Quote:First, I agree that focusing on 'being positive' or 'being nice' to the detriment of being honest is problematic.
In which case we agree about the first half of the key question at stake here. The second half is that modern anglophone culture does indeed tend to emphasize being pleasant at the expense of acting so as to achieve excellence. I am not sure that you agree with this part. At the risk of courting further controversy, there is a link here with the feminization of the West (observable in male testosterone levels, as well as in the exterior develop of culture).
(Today 1:21 PM)Planchet Wrote: As someone who invests in public markets I find this response, which is typical in the modern world, highly amusing. Those with 'objective' 'genuine expertise' created the financial crisis and the risk managers with 'genuine expertise' completely failed to see it coming. Many of those who managed to predict it were those without any kind of recognised expertise as being outside the system helps one recognises the failings thereof - think of the emperor's new clothes story.
The problem here is an underlying belief in the existence of objectivity (which is false) and a desire to categorise and control which is described by Iain McGilchrist as a bias to the use of the left hemisphere of the brain in his book "The Master and his Emissary". Pheroquirk's point about how one determines those who know what they are talking about on the internet is spot on in this regard.
Further, I would note that the other aspect of the excess of niceness is that many have become overly emotionally sensitive and so unable to cope when others are not nice - I've seen this a few times on this forum.
Quote:I don't think your reply demonstrates an understanding of what I've written. Neither have I found my beliefs to be common or typical in the general population.
Whether or not it is
demonstrated by his post, I rather think that Planchet gets your basic point even if he did not follow the origin of the term 'genuine expertise'.
Quote:First, note that "genuine expertise" was in quotes for a reason. I was using the term that pheroquirk had provided. I quoted it because I saw it as a tautological argument (we believe who we believe) which neglected to explicitly state the ultimate basis of its epistimology.
Can our epistemology ever be made explicit? I somehow doubt it, and indeed that this relates very much to the book by Iain McGilchrist mentioned by Planchet. As a practical manner I find it interesting to observe that scientists, religious thinkers, investors, artists and the like very rarely make their epistemology articulate. More theoretically, Polanyi has pointed out that a great deal of reasoning actually depends on what is tacit and might not be possible to be made articulate. One can try to tease out the foundations, but in the end they can at best point to one's epistemological grounding, and not fully specify it. Godel tells us that any formal system that is complete will struggle to describe the real world.
All said and done, I'm a practical man, and the discussion started with respect to a practical question. Fancy philosophical ideas are all very well, but all too often they lead us away from looking at the world as it is in favour of a beautiful abstraction that can never properly describe the real thing.
The meaning of the term genuine expertise is perfectly clear. Somebody who has studied computer studies at university with a certificate in Microsoft networking has a credential, might claim to be an expert, and might be thought to have expertise in that area. But whether he can actually do the job or has any
genuine expertise is a totally different question. It may well be that the fifteen year old kid in the neighbourhood has zero credentials, but a great deal more genuine expertise than the credentialed guy. How do you tell? Well - assessing expertise is not that easy - you need a good feel for the subject, and a good nose for talent. But just because you can't write a manual that explains to someone with no ability to judge how to choose, doesn't mean that this kind of skill doesn't exist. Clearly it does.
"I'm not criticizing his basis for trust. I'm questioning his objective assertion that his process should be the exclusive basis, when he isn't explicitly stating his process and perhaps is not able to. There are various processes for establishing trust, and all have flaws that can be balanced against other methods."
I am not aware that I said that natural authority and good judgement should be the exclusive basis form making decisions in life. I repeat what I said before that Nature has more shades of grey than black or white. Nonetheless - as Planchet points out - the custom today to look for objectivity and demonstration of ability or quality, and one to which you clearly subscribe quite strongly, is very much the culmination of a modern trend - actually a trend in consciousness, a certain way of looking at the world. It's especially a Western, and above all an American way of thinking. Many parts of the world do things rather differently, and this is a point tacitus used to make. He suggested an important step in personal growth would be to disconnect entirely from technology and go live with a tribe that has retained other modes of consciousness and has a more plastic way of looking at the world. I do believe he did something rather like this in his youth, and benefited tremendously from it.
It is certainly true that whilst Moore's Law holds, and there are continued benefits from breaking tasks down into components, automating what can be automated, and farming the rest out to be done by the emerging world, that this prevalent mode of consciousness has many benefits and understandably has come to be associated with great prestige by virtue of its success in our era. But one should not make the mistake of confusing what works for now today in certain parts of life as the only valid way to look at the world. Looking for objective proof, and distrusting natural authority is the consequence of an acquired mode of consciousness and set of mental habits. I cannot blame you for rather liking it. But one should be aware that consciousness shapes the world that one sees, and if one were to choose to adopt a different set of habits for certain other contexts one would see the world differently, and most likely in a richer, more fulfilling manner. This is what I learnt from tacitus.
By the way, in case it might be of interest, tacitus nailed the bursting of the housing bubble in real time - see some of his old posts back in Feb 2007 (the point of minimum fear in the credit market). He did this based on not depending primarily on objective models, but rather good judgement and discernment.
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Quote:But in many fields where quality really matters, it is often only someone with genuine expertise that can tell the difference between good and bad work. And then people need at some point to recognize that the judgement of the one with expertise is likely better than their own, even if they can't see why.
His definition of the process by which 'genuine expertise' arises is, essentially, "trust your friends and then gain your own expertise.""
With the greatest respect, I think not. I tried in my example to give you a sense for how natural authority arises in the world because given how you look at things, I believe this concept must to you seems like gibberish, or at best tendentious and reflective of hidden power structures. Natural authority arises naturally in a culture where people are in the habit of forming their own judgements about things that they need to depend on. I understand that this isn't the case for much of modern life in America, particularly within elite circles, but it certainly is true for certain other circles, and not circles that are lacking in prestige or power. The world is a big place, and it is easy to think that the way things are done in the circumtances with which one is familiar must be the only correct ways when that is not necesarily the case. That said, there is no doubt that your way of looking at things has become more fashionable in recent decades.
" Sometimes that works, but that also gave us Bernie Madoff."
Actually, quite the reverse. People invested with Madoff because he ticked all the boxes, and everyone else was doing it. Also because people thought they knew his game, which they imagined to be frontrunning customer flow but getting away with it because he was clever and protected by his standing in the Establishment. This kind of credentialist left hemisphere consciousness is quite the reverse of that which favours natural authority. A discernment based culture would say when he came to visit hmmm it is very interesting how profitable you are able to be with a strategy that nobody else is able to make any money doing; please help us understand better. And a discernment based culture led to people digging deeper in response to something that didn't seem to make sense. This only happens when you trust your intuition, and refined sensibility, not when you only look at the numbers, and what the credentials of the people appear to be.
The problem is that you can not substitute "data" and "objectivity" for a deep understanding of what is going on. The data are a starting point, but you always need to dig deeper. Our society, especially in big cities, leads people not to trust their personal judgement and intuition (which requires practice, training and development) enough to depend on it, but rather to depend on social institutions - follow the herd, do what you are supposed to, get rich, right? That can work for a while, but in the long run there is no substitute for confronting the world as it truly is.
"Just because someone claims objectivity based on data doesn't mean you give credence to their claims."
Indeed. Therefore one needs to exercise discernment, and also to pay attention to the observations of natural authorities on the subject in order to figure out what might be right or wrong with such models. There is no escaping the need to decide who knows their stuff and who does not, and you can't go by social proof in these matters. In 2006, Paulson was not even a second rate hedge fund guy, for example.
" Quote:The problem here is an underlying belief in the existence of objectivity (which is false)
To claim authoritatively that objectivity is false is to make an objective statement. In any case, you have to at least allow an imperfect measure of objectivity, or else the notions of true and false in general become meaningless. If really don't believe anything is objective then you don't get to claim that anything is false."
There is a real world out there, that is accessible to us directly via intuition, supported by the evidence of the senses. But the evidence of the sense (such as data and models) can never be objective, because it requires placing into context, and there is always an aspect of discernment and judgement in doing so. Data by itself is meaningless, and the kind of evangelical belief some Westerns have in data stripped of intuitive thinking on the grounds that this objectively tells you anything is very much mistaken.
"I agree with your assertion that we should prefer unbiased individuals over biased ones as a heuristic, especially if we lack the capacity to understand their mental models."
I don't believe either Planchet or myself spoke of heuristics, or of unbiased individuals. My experience of life is that there is always a bias, and truth emerges at best via critiquing and dialectic.
"Of course, most High School and even most college education isn't teaching kids about anything so poorly understood as economic theory. Objective standards work a lot better in regards to teaching material which is well understood."
It strikes me that standards a century ago were much less objective than they are today. Coincidentally, standards then were much higher. Also, academic standards in India and Hong Kong are arguably much higher than they are in England and the US. (In A Level exams, a C grade in the Hong Kong exam will get you an A in England). Yet the fashion for 'objective' marking has been much greater in the West. I do think there is a casual relationship here (albeit not direct), but don't wish to drift further here.
"@Pheroquirk - "if there was one nation in the world that exemplified the rule of law rather than the arbitrary rule of man, it would be England."
I'm not sure I agree with that. Modern America, for example, is far more legalistic and lawsuit happy than England was."
The Rule of Law is not about the reign of lawyers! Rather the opposite! A legalistic culture is the opposite of one where the Rule of Law holds. Blackstone is quite clear.
"Not to mention that the pasturelands of Ireland and Scotland were noted as being difficult to defend against theft, which seems to contribute to cultures of honor."
English elite culture at its height was shaped barely at all by Ireland, and only somewhat by Scotland. The concept of an English gentleman owes nothing to the putative 'honour cultures' of Scotland and Ireland.
" Quote:You may say that I have no objective basis for believing the Savile Row suit superior. But on the whole it is very likely to be, whether or not you can tell.
What does 'it is very likely to be' mean here?"
It means you might somehow have found an amazing suit in Barneys, and gotten a horrible one that doesn't fit and doesn't make you look good from your tailor in Savile Row. The latter is not very likely, but not impossible.
" If there's no objective basis for quality, then quality is subjective and relative and should be discussed using appropriate terms. Terms of preference ("I like") would be more suitable than statements of absolute fact ("It is"). Unless, of course, you think the product has some absolute quality which is universally preferred even if you personally lack the ability to measure that quality."
This is a very clear statement of your beliefs. As I said, these questions are metaphysical and metapolitical. I believe there is a natural hierarchy of discernment and expertise in any particular area, and that human beings are naturally oriented towards figuring this out. But because you do not believe in anything beyond the evidence of the senses (which includes 'data'), you exclude this possibility by assumption. I don't want to try to persuade you that you are wrong, but it's my belief and that of many others that you limit the aspects of the world that you can experience by starting with this basic assumption, an assumption that is useful but not true. Quality is objective because intersubjective, and a representative suit from Savile Row (I shall not mention particular tailors) is of higher quality than a representative suit from even high-end department stores.
"This seems to be a common epistimological mistake; people claim that matters are subjective but still wish to discuss them using objective terminology. They don't just assert that their opponents have a different preference, but that their opponents are "wrong." To say that a thing is wrong requires some universally legitimate objective standard."
Your paragraph above is unimpeachable by prevailing cultural fashions in America. But they are only fashions. If one has genuine expertise in a field then to say a thing is wrong does not require a universally legitimate objective standard. One can say a thing is wrong because I have been doing this a long time, and I know what I am doing, and I tell you this is not correct. If there is a discussion about it with other experts then one then uses language to point to the thing that is not right in an attempt to get others to see what you do. That's utterly different from producing 'objective' evidence of your point of view.
Ever read Zen and the art of archery?
" Quote:Authorities become such because they are recognized by others as such, not because they claim to be one. Please don't ask me to prove to you that he knows his onions. This is how authority works.
The problem is that this doesn't explicitly state how you determined that Pago "knows his onions." (your epistimology)"
He clearly knows his onions, and I say that because I have been using mones a long time and am very sensitive to small differences. If you would like to claim that he doesn't, you would need to point out things he ought to have noticed but didn't, and things he clearly interpreted wrongly - but I suspect such will be hard to find.
As I said earlier, I have never found much good to come out of devoting excessive thought to questions of pure epistemology, and indeed most great thinkers seem not to have done so either. Knowing all the epistemology in the world will not teach you how to think, and how to judge. I think you might enjoy Iain McGilchrist's book - he explains very well the problems of relying exclusively on the kind of thinking you prefer. It's hard to condense into just a few lines, however.
" There's a process at work there, whether you're cognizant of it or not, whether I accept your process or not. This is what I'm referring to when I say that you're using loaded terms."
Of course there is a process at work - a process of discernment and judgement. But it's certainly not one that can usefully be codified and placed in a four-ring binder!