On unhealthy trust of experts, the value of experthood, credentialism, etc.

Some items (not a one-to-one outline):

• American popular culture
• ZMM 1974, experts broke the motorycle
• COVID-19 experts
• We need experts
• Distrust vs. outright dismissal 
• Meta-experts? Meta-expertise? Becoming an expert on dealing with experts?
• Asking experts questions (including stupid questions) to uncover red flags pointing to likely incompetence?
• Experthood in psychiatry 

In American popular culture, there seems to be quite a bit of distrust of experts. One item substantiating the idea is the hugely popular American philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from 1974. There, the narator recounts how professional mechanics damaged his motorcycle instead of fixing it; he had to fix it himself. He indicates that there is a school of mechanical thought that says that you should not try to fix the motorcycle yourself. You should contact a professional mechanic. The narrator (Pirsig) says that it is this elitism that he would like to see wiped out, or the like.

In Programátorské poklesky (Programmer's failings or missteps, let's say) by Kučera and Kopeček, there is a quote to the effect that there are three things that can ruin a man: wine, women and an excessive trust of experts. I suspect they get this sentence from American culture (they both worked with computers and computer science, and computers are an American thing; the British with their ZX Spectrum and the seeds of what became ARM will pardon me), but I do not know that for sure.

In relation to the COVID-19 crisis, experts first worked out epidemiological plans that indicated that lockdowns were a bad idea, likely doing more harm than good. Then other experts published spectacularly badly failing mathematical models for COVID-19 (recall that certain strands of astrology are also mathematical: they are pseudo-random generators taking heavenly data as seeds). Expert articles started to pop up supporting the lockdown idea. Moreover, some media pointed to the institute doing the bad modelling being funded by Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Quite a bit seems astray here.

Richard Faynman recounted how medical doctors misdiagnosed his girlfriend Arlene. He wrote that the doctor was an idiot and did not know what he was doing. There was another doctor, asking the right questions about the diagnosis, but a nurse dismissed him as a troublemaker from a neighborhood. I have more notes on this in Wikiversity, full with Feynman quotes. 

Ben Goldacre (a British epidemiologist, I think, who had a TED presentation) reports how medical literature is skewed by widespread corruption, e.g. by unfavorable results being withheld and favorable published by the big phrama companies doing the medical trials.

In socialist Czechoslovakia, so-called "experts" in what they mistakenly called "social sciences" (under which head they filed philosophy as well) produced swaths of economical and philosophical analysis, most or lot of it arguably nonsense (or very bad) supporting the official doctrine of the state.

What, then, should one do as far as experthood? Should one do everything oneself? Should one never consult an expert? Should one pay no attention to who is and who is not an expert?

It is obvious that the concept of experthood is important and indispensable. Even Feynman depends on experts, that is to say, the people who wrote the medical literature that he studied. But here, a nice contrast can be made: a single diagnosis that is not a reviewed publication vs. a reviewed publication.

A healthy distrust of experts is not the same thing as dismissal of experthood on the whole. For instance, should one distrust medical doctors, one could order multiple independent diagnoses from different teams (if one can afford to pay for it), and then compare whether they agree. These kinds of procedures are standard in engineering, where in some settings an artifact or its change is required to be reviewed by independent reviewers/inspectors; when they disagree, they try to find out who, if anyone, is right (the disagreement may reveal that they have it all wrong).

In the field of law, one seems well advised to consult an expert, even if maintaing a healthy distance. A lawyer would have learned a lot of things about the statutory law and the common law that an amateur is unlikely learn with reasonable effort.

One general idea supporting experthood is this: an expert visits cases or items in his field again and again. He will have made a range of mistakes in his field and have learned from them. In short, he would have gained "experience". That is at least true of a real/true expert. What is key is to distinguish a true expert from all those all too abundant phony experts. Unfortunately, there is no simple way of doing so. Certification and credentials are items supporting expert identification, but they are not infallible/perfectly reliable. In medicine and aerospace, only certified professionals are allowed to practice, in many countries (for some professions; not a floor cleaner on the airport, I figure).

More on the note of credentials, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are examples of people without university-level education, and thus lacking the credentials. When Wozniak, the genius engineer behind Apple I and Apple II, co-founded Apple, he did not have a university degree. (Question: what are other notable people in management and engineering without university degree?) Einstein made his ground-breaking contribution while working in a patent office, but he did have a physics degree at that point. Richard Stallman gained a physics degree but achieved fame for results in software and its philosophy (GPL is not computer software, nor is GNU Manifesto; they are cultural software, if anything). Linus Torvalds started his work on Linux while he was a student, before he completed his master's thesis; he had a disagreement with an academic expert, Andrew Tanenbaum, concerning the best design for an operating system kernel, monolithic kernel vs. microkernel. Steven Wolfram has a PhD in physics, but his most notable work seems to be in computer programming and software design (Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha). While Elon Musk has a bachelor's degree in physics (and economics), it is not clear he specifically studied rocketry, vital for Space X. In many of the cases, learning by doing is a key phrase. However, one should not be misled: there are many successful people with degrees in their relevant field and, in 20th and 21st centuries, it is quite possible that having a degree is rather typical for successful people (I don't know). It seems likely that many people benefit from attending a university. (There seems to be a modicum of truth in Charlie Kirk's statement that college is a scam, but the statement seems greatly overblown. Or maybe I do not know what "college" is exactly, other than a university. Since Charlie was in the U.S. before he was assasinated, the word "college" in his statement is to be interpreted in U.S. context.)

On how to tell whether someone is an expert, let me recall a conversation I had many years ago with a medical doctor in Brno, Czechia (the doctor shall remain unnamed). The conversation was approximately as follows (from memory):

• DP: What is the probability that the diagnosis you have determined is correct?
• Doc: I don't know.
• DP: Okay, is it least 5%?
• Doc: In medicine, just like in life, nothing is certain.
• DP: In life, some things are certain, such that you are sitting in this chair right now.
• Doc: Given quantum mechanics, something something. (I do not recall what the doctor said exactly, but the point was that that was not certain either.)
• DP: (Angrily) I think you have a major cognitive disturbance. (I should not have said that. It did not help anything.)

As fas as I am concerned, the above was a huge red flag concerning the validity of the diagnosis and the trustworthiness of the medical doctor. Poincaré's adage applies here, I think: to believe everything and to doubt everything are two equally convenient solutions: both dispense with reflection. On asking incisive questions to putative experts, let me remind the Czech audience of the inquiry by the TV personality Kraus into the meaning of biomasa, directed at the Czech politician Jacques[1]. This classic is a great reminder. (Young Kraus played a nasty/disruptive boy in the film Saxana. He seems to be fit for these kinds of irreverent endeavors.)

On psychiatry and experthood. Let me quote user thienvu812 from under a video on Study 329: "I know when I worked in the mental health field and questioned the side effects of the drugs; I was told I wasn't a team player and the Drs are experts. I am glad there are Drs like you exposing the corruption. Thank you". Let us recall some of the performance of the "experts": 1) on life unworthy of living (a German psychiatrist whose work contributed to killing and sterilizations of psychiatric patients in Nazi Germany); 2) insulin shock therapy (bogus); 3) lobotomy (bogus, leading to a Nobel price). Let us also recall that the concept of team player is at direct odds with the critical attitude, championed by Popper's critical rationalism. One should perhaps also think of the socialist member of the collective; in Czech discourse, the word for collective (kolektiv) was replaced with the word for team (tým) to much the same effect. Words change; structures remain. On this topic, there is more in my "A critical look at psychiatry" at Wikiversity, which includes some great further reading.

That's it for experthood for now, as a first quick take. I apologize for this being more rambling/disorganized than I would like it to be. I hope some of the ideas are useful to someone.

Questions:

• What are some of the best sources online covering the topic?
• What does Stephen Wolfram say on the topic, if anything?
• Are Kopeček and Kučera indicating the source of their memorable quote?