from now. The problem is that macro-experts who are making or advising decisions at large scale, where there is little contact with reality, have downsides that are much more consequential than experts operating on a smaller scale (closer to reality). If a single plumber fails in his job, he might screw up a municipal water system. This is bad, but it's less of a danger than at the national level. If advocates of certain macro-economic theories get a hold of fiscal and monetary policy, they could bring down the entire financial system (if they are wrong). The greater the scale and the harder to measure consistency, the less confident an "expert" should be in themselves, and the more skeptical non-experts should be. But the opposite is more often the case; you tend find more humble swimming pooler installers than humble national defense strategists. 

Also, as I made clear in last week’s essay, the point is not to try to know more than the experts, it's to learn enough to be able to ask penetrating questions, be able to smell BS, and maintain healthy skepticism. Some will go too far, but, I say again, the danger is more in "expert" overconfidence than in lay-person overconfidence. And when experts try to "pull rank" as an expert, that is a red flag. I'm not saying it's wrong to identify yourself as an expert, I am saying it is fallacious to claim that you are right because you are an expert.