LLMs are not generally optimized to say “I don’t know” when they don’t have enough information – Co-Intelligence Pg 96
One of the things I’ve always valued in another person is their ability to admit when they don’t know something. It’s also one of my biggest issues with LLMs, they confidently tell you a lie instead of saying they don’t know the answer because they have no ability to evaluate the truth of what they’re using their fancy autocorrect to send back to you.
Today I’m trying to work out my understanding of what expertise and knowing is in our current environment.
Access doesn’t mean learning
These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything – The Death of Expertise Pg 2
Contrary to popular political belief, access to the vast streams of information on the internet doesn’t mean that you improve anything but if access is provided it’s much easier to say that your lack of knowledge and progress is your fault1. If access does anything it only lets us mimic expertise with a list of inexhaustible facts2, in fact merely searching for information and skimming the headlines without reading anything makes almost everyone think they learned something about the topic3.
Add to this the rise of pseudo-intellectuals who hide their “training” behind obscure references and appeals to anti-intellectualism where the “expert” claims that because they don’t have training they are better than the institutional experts because they’re outside “the system”, means so much of the information one has access to is poor quality. Many of popular “thinkers” are firmly enmeshed in the conspirituality4 movement where they convince followers that there is some big evil right around the corner that only they can see. Of course these types of appeals come with a course or coaching that helps line the pocket of the guru.
Possibly worse than the thought that mere access to more information will weed out lies5 is the idea that your personal feelings negate all other ideas that could exist.
Feelings trump all
When feelings matter more than rationality or facts, education is a doomed enterprise. Emotion is an unassailable defense against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. – The Death of Expertise Pg 99
For generations we told people to suppress their feelings, especially men who were supposed to be stoic and act like a rock that had no feelings at all. You don’t have to look far to find men still berating boys for crying often equating the act of showing a strong emotion with “acting like a girl”6. A full human has emotions and we should all be able to show them without fear of reprisal, but we may have taken it too far.
In my house last week my daughter said that she feels we don’t love her because we make her clean her room and fold her laundry. Most adults recognize a child not wanting to do chores and coming up with an excuse to try and guilt parents into removing the requirement to do any type of work. But not all people see this for what it is, and instead they remove the requirement because feelings erase the need for that chore and parents too often devote their lives to wiping away all roadblocks turning their children into porcelain dolls7.
Later in life these porcelain dolls turn into adults who upon being told they’re wrong equate that statement to being told they’re stupid8. The bad feelings that come with being wrong break the person that hasn’t been equipped to deal with adversity and thus they fall back to the emotion and lash out by saying that all feelings are valid and those valid feelings erase the truth.
This leads to the claim that in the face of verifiable facts, feelings are more important and the facts should be pushed aside because you feel like the facts are wrong. Often the truth is that the facts make you feel uncomfortable and it’s easier to dismiss the facts than it is to take time to evaluate why you’re uncomfortable and what you can learn from investigating the discomfort.
What an expert looks like?
Expertise is rare and far too often assumed to be more expansive across fields what does an expert look like?
The first mark of someone that’s striving to be an expert is them being willing to reevaluate their opinion in the face of new information. They’re willing to be evaluated, critiqued and corrected9. They’re more concerned with learning the truth than with being correct out of the gate.
Experts don’t feel threatened with new information, they embrace it and incorporate it into what they already know. Yes they may push back if it doesn’t fit with what they know already in their field of expertise, but they’re willing to listen to a rational argument and evaluate the evidence and then change their mind if the evidence supports a change.
Someone striving for truth understands first-instinct fallacy, and doesn’t cling to their first thought. They’re willing to come up with alternate options and then evaluate them for the one that’s most correct given new information.
One big trap that experts can fall into is thinking that because they’re an expert in one area they’re an expert in other areas. This was shown well in Sideways when Larry Page thought his programming smarts meant he was an expert in how cities should run, only to be constantly wrong. It took subordinates many meetings to convince Larry Page that their years of experience in city planning meant they had more knowledge than he did in this field10.
This lack of acknowledgement for anyone else’s expertise seems to grow the more famous an expert becomes, or the more money they earn. Given that capitalism equates financial success with validation of your ideas, it’s easy to see why this pairs together in the minds of so many. You’ve earned money, so you must be smart. If you’re smart, then you must know lots and thus you’re an expert in all fields?
Expertise in one area doesn’t equate to expertise in any area. Even if you have a high IQ, that doesn’t mean you have expertise in any areas you haven’t spend time in working to become an expert. But because of our tendency to equate the words “you’re wrong” with “you’re stupid” people cling to their supposed expertise instead of backing down and listening to others.
I was stupid
The final and probably best mark of someone striving for truth is someone that looks back at what they thought last year and wonder how they were so wrong about parts of their thinking. If you don’t look back at yourself and wonder how you could be so wrong, then you haven’t put much effort into learning.
- The Promise of Access Pg 32 ↩︎
- The Death of Expertise Pg 106 ↩︎
- The Death of Expertise Pg 119 ↩︎
- Conspirituality Pg 8 ↩︎
- See Nexus for more, I’m still reading it. ↩︎
- Which makes being a girl the biggest insult to men and I hate it. ↩︎
- You Are Awesome Pg XVIII ↩︎
- The Death of Expertise Pg 25 ↩︎
- The Death of Expertise Pg 35 ↩︎
- Sideways Page 68 ↩︎