I also read Huemer's blog, but I did not bother to comment on this post.
What Huemer misses is the expertise on... experts. There is a pretty substantial literature on expert opinion and it is not very supportive of the heuristic.
I'm thinking people like Khanneman and Tversky, Hastie and Dawes, Tetlock.
I also read Huemer's blog, but I did not bother to comment on this post.
What Huemer misses is the expertise on... experts. There is a pretty substantial literature on expert opinion and it is not very supportive of the heuristic.
I'm thinking people like Khanneman and Tversky, Hastie and Dawes, Tetlock.
Sure, if what you want from experts is recitations of non controversial facts or calculations using the tools of their field, they're great. Also, if you have an expert who repeatedly makes many predictions about the same situation and then gets feedback on the outcome, they're pretty good (the classic example is pathologists and cancer biopsies).
But this is not in fact what most arguments about deferring to experts are about. Rather, it's about claims by experts about interventions (or implied interventions) into complicated situations beyond a straightforward application of tools with well established accuracy and often extending across domains. Moreover, these claims are often framed in terms of certainty or near certainty.
Just think about statements from well credentialed economists about the economy. Do you think following their (implied) prescriptions based on their "well established" models is advisable?
If not, why would you think other fields are any different?
How did those predictions from epidemiologists and doctors on covid work out? The standard reading of the literature from people like Khanneman and Tversky, Hastie, and Dawes, and Tetlock would have said this was exactly the type of situation where "experts" would be unreliable. And they were.
Ironically, Huemer's epistemological model of expertise is oversimplified so it gets the answer wrong. A common problem with experts in many fields.
What's particularly humorous, and I need to read Huemers post maybe he addresses it, is that in his older essay "In defense of passivity" he directly explains why to not trust experts. As you pointed out, he uses the results of experts on experts to dismiss most people who are thought of as experts! Curious to read this new post he has made as his original essay was highly influential on my worldview.
I also read Huemer's blog, but I did not bother to comment on this post.
What Huemer misses is the expertise on... experts. There is a pretty substantial literature on expert opinion and it is not very supportive of the heuristic.
I'm thinking people like Khanneman and Tversky, Hastie and Dawes, Tetlock.
Sure, if what you want from experts is recitations of non controversial facts or calculations using the tools of their field, they're great. Also, if you have an expert who repeatedly makes many predictions about the same situation and then gets feedback on the outcome, they're pretty good (the classic example is pathologists and cancer biopsies).
But this is not in fact what most arguments about deferring to experts are about. Rather, it's about claims by experts about interventions (or implied interventions) into complicated situations beyond a straightforward application of tools with well established accuracy and often extending across domains. Moreover, these claims are often framed in terms of certainty or near certainty.
Just think about statements from well credentialed economists about the economy. Do you think following their (implied) prescriptions based on their "well established" models is advisable?
If not, why would you think other fields are any different?
How did those predictions from epidemiologists and doctors on covid work out? The standard reading of the literature from people like Khanneman and Tversky, Hastie, and Dawes, and Tetlock would have said this was exactly the type of situation where "experts" would be unreliable. And they were.
Ironically, Huemer's epistemological model of expertise is oversimplified so it gets the answer wrong. A common problem with experts in many fields.
What's particularly humorous, and I need to read Huemers post maybe he addresses it, is that in his older essay "In defense of passivity" he directly explains why to not trust experts. As you pointed out, he uses the results of experts on experts to dismiss most people who are thought of as experts! Curious to read this new post he has made as his original essay was highly influential on my worldview.