When hiring professionals in high-stakes/adversarial scenarios, your standards are probably too lenient. How to reassess your relationship with hired experts
Kai! Long time since the LiveJournal days! Fantastic post - was listening with rapt attention to the βproblem statementβ section (the first 66-75%) of this article. But you lost me as soon as you ignored the Dunning-Krueger effect: I bet most Drβs, Lawyers, Engineers all think they are at least βslightly above averageβ and many who are βaverageβ think they are in the top quartile. Additionally, they probably assume you know less than you do, and any deficiencies they have are βin the marginsβ relative to what you bring up. Those who pull rank are going to be the *dumbest* and easiest to catch. Those who are not *dumb* but also arenβt terribly good at their field (due to motivation / experience/ suitedness to the field / training / whatever) arenβt going to be so obvious. Theyβll say βweβll according to the current American Cardiology guidelines, reducing saturated fat is more important than reducing carb intakeβ which is *true* even if itβs irrelevant (because thatβs becoming more well established that metabolic syndrome is a bigger cause of cardiovascular disease than high cholesterol, especially for people over 50). To ferret out these professionals who βcop outβ you have to do more. Maybe look for those who do like you describe: they can discuss the problem at 10000β and then zoom in. They are willing to read a paper you refer to them, etc
I do think having an intermediary who is incentivized to help us pick out experts might be good. Some fields have this, right?
Kai! Long time since the LiveJournal days! Fantastic post - was listening with rapt attention to the βproblem statementβ section (the first 66-75%) of this article. But you lost me as soon as you ignored the Dunning-Krueger effect: I bet most Drβs, Lawyers, Engineers all think they are at least βslightly above averageβ and many who are βaverageβ think they are in the top quartile. Additionally, they probably assume you know less than you do, and any deficiencies they have are βin the marginsβ relative to what you bring up. Those who pull rank are going to be the *dumbest* and easiest to catch. Those who are not *dumb* but also arenβt terribly good at their field (due to motivation / experience/ suitedness to the field / training / whatever) arenβt going to be so obvious. Theyβll say βweβll according to the current American Cardiology guidelines, reducing saturated fat is more important than reducing carb intakeβ which is *true* even if itβs irrelevant (because thatβs becoming more well established that metabolic syndrome is a bigger cause of cardiovascular disease than high cholesterol, especially for people over 50). To ferret out these professionals who βcop outβ you have to do more. Maybe look for those who do like you describe: they can discuss the problem at 10000β and then zoom in. They are willing to read a paper you refer to them, etc
I do think having an intermediary who is incentivized to help us pick out experts might be good. Some fields have this, right?