[User23]

That’s exactly the point and why it’s laziness. If you lack the knowledge to judge someone’s work then intellectual honesty requires foregoing an opinion on its quality. Saying “well I don’t understand, but his degree doesn’t have climate in its name so he must not know what he’s talking about” is gross laziness. And if you do have the expertise to accurately judge the work in question, then it stands or falls on its own and the credentials don’t matter.

[afarrell]

> requires foregoing an opinion on its quality

So how do you decide whom to rely on for medical care? Surely you don’t just roll a die.

[User23]

This is actually something I have a serious problem with, especially considering the prevalence of iatrogenic injuries. For some reason doctors don't list actual useful metrics that could help with decision making, like how many people they've accidentally killed or maimed, how many times they've failed to win malpractice suits, and how much time they spend with a patient on average per visit to name just a few examples. There's an old joke that makes fun of medical credentialism: Q: What do you call someone who graduates at the bottom of the class in med school? A: Doctor.

The same goes for hiring a lawyer. How do I know that I'm getting a good one? Is the one whose daddy paid his way into Stanford really better than the striver who worked his way through some second tier law school? At least with a lawyer I have some ability to judge his verbal intelligence through conversation, but I'm still basically blind as to his actual legal ability.

So you tell me, what's the foolproof technique to hire a top decile professional in a field where you aren't equipped to judge the candidate's quality?

[vnorilo]

Perhaps I have some meta-expertise on judging the correlation between credentials and credibility.

Exclusive first-hand observation is a cripplingly restrictive epistemology. Even much of our own first-hand expertise is based on us learning from and believing sources, professors, textbooks etc.

[inflatableDodo]

Expertise isn't one of those words that metas all that well. Expert tends to sound a lot more, well, expert, than meta-expert. If someone tried to reassure me by saying that they were a meta-expert, I'd probably try and shoo them out of the building with a broom before they damaged anything.

[threatofrain]

You have some meta expertise? Have you studied industrial or organizational business and psych literature? You should just come out and say it, as opposed to hinting that you have mysterious credibility.

[vnorilo]

The first paragraph should probably have had a /sarcasm tag. To rephrase with less snark, I don't believe anyone can become an expert without trusting prior experts.