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Experts should have proficiency even if their primary function is to exercise power or speak to a platform

Experience does not mean expertise

# Disciplines where it is clear to an outsider whether you are proficient
In disciplines like fighting and comedy it is clear to an outsider whether you have are proficient in the discipline. “Did the other person give up?” “Are you funny?” [[Absolute games are anchored to reality]] and so are these disciplines - they are both low on [[Bullshit Ideas]].  However, some of these disciplines (like fighting and chess) are clearly relative games, demonstrating that relative games do not necessarily lead to bullshit. 

Is it the case with any game that’s anchored to reality is observable to an outsider? 

The really hard-line assertion would be that any discipline is “floating” until it produces an output that an outside observer can appreciate. I’m not sure I entirely buy that but I do like the bright line.

This criterion is complicated by serval factors. Many things are ‘acquired tastes.’ Taste can either be really fine tuned pattern-matching *or* it can just be the result of other people convincing you that something is good. [[Faith based on desire works in human systems]].  

Similarly, in science or math, a new discovery can honestly expand humanity’s knowledge about the real world (it is anchored in reality) but it could have no effect on people’s lives and be so subtle that an outsider couldn’t tell the difference between the new state of knowledge and the previous state of knowledge. And on the flip side, many scientists who *seem* good to outside observers earn that distinction by being skilled communicators and entertainers rather than skilled scientists. [[There are secretly three kinds of experts]]. 

### Related
- [[Physical and knowledge frontiers lead to absolute games instead of relative games]]
- [[How can you tell if an expert has a minimum level of proficiency to wield power or speak to a platform?]]

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When should we defer to experts?

# Experience does not mean expertise
We often mistake two separate classes of experience for expertise. Both experience and badges certainly *correlate* with expertise but are not causal and the correlation is weaker than our brains assume. 

Of course, all of this is predicated on the question “what do we mean by an expert?”  [[There are secretly three kinds of experts]]. Generally when we’re looking for experts, we’re implicitly referring to experts with proficiency. [[Experts should have proficiency even if their primary function is to exercise power or speak to a platform]]. 

However, proficiency is often illegible to people outside of the discipline. [[Disciplines where it is clear to an outsider whether you are proficient]].  Duration is a direct proxy for proficiency. Duration is perhaps not the right word but it’s the thought pattern that goes “you’ve done thing X a lot or at least talk about it often, so you must be proficient.” Expertise-based power and platforms are more discernible via proxies. These proxies include badges and popularity. Badges mean that someone has gone through some kind of gatekeeping process  eg. publishing a book or holding a position) Popularity implies that many *other* people think they’re an expert.  

Duration is a poor proxy because there are *many* disciplines where you can get by without improving or developing a keen intuition for the affordances of a domain. People can run every day for years and not become faster or do a job for decades and not necessarily be more proficient than a journeyman or highly-competent novice.

Badges and popularities have always been shaky proxies but arguably their ability to reflect underlying proficiency has eroded because of several later 20th and early 21st century trends. The number of badges has exploded, while the gatekeeping quality of the institutions giving them out has declined. [[Most institutions have become cancerous]]. Similarly, the internet has allowed (and encouraged) popularity predicated on, but entirely divorced from proficiency.

### Related
- [[How can you tell if an expert has a minimum level of proficiency to wield power or speak to a platform?]]
- [[People create proxy games for long term or hard-to-measure games]]
- [[Optimizing for fair gatekeeping games is often disjoint for optimizing for the real game]]



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There are secretly three kinds of experts

# Experts should have proficiency even if their primary function is to exercise power or speak to a platform
An expert obviously does not need to be the most proficient person in the field, so there is some ‘minimum viable proficiency’ that varies by field. If an expert has insufficient proficiency, they have no intuition for the dynamics and affordances of their domain. ( [[Understanding a thing has to do with intuiting the affordances of a thing]].)

 If an expert can’t intuit the affordances of their domain, they are either limited to repeating verbatim what they learned from other experts, or making shit up. 

[[How can you tell if an expert has a minimum level of proficiency to wield power or speak to a platform?]]

### Related
- [[Disciplines where it is clear to an outsider whether you are proficient]]
- [[Absolute games are anchored to reality]]

[Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Experts_should_have_proficiency_even_if_their_primary_function_is_to_exercise_power_or_speak_to_a_platform)

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The post-consensus world has fractured respect lines

Disciplines where it is clear to an outsider whether you are proficient

We need more metaexpertise

# How can you tell if an expert has a minimum level of proficiency to wield power or speak to a platform?
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Sam Arbesman

# We need more metaexpertise 
Metaexpertise is just the ability to pick which “experts” to listen to and distinguishing between different kinds of experts [[There are secretly three kinds of experts]]. 

It’s bad to both ignore experts when you should listen to them (errors of omission) and to listen to experts when you should ignore them (errors of commission.) The fact that both types of error are possible means that you can’t take a maximal approach and either ignore experts all the time or just “listen to scientists.” [[When should we defer to experts?]].  But while there’s lots of discourse about “should we listen to experts,” there’s not as much about “when should we listen to experts?” “Which experts should we listen to?” And “how should we listen to them.” 

There are offhanded ideas in this arena - things like the wisdom of crowds literature suggest that when information is highly distributed it’s better to use markets and averages and when information is extremely unintuitive it’s better to depend on experts. Skin in the game analysis is another. 

How would you evaluate someone’s meta expertise? It might  be their ability to make predictions in a large number of areas. The complexity of the modern world means that it’s impossible for any one person to themselves be an expert on any one topic so we need to depend on specialists (ie. experts.)  So someone looks like an expert in multiple areas is instead probably a meta-expert with extremely good taste in experts. (Of course, there’s no reason that anybody should be any better at determining whether someone is a legit metaexpert than they are at determining if someone is a normal expert.) 

### Related
- [ ] 
- [[Talking to experts can expose bad equilibria, the moves necessary to get out of them, and considerations for doing them like cost constraints]]
- [[How can you tell if an expert has a minimum level of proficiency to wield power or speak to a platform?]]

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How can you tell if an expert has a minimum level of proficiency to wield power or speak to a platform?

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