Thanks for your thoughts, David. I think you are not receiving my email messages, but I'll just post a couple of initial reactions here.
One is that I don't think we have a large substantive disagreement, since I think you are giving advice for especially smart and knowledgeable people similar to yourself. I agree that it's better for you, David Friedman, to think issues through for yourself, in about the way you currently are. I just think there are very few David Friedmans in the world, and that the great majority of people (even the great majority who are interested in these kinds of controversial issues) will mess it up.
When I mentioned climate change, I was mostly thinking about the questions of (i) whether global warming is happening, and (ii) what is causing it. I think we agree that those questions are best addressed by consulting expert climate scientist opinion. I also agree with you that climate scientists are not experts on the human impacts of climate change (which depend on how humans will respond).
About the Krugman case: Your comments on that seem persuasive, but notice that you didn't try to present the economic arguments directly. You alluded to the fact that the great majority of economists ("the rest of us") think minimum wage reduces employment, you mentioned that even the earlier Krugman agreed with that view, then suggested a reason why his current position might be biased. To me, this sounds closer to my advice in the "critical thinking" post than yours.
"Trust the experts" has less appeal if you know something of the history of science, particularly applied science. I've read that early in the 19th century, a group of British experts went to Portugal, where there was an epidemic, found no visible evidence of any kind of harmful substance travelling from one person to another, and concluded that quarantine was based on Papist superstition. There is the famous case of Semmelweiss starting to clean his hands before delivering babies, and avoiding most cases of childbed fever---and being driven out of the profession by other doctors. There is the widespread support of doctors and biologists for eugenics in the early 20th century, including forced sterilization of large numbers of people in the United States. In all these cases, experts were giving practical and moral advice based partly on their specialized knowledge and partly on the value judgments common in their class---and were harmfully wrong. Should we suppose that our experts now are immune to that sort of error? That seems wildly optimistic, and is susceptible to becoming self-serving.
I have figured out that expert advice is generally better than you doing your own research when certain conditions are met :
1. When experts have some real skin in the game for being right.
For example I trust my car mechanic lot more than Bill Nye. My car mechanic will go out of business if his expert opinion is wrong consistently.
It is easier to trust an expert talking about gravitational field of Moon rather than climate impact of human fats because person is unlikely to be emotionally/financially dependent on what that opinion is when it comes to former.
However, as we move into esoteric topics, it is generally harder to understand the incentive structure either. For example saying certain things about moon's gravity might have some perverse incentives to start next project and receive more funding for that researcher.
Some random comments (not a single coherent argument).
1) What first came to my mind here was the idea of the fox and the hedgehog. I don't think "always trust the experts" is likely to be a good policy - but I feel the same way about "always examine the evidence for myself".
2) Does Michael Huemer follow his own advice? In particular, is this argument he's making based on the consensus of expert opinion about how best to make decisions? Or is this his own argument, the result of him examining the evidence personally?
3) It's one thing to "trust the experts". It's another thing to trust a soundbite summary of expert consensus. And that may be true even if the experts themselves produced the soundbites (intentionally dumbing down the topic to the level that they feel the average person can handle), let alone when the summary was produced by journalists.
4) Beware of experts attempting to convince "the average person". Or maybe just beware of experts attempting to convince. Some even admit that they've studied what the average person finds most convincing, and chosen to produce that, fallacies and all, rather than the sort of arguments that might convince those they regard as their peers.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators (PJR). And when 'trust the experts' becomes a rule governing belief formation, the first thing to be governed is who counts as an "expert".
Goodhart's law deserves to be known more widely-- I would argue it is one of the most fundamental laws in the social sciences. Here are my attempts:
Of note on the utility of listing arguments against your own position, I think the chapter in Machinery of Freedom where you went through potential problems with your ideas was what actually convinced me to start calling myself an ancap.
Are you sure Huemer rejects evidence and arguments in favor of authority? He relies on evidence and arguments all the time. I've never known him to appeal to his own authority as an expert. Experts seem to be least reliable concerning matters involving values--such as ethics, politics, and religion--or when they have other reasons to be biased. In many fields experts have no apparent reason to be biased, and in those fields--especially in fields that require expertise well beyond one's own capacity--one may have no reasonable alternative to relying on expert opinion.
It's difficult to trust "experts" when you have NGOs naming unqualified people as "experts" in order to further their agendas. Titles such as "Chief Scientist" are affixed to mouthpieces for pay.
From experience I know you can't trust anything out of The Rocky Mountain Institute. Yet a "report" (which was retracted a few days later) from RMI that purported that gas stove cause asthma was used and is still being used as justification for a campaign against gas stoves by regulatory bodies in the US goverment.
Yet the RMI continues to be a go-to for media outlets seeking "neutral" experts.
Or consider the case of Mark Jacobson. He's been soundly criticized and defeated in court, yet Standford university continues to support him. Why would I trust any "expert" from Stanford at this point? Being associated with Standford is clearly no indication of quality. The university has demonstrated that they are no purveyor of reliable scientific discourse.
Two of my favorite thinkers debating one of the most important questions. What a joy! I hope this is a continuing debate. It might even be worth a podcast or live debate between you two.
The extreme historical example is Lysenkoism. Despite significant breakthroughs by Russian biologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lysenkoism nearly completely ruined an entire scientific field in Russia for a very long time, largely through the mechanisms David points out at the end.
This topic is all the more important given the use of scientific experts to justify global near-totalitarianism during the COVID epidemic. Expertise has been weaponized by governments and corporations, and I can sympathize with average IQ people starting to question expertise. Of course, people still need to act in the world, and it's all too easy for an average IQ person to fall prey to alt-experts.
Inculcating steelman thinking into people seems to be very difficult. It's not clear to me there's a great way out of this situation for the average person until the incentives are fixed, in the same way that Soviet biology only recovered once political pressures subsided.
"If someone offers a positive correlation between the existence of the death penalty and the murder rate in U.S. states as proof that the death penalty does not deter without discussing the obvious problem of reverse causality ..."
I get that correlation does not tell us causation but I don't know what you mean regarding reverse causality. Surely you don't mean that having the death penalty causes people to commit murder so what is this obvious problem?
Cross examination of experts in court is interesting. It’s conducted by non-experts and judged by a non-expert. My impression over 30 years is that true experts are very rare, and even true experts only have expertise over a very narrow range. There are no experts as soon as the questions broaden out.
I think it’s a mistake to summarise Dr Huemer’s argument as being “against critical thinking”. It’s clearly not - for one thing, the argument is itself an application of critical thinking to a point of expert consensus: that teaching critical thinking is good. In fact, Huemer’s position can be more accurately summarised as “against critical thinking for those of lesser intelligence”.
Framed in this way, Huemer’s argument is paradoxically self-undermining: if some more intelligent expert says that Huemer’s argument is wrong, then Huemer either accepts that statement (and so abandons his position against critical thinking for the less intelligent) or gives a critical argument against this more intelligent expert (and so abandons his position against critical thinking for the less intelligent).
This is leaving aside all the other fairly obvious flaws with Huemer’s argument: that science, and even philosophy, move forward through criticism and overturning of experts; that level of expertise can only be assessed by thinking critically; that people only become experts through critical thinking; that science is in some central ways falsificationist and so involves special criticism of expert consensus; and so on. (Apologies if this comment is too harsh: the apparently elitist nature of Huemer’s argument sticks in my craw.)
As an "average" person I believe there are few instances where pure expertise sways me. As others have noted, today's expert may well be tomorrow's fool, even in the most objective pursuit. In the back of my mind is "well that's what is believed now". And when it comes to extremely complex multidisciplinary problems, like climate change, there can only be consolidators who evaluate many experts to form an opinion much like I would thought likely with a higher capacity and more perseverance. For some of the "softer" issues, abortion for one, there is little legitimate expertise, only well read opinion.
I favor your side, David, although perhaps you are not so different from Michael if he is talking about people of average intelligence and you are not.
In some areas -- especially in fields that are new or not well established -- it can be tricky to figure out who the experts are. You may have to dig into relevant work to even figure that out. I wrote about the expertise issue in relation to cryonics:
Thanks for your thoughts, David. I think you are not receiving my email messages, but I'll just post a couple of initial reactions here.
One is that I don't think we have a large substantive disagreement, since I think you are giving advice for especially smart and knowledgeable people similar to yourself. I agree that it's better for you, David Friedman, to think issues through for yourself, in about the way you currently are. I just think there are very few David Friedmans in the world, and that the great majority of people (even the great majority who are interested in these kinds of controversial issues) will mess it up.
When I mentioned climate change, I was mostly thinking about the questions of (i) whether global warming is happening, and (ii) what is causing it. I think we agree that those questions are best addressed by consulting expert climate scientist opinion. I also agree with you that climate scientists are not experts on the human impacts of climate change (which depend on how humans will respond).
About the Krugman case: Your comments on that seem persuasive, but notice that you didn't try to present the economic arguments directly. You alluded to the fact that the great majority of economists ("the rest of us") think minimum wage reduces employment, you mentioned that even the earlier Krugman agreed with that view, then suggested a reason why his current position might be biased. To me, this sounds closer to my advice in the "critical thinking" post than yours.
"Trust the experts" has less appeal if you know something of the history of science, particularly applied science. I've read that early in the 19th century, a group of British experts went to Portugal, where there was an epidemic, found no visible evidence of any kind of harmful substance travelling from one person to another, and concluded that quarantine was based on Papist superstition. There is the famous case of Semmelweiss starting to clean his hands before delivering babies, and avoiding most cases of childbed fever---and being driven out of the profession by other doctors. There is the widespread support of doctors and biologists for eugenics in the early 20th century, including forced sterilization of large numbers of people in the United States. In all these cases, experts were giving practical and moral advice based partly on their specialized knowledge and partly on the value judgments common in their class---and were harmfully wrong. Should we suppose that our experts now are immune to that sort of error? That seems wildly optimistic, and is susceptible to becoming self-serving.
I have figured out that expert advice is generally better than you doing your own research when certain conditions are met :
1. When experts have some real skin in the game for being right.
For example I trust my car mechanic lot more than Bill Nye. My car mechanic will go out of business if his expert opinion is wrong consistently.
It is easier to trust an expert talking about gravitational field of Moon rather than climate impact of human fats because person is unlikely to be emotionally/financially dependent on what that opinion is when it comes to former.
However, as we move into esoteric topics, it is generally harder to understand the incentive structure either. For example saying certain things about moon's gravity might have some perverse incentives to start next project and receive more funding for that researcher.
My test for how seriously to take the "experts" in a field: does being wrong cause the "experts" to exit the field?
Some random comments (not a single coherent argument).
1) What first came to my mind here was the idea of the fox and the hedgehog. I don't think "always trust the experts" is likely to be a good policy - but I feel the same way about "always examine the evidence for myself".
2) Does Michael Huemer follow his own advice? In particular, is this argument he's making based on the consensus of expert opinion about how best to make decisions? Or is this his own argument, the result of him examining the evidence personally?
3) It's one thing to "trust the experts". It's another thing to trust a soundbite summary of expert consensus. And that may be true even if the experts themselves produced the soundbites (intentionally dumbing down the topic to the level that they feel the average person can handle), let alone when the summary was produced by journalists.
4) Beware of experts attempting to convince "the average person". Or maybe just beware of experts attempting to convince. Some even admit that they've studied what the average person finds most convincing, and chosen to produce that, fallacies and all, rather than the sort of arguments that might convince those they regard as their peers.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators (PJR). And when 'trust the experts' becomes a rule governing belief formation, the first thing to be governed is who counts as an "expert".
Goodhart's law deserves to be known more widely-- I would argue it is one of the most fundamental laws in the social sciences. Here are my attempts:
https://triangulation.substack.com/p/harvards-plagiarism-scandal-reveals
https://triangulation.substack.com/p/goodharts-law-in-education
Of note on the utility of listing arguments against your own position, I think the chapter in Machinery of Freedom where you went through potential problems with your ideas was what actually convinced me to start calling myself an ancap.
Are you sure Huemer rejects evidence and arguments in favor of authority? He relies on evidence and arguments all the time. I've never known him to appeal to his own authority as an expert. Experts seem to be least reliable concerning matters involving values--such as ethics, politics, and religion--or when they have other reasons to be biased. In many fields experts have no apparent reason to be biased, and in those fields--especially in fields that require expertise well beyond one's own capacity--one may have no reasonable alternative to relying on expert opinion.
It's difficult to trust "experts" when you have NGOs naming unqualified people as "experts" in order to further their agendas. Titles such as "Chief Scientist" are affixed to mouthpieces for pay.
From experience I know you can't trust anything out of The Rocky Mountain Institute. Yet a "report" (which was retracted a few days later) from RMI that purported that gas stove cause asthma was used and is still being used as justification for a campaign against gas stoves by regulatory bodies in the US goverment.
Yet the RMI continues to be a go-to for media outlets seeking "neutral" experts.
Or consider the case of Mark Jacobson. He's been soundly criticized and defeated in court, yet Standford university continues to support him. Why would I trust any "expert" from Stanford at this point? Being associated with Standford is clearly no indication of quality. The university has demonstrated that they are no purveyor of reliable scientific discourse.
Two of my favorite thinkers debating one of the most important questions. What a joy! I hope this is a continuing debate. It might even be worth a podcast or live debate between you two.
The extreme historical example is Lysenkoism. Despite significant breakthroughs by Russian biologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lysenkoism nearly completely ruined an entire scientific field in Russia for a very long time, largely through the mechanisms David points out at the end.
This topic is all the more important given the use of scientific experts to justify global near-totalitarianism during the COVID epidemic. Expertise has been weaponized by governments and corporations, and I can sympathize with average IQ people starting to question expertise. Of course, people still need to act in the world, and it's all too easy for an average IQ person to fall prey to alt-experts.
Inculcating steelman thinking into people seems to be very difficult. It's not clear to me there's a great way out of this situation for the average person until the incentives are fixed, in the same way that Soviet biology only recovered once political pressures subsided.
"If someone offers a positive correlation between the existence of the death penalty and the murder rate in U.S. states as proof that the death penalty does not deter without discussing the obvious problem of reverse causality ..."
I get that correlation does not tell us causation but I don't know what you mean regarding reverse causality. Surely you don't mean that having the death penalty causes people to commit murder so what is this obvious problem?
Relevant piece:
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardhanania/p/epistemology-in-a-world-of-fake-data
Cross examination of experts in court is interesting. It’s conducted by non-experts and judged by a non-expert. My impression over 30 years is that true experts are very rare, and even true experts only have expertise over a very narrow range. There are no experts as soon as the questions broaden out.
I think it’s a mistake to summarise Dr Huemer’s argument as being “against critical thinking”. It’s clearly not - for one thing, the argument is itself an application of critical thinking to a point of expert consensus: that teaching critical thinking is good. In fact, Huemer’s position can be more accurately summarised as “against critical thinking for those of lesser intelligence”.
Framed in this way, Huemer’s argument is paradoxically self-undermining: if some more intelligent expert says that Huemer’s argument is wrong, then Huemer either accepts that statement (and so abandons his position against critical thinking for the less intelligent) or gives a critical argument against this more intelligent expert (and so abandons his position against critical thinking for the less intelligent).
This is leaving aside all the other fairly obvious flaws with Huemer’s argument: that science, and even philosophy, move forward through criticism and overturning of experts; that level of expertise can only be assessed by thinking critically; that people only become experts through critical thinking; that science is in some central ways falsificationist and so involves special criticism of expert consensus; and so on. (Apologies if this comment is too harsh: the apparently elitist nature of Huemer’s argument sticks in my craw.)
As an "average" person I believe there are few instances where pure expertise sways me. As others have noted, today's expert may well be tomorrow's fool, even in the most objective pursuit. In the back of my mind is "well that's what is believed now". And when it comes to extremely complex multidisciplinary problems, like climate change, there can only be consolidators who evaluate many experts to form an opinion much like I would thought likely with a higher capacity and more perseverance. For some of the "softer" issues, abortion for one, there is little legitimate expertise, only well read opinion.
I favor your side, David, although perhaps you are not so different from Michael if he is talking about people of average intelligence and you are not.
In some areas -- especially in fields that are new or not well established -- it can be tricky to figure out who the experts are. You may have to dig into relevant work to even figure that out. I wrote about the expertise issue in relation to cryonics:
https://biostasis.substack.com/p/who-are-the-experts-on-cryonics