[HN Gopher] Articulate and Incompetent
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Articulate and Incompetent
Author : jger15
Score : 28 points
Date : 2022-01-22 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thekcpgroup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thekcpgroup.com)
| biorach wrote:
| > a major problem we are seeing unfold in real time is that some
| influential, very high-IQ people often have limited awareness of
| exactly where their circle of competence ends.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| As far as I can tell, this is nearly everybody's biggest flaw,
| high IQ or no. I think we just relish the chance to point out a
| "smart" person's limits more.
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| Well, there does seem to be a special Silicon Valley version
| of this where people get incredibly wealthy from their
| software/web businesses and conclude all they need to do is
| get into <some other radically-different field> and they'll
| get that "figured out" just as easily. It's a unique kind of
| hubris that doesn't usually pan out.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > Whenever someone offers you their opinion, a superb initial
| question paraphrases Morgan Housel: "what have you experienced
| that makes you believe what you do?" The profound usefulness of
| this simple question is that it immediately anchors abstract
| ideas back to real-world experience. Or reveals its absence;
| especially in non-practitioners like politicians or academics.
| theknocker wrote:
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Worth knowing, but in many cases a person's experience with
| something amounts to little more than an anecdote.
|
| I experienced a robbery in a restaurant, committed by a black
| man. Yes it really happened, but I should not generalize very
| much based on that experience -- or if I do, I need to be able
| to discern which attributes of the experience are incidental
| and which are relevant, and to weight one-off experiences
| differently from deep experience in an area of claimed
| expertise.
| tux1968 wrote:
| A fact is true (or not) regardless of the messenger. This credo
| is essentially an appeal to authority rather than addressing
| the assertion itself.
| greenyoda wrote:
| > This credo is essentially an appeal to authority
|
| Strange, I read it as exactly the opposite. Many times,
| people who are considered authorities in something, such as
| academics, have little or no real world experience in the
| matters that they're giving advice on. For example, why
| should a business owner take advice from an economist, who
| has never run a business (or even worked outside of
| academia), on how to run a business? By asking "what have you
| experienced that makes you believe what you do?", we can at
| least establish if someone really knows something or is just
| an "authority".
|
| Similarly, if I see a book about software development, I'd
| like to know what significant software the author has
| delivered. If their expertise is mostly in writing books and
| making YouTube videos, I don't want to waste my time reading
| their advice.
|
| Ironically, the author of this article seems to work for a
| "wealth management group", so we should ask what experience
| _they_ have that would make them a credible source of advice
| in psychology or brain function. They write _nothing_ about
| their own actual experience, only quoting various
| authorities.
| mistermann wrote:
| If it was posed as an assertion rather than an exploratory
| question I'd agree.
| torstenvl wrote:
| What have you experienced in your life that makes you think
| analysis of errors in logic applies to analysis of errors in
| establishing premises?
|
| GP isn't appealing to authority, he's suggesting a way to get
| to the heart of epistemological differences.
| civilized wrote:
| Alternate title for this article: _mental shortcuts for arriving
| at a conclusion without actually applying logic or reasoning._
|
| For example:
|
| > This leads to a stunning possibility implied by the opening
| quote. True expert intuition may often be associated with poor
| explanations. We should therefore be extremely suspicious of neat
| explanations in the broadest domains.
|
| Does anyone think this is actually a valid or plausible argument
| for its conclusion? "Expert explanations sometimes don't seem to
| make sense, therefore don't trust explanations that seem to
| broadly make sense?"
|
| I understand the value of heuristics, but they're a crutch. You
| shouldn't be using crutches or wheelchairs all the time when you
| can walk (i.e. use logic). If you don't walk, your legs will
| wither away.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Does anyone think this is actually a valid or plausible
| argument for its conclusion? "Expert explanations sometimes
| don't seem to make sense, therefore don't trust explanations
| that seem to broadly make sense?"
|
| I read this a bit differently: Experts often have a hard time
| explaining their intuitions. That is, they (presumably, as
| experts) have the correct intuition, but can't articulate their
| internal reasoning (and maybe the correct explanation is
| inherently difficult to understand), while on the other hand it
| is not very hard to come up with a seemingly coherent ("neat")
| explanation for pretty much anything. If that is indeed true (I
| don't know that it is), then having a "neat" explanation
| presented could really be a counter-indication, statistically
| speaking.
|
| I'm halfway sympathetic to that, as "neat" explanations do
| quite often oversimplify, and reality usually turns out to be
| more complex. Explanations that also point out their own
| limitations and caveats tend to inspire higher credence.
| civilized wrote:
| Some things do have simple neat correct explanations though.
| So it reduces to a tautology - "be suspicious of simple
| explanations in areas where you wouldn't expect a simple
| explanation to work".
| layer8 wrote:
| I'd argue that as a non-expert you can't really assess
| whether a simple explanation would work or not.
| FabHK wrote:
| I think this is what the article alludes to. There is the
| famous example of some expert on Rembrandt (or some other
| painter) that could tell that a specific painting was a
| forgery, but was not able to pinpoint why he felt that way.
| (This anecdote might have been in the introduction of some
| book on intuition, something Malcolm Gladwell-ish, but I
| can't recall which...)
| [deleted]
| teucris wrote:
| Being unable to explain a standpoint is a deal breaker. Even if
| you're an expert with good intuition, you should be able to
| translate that intuition into a coherent argument. I think we
| don't do a good enough job of holding people to this bar.
|
| Thus I think there needs to be two criteria here: is the
| argument plausible, and is backed by evidence or demonstrated
| expertise. Not just one or the other.
|
| Feels obvious once I write it out, to be honest.
| mcguire wrote:
| Keep in mind, logic is only as reliable as your axioms. I've
| seen plenty of logical arguments lead to wrong conclusions.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yes, but logically sound arguments backed by available
| evidence tend to lead to wrong conclusions _less frequently
| than other strategies_.
| car wrote:
| This reasoning seems to apply in non-scientific fields, where
| it's hard or impossible to refute. Power Poses to induce
| confidence (from Amy Cuddy) comes to mind, which was ultimately
| debunked. Or the asinine advice that forcing a smile will make
| you happy.
| [deleted]
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| tldr; intuition _qua_ pattern recognition is often better than
| analysis but isn 't as amenable to explanation.
|
| Even if this were true, and it's certainly not in the context of
| fundamental investing, it's what asset managers call untradeable
| knowledge, e.g., an existence theorem for a number with no
| tractable means of finding it.
| pfisherman wrote:
| I have experienced this before - someone who was great at selling
| their work - but everything quickly fell apart when you started
| looking at it closely and asking the right questions.
|
| I think that this type of behavior can be advantageous in a
| couple of ways. It gets started on a higher rung of the ladder of
| perceived competence and trust, and that advantage can be
| compounded over time. The drawback is that over time they start
| to get a reputation as a bullshitter and people do not trust them
| to do anything that actually needs to work. And your reputation
| tends to follow you.
|
| That being said, these types of people can be very valuable
| members of a team and excel if given the right role and
| responsibilities.
| greenyoda wrote:
| > these types of people can be very valuable members of a team
| and excel if given the right role and responsibilities
|
| I'm curious about what roles you think someone like this could
| bring value to. If "people do not trust them to do anything
| that actually needs to work", aren't they a liability to the
| team?
| pfisherman wrote:
| Sales-like roles are usually a good fit. Leadership if they
| are aware of their limitations. Also useful in planning /
| strategy because they usually have a good sense of what is
| hot / what will sell. Main thing is that you them want to
| have them with someone who is competent, and they have to
| trust and be willing to defer.
| FabHK wrote:
| > We have an infinite palette of emotions and sensations, yet
| only a handful of words to describe them. (I am English,
| therefore particularly disadvantaged.)
|
| That strikes me as wrong - English is the language with the most
| words. Why would it be particularly poor in describing the
| emotional realm? (Presumably, the author means that the English
| with their stiff upper lip don't have much awareness of their
| emotions, but the author is specifically referring to words.)
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