[arvinjoar]

It's not a bad attitude though.

Experts with authority granted to them in the form of titles have failed us, and keep failing us in so many areas. Ranging from nutrition to psychology, we really shouldn't put their work on a pedestal. Techies are a smart bunch on average and can stomach a lot more complexity than the average joe. It makes sense for them to try to pick up stuff outside of their line of work.

Take Elon Musk as the most successful example. Deferring to experts is a poor substitute for thinking for yourself.

[tpeo]

There's a difference between "thinking for yourself" and "uncritically discouting past work". And that's the difference between asking yourself whether power poses really work and and coming in kicking doors, yelling that psychology is bullshit. First one is engaging in very much reasonable level of critical thought, whereas the second is just thinking "Dunning-Kruger is okay, when I do it".

On a side note, I don't quite get what Elon Musk has to do with this. Isn't hea millionaire paying big bucks for expert engineering talent to put his rockets up in the air?

[arvinjoar]

I'm not saying Psychology is bullshit, why would you frame what I said as such? I think it's in general super interesting. I'm just saying that you can gain a lot more from it by evaluating things critically than you can from swallowing anything and everything that's in vogue uncritically because some authority figure tells you it's the Truth.

Also, to nitpick, Dunning-Kruger is certainly ok when the top performers do it, if you care to look at the actual graph[1].

Elon Musk is very much involved in the engineering of his projects, he's not a Steve Jobs-style CEO. As tomp pointed out[2], Elon was willing to look at things outside of his area of expertise, and guess what, he actually managed to learn quite a lot about those things.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/bJXQWRY.jpg

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12814851

[tpeo]

I mentioned power poses and psychology because it occurred to me as an example since you happened to mention psychology. I don't personally have any knowledge regarding your attitudes towards psychology nor did I intend to frame what you said in any way.

Prior findings must be indeed critically evaluated. That's not the issue. The issue is refusing to even acknowledge them or to acknowledge current field wisdom due to some unwarranted sense of superiority. Taking the dangerous and daring approach to crossing expertise fields instead of being careful is fine, of course. Everyone is free to do whatever they want! But if the daring do fail, they will look like complete asses. They had been given plenty of warning before hand.

And, this is the key and the real reason why I'm saying all this, the daring will fail more often than the careful. The most frequent reason why people try to enter a new field is because they think they might have some superior insight on the matter, whereas the development of each field is chiefly constrained by the amount of data available to it. Ideas are never in short supply relative to data. This isn't to say that outsiders can't make meaningful contributions, or that cross-field collaboration is useless, far from it. But that there isn't much that can done beyond what's warranted by the data.

I'll pass up the opportunity to talk about Musk, because I don't feel I'm qualified to do it.

But as for your nitpick: I don't see why top performers incorrectly gauging their own ability would be "okay". They would pass up great opportunities because they perceive their ability to be lower than what it actually is, and they might experience unwarranted anxiety and feelings of inadequacy (something like an impostor syndrome) if they incorrectly perceive their ability to be lower that that of their peers. There are many ways in which this might not be "okay".

[leshow]

I think you have an imaginary view of what Musks thinking process is like. The reality is he pays top dollar for experts in every field on his interest or that will advance some other goal of his.

[mtberatwork]

> Deferring to experts is a poor substitute for thinking for yourself.

Not deferring to experts when you posses surface level knowledge (or less) of a subject is a sure-fire way to shoot yourself in the foot.

[baldfat]

He is just being a cynic thinking he is a intellectual skeptic.

Cynic : Cynics are distrustful of any advice or information that they do not agree with themselves. Cynics do not accept any claim that challenges their belief system.

"Being skeptical, not cynical, helps us in forming beliefs that are in agreement with evidence."

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/02/08/im-a-skepti...

[arvinjoar]

That's quite a conclusion, given so little data. Priors may vary I guess.

[baldfat]

No their was plenty of data. I run into cynics all the time that just doubts everything "Experts" says and their arguments are not about the actual data or implementation of the data.

[colejohnson66]

The biggest I've run into are people who believe in homeopathy. Give them all the evidence that it doesn't work and they'll disregard it in favor of their anecdotal evidence combined with confirmation bias.

[mwfunk]

I think it's a really common form of irrationality (or cognitive bias?). Antivaxers, 9/11 truthers, moon landing skeptics, Holocaust skeptics, etc. are the same way. I think part of the appeal is that it's more comforting for them to believe in BS than live with the existential angst of the uncertainty and the unknowability of so much of life/reality/other people, but for whatever reason they can't see that motivation within themselves.

[daxorid]

In this particular case, the experts have not only been wrong, but been deadly wrong for the last thirty years. Nutrition has been revealed to be woo-woo pseudoscience after mountains of recent research has debunked the lipid hypothesis for heart disease.

Reinhart has NO obligation to heed the "wisdom" of people who have been killing us with sugar for decades now. We should have nothing but contempt for these charlatans.

[__jal]

Great, so you've discounted one tradition of food advice, although it is far from clear whom, exactly, you're discounting - you start talking about what sounds like dietitians, but end talking about what sounds like processed food manufacturers. But never mind.

Now you have a search problem. Which dilettante do you want to listen to? A techie making a protein shake that makes people sick is far from your only option. As best I can tell, most folks tend to choose diet fads based on a messy set of priors and an aesthetic judgement about the surrounding marketing.

It makes market sense to me that something like Soylent would find a niche; there is a segment that finds eating a hassle, and so an anti-food with hints of Jetsons-food-capsule, from-the-future marketing has a place alongside all the other goofy food fads.

I just don't see any reason to rank Soylent any higher than macrobiotic hyperlocal kale wonder-juice, either. (I do rank both higher than the colloidal silver thing; as far as I know, neither turns you blue.)

[webmaven]

Nutrition experts aren't the ones responsible for the prevalence of sugar and starches in our diet, though:

http://www.whale.to/a/light.html

[arvinjoar]

No, you should definitely listen to what experts have to say. You should then proceed to evaluate it critically. Be mindful of what methodology they use. What assumptions they bake into what they're saying. Ways their model doesn't fit reality. And so on, and so forth. You should seldom defer to them.

[wallace_f]

Thank you for that.

To add to that, this reminds me of the kind of Epaulettes Feynman talked about in SYJMF -- creating titles, awards and distinctions to create an aura around experts. This kind of "aura" of trust and distinction is something that I think in 100 years we will look back on the same way we look at experts of our past: imagine how you view religious leaders who held the keys to understanding life and the universe, or doctors who did more harm than good.

Here's an anecdote. Post WWII the Nobel Prize was awarded for the lobotomy procedure... Experts with authority and all the fanciest Feynman-epaulettes that the world has dreamt up have failed us, that's a certain fact.

[ebbv]

Yes I love how Elon doesn't hire rocket engineers and scientists or consult with NASA. Oh wait he does those things.

[arvinjoar]

If you had read my comment a little more charitably, you might have noticed that I never said you shouldn't consult or listen to experts, but simply that you shouldn't assume someone who is not an expert can't figure things out in a field outside their line of work.

Experts weren't always so kind to Elon[1] either.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P8UKBAOfGo

[livingparadox]

On a side note, disregarding experts is most certainly not what Rob Rinehart is doing. They specifically only regard expert, peer-reviewed literature as authoritative sources for formula changes. Trying to depend on your own analysis is a poor substitute for standing on the shoulders of giants.

[kiba]

Elon Musk made himself into an expert.

I would consider him an authority on rocketry.

[arvinjoar]

Kind of proving my point? :) He did have to go aginst the grain though[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P8UKBAOfGo

[sn9]

He's hardly a typical case.

People who get into graduate physics programs at Stanford rarely are.

And the amount of information one has to add to a solid undergrad education in physics to do rocketry is relatively minor compared to the amount most dilettantes need to add to become an expert.

[stomato]

> Take Elon Musk as the most successful example. Deferring to experts is a poor substitute for thinking for yourself.

I'm not sure what you mean. Elon Musk is an extremely purpose-driven, incredibly intelligent person in addition to being successful. From wikipedia:

'He is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla Motors; co-founder and chairman of SolarCity; co-chairman of OpenAI; co-founder of Zip2; and founder of X.com which merged with PayPal of Confinity. As of June 2016, he has an estimated net worth of US$11.5 billion, making him the 83rd wealthiest person in the world. Musk has stated that the goals of SolarCity, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the "risk of human extinction" by "making life multiplanetary" by setting up a human colony on Mars. In addition to his primary business pursuits, he has also envisioned a high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop, and has proposed a VTOL supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion, known as the Musk electric jet.'

These are not things that just a "successful" person does. He breaks the mold from tech: the mind of Nikola Tesla but with much more business sense.

[tomp]

S/he means that Elon Musk set up a rocket company and a car/battery company, without previously being an expert in either of these things. Sure, he became an expert by learning, but he also noticed and used many things that earlier experts have missed.