Should you always use and trust “experts”?
British economist Noreena Hertz wrote in 2002 about the potential collapse of the global financial system through corporate greed and unregulated markets.
After this came true she gave a controversial TED talk in late 2010 about expertise.
In this speech she cites a study where patients hooked up to an MRI listened to experts speak and the findings were extraordinary.
“As they listened to the experts’ voices, the independent decision-making parts of their brains switched off,” Noreena notes.
She also explores examples of when experts have failed society, and claims that relying too much on experts can be limiting and even dangerous. She calls for us to start democratizing expertise.
Check out the whole video below (or on YouTube).
How much do you think we can rely on experts?
How much should we rely on ourselves?
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The problem is not listening to experts. The problem is not listening to experts with SKEPTICISM!
If we never listened to experts, we would still be using leaches to cure headaches, never have gone to the moon, not have personal computers, etc, etc.
I have to rely on what my doctor tells me when I go to the doctor. She is an expert, not me. However, there’s no reason I can’t get a second or third opinion from another expert.
What scares me about this article is that it doesn’t say how the democratization of expertise would happen. I, certainly, shouldn’t be voting on what’s the best Leukemia cure. And the scientific community already does peer review. Peer review seems like the best course. Perhaps that is what is meant by democratization.
The most important thing in life is to have a huge sense of wonder with a giant dose of skepticism.
beowuff, I agree completely with your comment. We have to approach experts with skepticism. They may be experts, but they are far from infallible.
Concerning your comment about going to the doctor, a book I read a year or so ago, How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman (http://www.jeromegroopman.com/how-doctors-think.html) speaks to that exact issue.
Dr Groopman goes into the importance of questioning your doctor and actually helping the doctor help you better by providing the right information and questioning the answers, not just relying on their expert advice.
I think we as a society are trained to leave things to those who are more specialized in that field, the experts. The maxim that I like to live by is “Trust but verify”.
Like you said bewuff, there is no reason why we can’t get a second opinion. Trust but verify
No, I don’t agree. The problem may lie in the dichotomy created by marketing. Discovering the difference between the self-professed expert and the expert can take time but should make the difference.
Of course there is the problem created when there is a group of “experts” who all agree and they are wrong. Think barbers letting blood to cure people or doctors burning and poisoning patients to cure people. Both groups agreeing that their expertise is the correct one and both (in my non-expert opinion) wrong.
One last observation. If I need a lawyer I will NOT be relying on my own expertise. Only my expertise of seeking for and finding someone expert enough for the job.
I think it depends, I mean, everything when taken to the extremes it’s bad, and as Tim Ferriss says in The 4 Hour Body, you should always be aware at least at 50% and to be able to experiment and test new things and prove or disprove theories, it’s always healthy to keep the little scientist alive inside of us and to be willing to take some risks
Absolutely.
I see this whole “the independent decision making parts of people’s brains switch off” far too often for comfort (ESPECIALLY in the blogosphere!).
What happened to people using intuition to determine what was best for their [insert life situation]? Sure, there are situations where you might want an expert to guide you, but at the end of the day, you need to do your own research from a variety of sources and trust your gut.
Thanks for sharing this article. I don’t often read this site, but when I saw the Tweet, I knew I had to rush right over to watch the clip.
I’ve been arguing on my own blog that innovation stalls when we decide that the pioneers in our industry are inherently better than us, that they have everything figured out. Instead we should question conventions. We can study the experts, but with an eye for progress, not hero worship.
In short, I loved the video and very much agree with the central premise, especially this part: “Being a rebel is about recognizing the experts’ assumptions and their methodologies can easily be flawed.”
It honestly depends on the field in question. If we’re talking about sports then forget what any expert says about anything. Sometimes sports experts are so wrong it’s laughable. But if we’re talking about economics, I think it’s good to listen to experts as long as you do the research necessary to think critically about a topic. The worst is when people listen to an economic expert and then turn-key the information without doing any real legwork. It’s the classic scene from Good Will Hunting when Matt Damon puts a Harvard student in his place after regurgitating the latest academic babble. And of course I would trust my doctor’s medical expertise over my own, but that doesn’t mean I should follow him blindly. If that were the case there would be no such thing as a second opinion. Experts are guides, not the final word.
I wasn’t able to get past her emotional appeal during the first 90 seconds.
So I won’t comment further on her opinion.
As an engineer, I’ve been conditioned to “trust, but verify.” Meaning: You trust someone’s expertise/knowledge/ability, but you always verify it anyway. Why? Well, it’s the acknowledgment of the fact that even though you trust the expert’s competence (and assuming you trust their good intentions as well), they’re still *human.* They are not infallible. The best of them can, in fact, make mistakes.
So I agree with what beowuff said about taking expert’s opinions seriously…with a healthy dose of skepticism. And not resting on just *one* expert’s opinion. Seeking out multiple opinions seems to be the most prudent thing to do. Then, after you take all those opinions into consideration, you pick what’s best for *you.*
Disclaimer: I didn’t watch the video (I hate video).
I disagree with what most people above have said. This is what I believe:
Current educational systems remain relatively unchanged as compared to, say, 50 years ago. However, the rate of scientific change has massively accelerated since then. 50 years ago there was an implicit assumption that what people were learning was accurate, and would remain so for the rest of their lives. This assumption still holds at most educational institutions – challenge a doctor, manager, economist, or piano instructor with new scientific knowledge you have collected and they will refute it.
As time goes on, this comfort bias will be more and more heavily penalized. To illustrate – the information advantage an economics graduate had in 1955 over one who graduated in 1950 was mild – the additional information taught from one year to the next was likely to be close to nil. Now take a doctor who graduated in 2012 who is familiar with fibromyalgia and psychosomatic disease, vs. one who graduated just 5 years earlier. One of these can deliver fantastic care; the other has a slim chance (unless they actively pursue new knowledge), as the research done on these highly prevalent conditions has been rapidly evolving.
Bringing this back to the economic crisis, the cost of the comfort bias was massive. The comfort bias serves a purpose – if we never trusted experts, average energy expenditure to reach decisions would skyrocket. However; there can be a happy medium. I believe as the rate of information advance continues to develop, at some point the cost of not developing skepticism will outweigh our psychological barriers to learning and integrating new information. At least that’s what I hope
I have noticed a big decline in nonsense once I decided to dramatically narrow down the number of experts I will even consider listening to, and then I can afford a healthy dose of skepticism. With the incredible access to various expert opinions, I can often afford to be highly selective in vetting my trusted experts.
I choose not to listen to “legitimate experts” whenever possible because their degrees, popularity, charisma and formal authority allows them a big fudge factor in terms of accuracy.
Instead, I listen to regular people who obsessively study, analyze and synthesize all the research in a relevant niche. They don’t claim to have all the answers, but what they do know they back up with the research data.
This inch wide, mile deep pipeline to self-appointed nerds clears up a lot of nonsense and info clutter. Plus it is a lot easier to find these people now that many of them have blogs.