Tetlock and the Taliban
How a humiliating military loss proves that so much of our so-called "expertise" is fake, and the case against specialization and intellectual diversity
richardhanania.substack.com
Tetlock and the Taliban
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richardhanania.substack.com
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
An excellent article, if sadly not very in-depth. Definitely a good starting point for people wishing to delve further into the subject of "experts" and the "specialist vs generalist" debate.
To add my own two cents on the subject:
A number of years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare form of malignant sarcoma that, if left untreated for too long, has close to a 100% death rate, and a decently high death rate even with treatment. Three different doctors examined me over a period of a few months - two of them by cutting me open, but each failing to take a tissue sample, relying instead on eye sight - and all three concluded that what I suffered from was a lipoma, a form of fatty mass.
When the first doctor provided me his diagnosis, I went and read up on lipomas, and in particular their symptoms and development cycle. I soon discovered that neither matched what I had, so I sought out the same clinic I had gone to the first time, hoping to speak with the same doctor.
Unfortunately, said doctor was on holiday at the time, and so I was assigned to a "stafettläkare" - a type of doctor that works in shifts at many different clinics and hospitals, never staying in the same place for long, at a ridiculously inflated salary. I presented my findings and conclusions, and after listening to them he dismissed them without offering up any real counterargument, simply stating that it was an asymptomathic lipoma, likewise without offering up anything to support his conclusion. Still, while it was statistically unlikely - and fit poorly with the symptoms - I didn't press the matter, and went home to study up on asymptomatic lipoma.
A number of weeks later, I went back to the clinic a third time and was assigned a third doctor, because the first had apparently retired (having used his accumulated holiday days to effectively get off early), while the second doctor was no longer employed at the clinic. I presented my findings and conclusions to the third doctor (including that there was a high likelihood it was cancer, as that fit both the symptoms and the time frame and development cycle), who nonetheless insisted that it was asympthomatic lipoma, despite overwhelming evidence that it wasn't. Having lost my patience at that point, I demanded to be referred to a surgeon. The doctor told me it was a waste of time, but at my insistence he wrote me a referral.
A week later, I was fortunate enough to get an appointment with an experienced surgeon of the elderly persuasion at a hospital in another town. He cut me open - for a third time - and eyeballed the tissue. He concluded that, while he couldn't determine its exact nature with the naked eye, it most certainly wasn't a lipoma, and he had hard time understanding how any doctor could make that mistake. He acknowledged that my analysis was well done and my conclusions fit the facts, and that there was indeed a high likelihood it was a cancerous tumor. He offered to remove the offending tissue and send it to the lab for testing, an offer which I of course graciously accepted.
As it turned out, the tissue was a malignant sarcoma tumor, and even with the timely removal of the tumor, there was a very real risk I would lose my right leg (as the tumor had been situated in my right knee), as well as a high risk I would develop metastatic tumors in my lungs, which could easily kill me even with extensive chemical and surgical treatment.
Fortunately, the old surgeon was quite skilled, and although I did have to undergo a second surgery - to remove tissue that had been in direct contact with the tumor - the tumor appeared to have been completely removed, and although I still need to X-ray my lungs once a year, there has been no sign of any metastatic tumors.
So, yeah, I am intimately familiar with how "experts" can be very, very wrong, and how you should always study and analyse a situation yourself (assuming you are able to do so, of course) rather than blindly trust authority figures. Now, having a high IQ as well as some previous experience and training in both the medical field and data analysis I admit I have a bit of a leg-up on most people when it comes to "doing my own research", but the importance of it still cannot be understated. Far more important than "previous experience" and "expertise" is, of course, one's ability to identify, study and analyse relevant information.
To add my own two cents on the subject:
A number of years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare form of malignant sarcoma that, if left untreated for too long, has close to a 100% death rate, and a decently high death rate even with treatment. Three different doctors examined me over a period of a few months - two of them by cutting me open, but each failing to take a tissue sample, relying instead on eye sight - and all three concluded that what I suffered from was a lipoma, a form of fatty mass.
When the first doctor provided me his diagnosis, I went and read up on lipomas, and in particular their symptoms and development cycle. I soon discovered that neither matched what I had, so I sought out the same clinic I had gone to the first time, hoping to speak with the same doctor.
Unfortunately, said doctor was on holiday at the time, and so I was assigned to a "stafettläkare" - a type of doctor that works in shifts at many different clinics and hospitals, never staying in the same place for long, at a ridiculously inflated salary. I presented my findings and conclusions, and after listening to them he dismissed them without offering up any real counterargument, simply stating that it was an asymptomathic lipoma, likewise without offering up anything to support his conclusion. Still, while it was statistically unlikely - and fit poorly with the symptoms - I didn't press the matter, and went home to study up on asymptomatic lipoma.
A number of weeks later, I went back to the clinic a third time and was assigned a third doctor, because the first had apparently retired (having used his accumulated holiday days to effectively get off early), while the second doctor was no longer employed at the clinic. I presented my findings and conclusions to the third doctor (including that there was a high likelihood it was cancer, as that fit both the symptoms and the time frame and development cycle), who nonetheless insisted that it was asympthomatic lipoma, despite overwhelming evidence that it wasn't. Having lost my patience at that point, I demanded to be referred to a surgeon. The doctor told me it was a waste of time, but at my insistence he wrote me a referral.
A week later, I was fortunate enough to get an appointment with an experienced surgeon of the elderly persuasion at a hospital in another town. He cut me open - for a third time - and eyeballed the tissue. He concluded that, while he couldn't determine its exact nature with the naked eye, it most certainly wasn't a lipoma, and he had hard time understanding how any doctor could make that mistake. He acknowledged that my analysis was well done and my conclusions fit the facts, and that there was indeed a high likelihood it was a cancerous tumor. He offered to remove the offending tissue and send it to the lab for testing, an offer which I of course graciously accepted.
As it turned out, the tissue was a malignant sarcoma tumor, and even with the timely removal of the tumor, there was a very real risk I would lose my right leg (as the tumor had been situated in my right knee), as well as a high risk I would develop metastatic tumors in my lungs, which could easily kill me even with extensive chemical and surgical treatment.
Fortunately, the old surgeon was quite skilled, and although I did have to undergo a second surgery - to remove tissue that had been in direct contact with the tumor - the tumor appeared to have been completely removed, and although I still need to X-ray my lungs once a year, there has been no sign of any metastatic tumors.
So, yeah, I am intimately familiar with how "experts" can be very, very wrong, and how you should always study and analyse a situation yourself (assuming you are able to do so, of course) rather than blindly trust authority figures. Now, having a high IQ as well as some previous experience and training in both the medical field and data analysis I admit I have a bit of a leg-up on most people when it comes to "doing my own research", but the importance of it still cannot be understated. Far more important than "previous experience" and "expertise" is, of course, one's ability to identify, study and analyse relevant information.
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KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
There is no substitute for intelligence and critical thinking, two things that the biggest majority of Americans seem to be lacking thanks in part to a lack of teaching.
I think there is an obvious problem responsible for a lot of the wrongness of experts.
As the old saying goes, whoever pays the piper picks the tune.
Our experts are not 19th century inventors, with more or less independent wealth and a lab or workshop in their backyard, living or dying on their reputation and marketability of their inventions.
Our experts, especially the "trusted" and influential ones, are in near totality mere employees of huge private organizations and governments that have vast, mixed and sometimes not very clear interests. The leaders and owners of these organizations ultimately wield power over the future of such expert's careers and personal fortunes. Both sides know it, and as such, the experts, usually smart people, know that sometimes being in agreement with the needs of the above can pay far better than being right, while being right about the wrong things can get one fired and ruined professionally. After all, consider some examples of the big experts who were so wrong. How did that affect their fortunes afterwards?
I think cushy consulting jobs, big grants and corporate boards would be fairly common on that list, while poverty and infamy would be disturbingly rare.
As for Afghanistan itself, the other half of the issue is that even with best imaginable experts, the war has become ill defined. No one had a concrete understanding of what the mission is, and what loose understanding there was, it called for things bordering on impossibility and reaching far beyond military objectives, at the same time constraining both military and non-military means available to achieve these objectives in significant, yet extremely complicated ways, most of them for glorified PR reasons. Defined as such, there was no possible way to win. The only options were to keep trying despite the futility of it, cut the losses and cancel the mission, or significantly redefine objectives and/or means available for pursuing them.
The rest was just all sorts of experts, in the way described above, going along with what their bosses needed and getting paid handsomely for it.
As basic economics say, whatever you subsidize, you get more of it.
As the old saying goes, whoever pays the piper picks the tune.
Our experts are not 19th century inventors, with more or less independent wealth and a lab or workshop in their backyard, living or dying on their reputation and marketability of their inventions.
Our experts, especially the "trusted" and influential ones, are in near totality mere employees of huge private organizations and governments that have vast, mixed and sometimes not very clear interests. The leaders and owners of these organizations ultimately wield power over the future of such expert's careers and personal fortunes. Both sides know it, and as such, the experts, usually smart people, know that sometimes being in agreement with the needs of the above can pay far better than being right, while being right about the wrong things can get one fired and ruined professionally. After all, consider some examples of the big experts who were so wrong. How did that affect their fortunes afterwards?
I think cushy consulting jobs, big grants and corporate boards would be fairly common on that list, while poverty and infamy would be disturbingly rare.
As for Afghanistan itself, the other half of the issue is that even with best imaginable experts, the war has become ill defined. No one had a concrete understanding of what the mission is, and what loose understanding there was, it called for things bordering on impossibility and reaching far beyond military objectives, at the same time constraining both military and non-military means available to achieve these objectives in significant, yet extremely complicated ways, most of them for glorified PR reasons. Defined as such, there was no possible way to win. The only options were to keep trying despite the futility of it, cut the losses and cancel the mission, or significantly redefine objectives and/or means available for pursuing them.
The rest was just all sorts of experts, in the way described above, going along with what their bosses needed and getting paid handsomely for it.
As basic economics say, whatever you subsidize, you get more of it.
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Part of the problem, as the article lays out, is that this is just foreign policy, but also Education, Crime, metal health, just to name the big ones, where so much of the work done has, if anything made us stupider on these subjects. At least, that seems more reasonable than the idea than everything else is going so terribly that we would be living in medieval squaller if not for the heroic efforts of the experts in these fields:
All 3 of these fall under the category where being wrong in the correct way translates to solid career and certain pay, while being right is more likely than not to get one outright cancelled and professionally ruined. So guess what kind of experts stay in the field with this kind of selection pressures.
All of these 3 also can be solved by politicians in power deciding to solve it, no more, no less, and if they do that, there will be a moment of screeching cacophony from the experts in questions, amplified by all their many allied media and business organizations.