Sumner on Experts

Check out Steve Keen's explanation. He predicted the crisis, and puts forward a theory as to why that makes sense numerically. And makes the case that the classical economics explanation of the event is fundamentally flawed. A respected professor of economics in Australia.

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/t...

While I generally agree with Sumner's view, this is pretty rich coming from an economist. Those guys can't even agree on the past, let alone have much useful to say about the present or future.

As others have said, if you think the experts don't know anything, try talking to the non-experts.

To be more precise, you would find broad areas of agreement among economists, or finance experts, or whatever. That agreement wouldn't extend to all the contentious political issues of the day, but it would rule out many of the stupid opinions you can hear expressed in the neighborhood bar or the halls of Congress. Furthermore, although the experts might disagree, each one of them would hold a set of opinions with more internal consistency than those of the average person.

"To be more precise, you would find broad areas of agreement among economists, or finance experts, or whatever. That agreement wouldn't extend to all the contentious political issues of the day, but it would rule out many of the stupid opinions you can hear expressed in the neighborhood bar or the halls of Congress."

You took the words right of my mouth.

"I'm the only President you've got." - LBJ

For better or worse, the experts that can't make good predictions are the only experts we've got. That may mean we're not justified in believing what the experts say, but the current trend is then to accept some opposing proposition--a move which is just as unjustified.

If the experts don't know anything then neither do we. This is something the ever-present critics of macro don't seem to understand.

I agree with urstoff here. I thought this was the great flaw in Nassim Taleb's argument that we shouldn't try to forecast.

There are many expensive long-term investments, for example building a power station or a school or growing apple trees, or getting a university degree. Deciding whether or not to make one of those investments, and if so which one to make and how much of an investment (eg you could build a 4 room school or a 40-room school), requires forming some view about the future. Even once you know that all forecasts are wrong, what else do you have to go on but some sort of view, or set of views, about the future? We can build in options, for example building a power station that will run on gas or coal, but even that requires some view about likely ways the future will develop (for example, if a high carbon tax or cap-and-trade system is introduced then the ability to burn coal is not valuable, unless lots of other people don't build non-coal power stations).

Taleb never answers that one as to how to make the decision of what to build, possibly because he's a finance guy and doesn't deal with real bricks-and-mortar.

"If the experts don't know anything then neither do we."

Hear, hear.

That is a logical fallacy

Actually it's an argument. Experts are in a better epistemic position regarding certain propositions than we are. This means that they are more justified in believing their conclusions than we are ours. If the experts are more justified than us but still don't have knowledge (in this case, because they lack sufficient justification), then it follows that we certainly aren't justified enough to know these certain propositions.

The sticking point is why experts are more justified, but I think this is pretty obvious: they have far more information at hand, they are properly trained in the methods of the subject, they have regular discussion with other experts, etc.

Now you can make a methodological argument against the methods used by the experts, but again this is wholly negative and gives us no reason to accept the proffered alternative (for example, what actual important results have the "post-autistic economists" given us?). Thus we're back to square one: not knowing anything about the subject at hand.

It's an enthymeme.

Right. So we don't know anything.

Will, Thanks for the plug. I sort of regret the comment on the Swiss accelerator, as I think the risks are actually very low. It is the biotech hypothetical I am more worried about. And I wonder how the government would respond to the Robin Hanson post I linked to.

Will, Me too! I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that a lot of the vaunted expertise in the world is more apparent than real. I was shocked a couple of days ago when my son told me that in the anthro course he just completed, the prof. had told the students, as an established matter of scientific fact, that there are no racial differences at all other than things like skin color. Differences of intelligence are entirely the products of culture. Yessir, the science is settled! There are no other views. The debate is over.

Mind you, I have no strong opinions to the contrary here, but I do think that this sort of talk is a sure sign that there is more going on here than scientific expertise. There is also special pleading for politically ordained conclusions.
The debate is over.

One of the valid points that I think Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan) makes is that in some fields expertise doesn't neccessarily improve outcomes or predictive ability, so those fields don't really have experts in the sense of people who have privileged knowledge or justified authority. I don't think we should generallize this to all fields, but it does seem true in some. Taleb seems to be saying that the difference is the role played by rare but consequential surprises that can't bre predicted regardless of experience.