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 “problem statement” section (the first 66-75%) of this article. But you lost me as soon as you ignored the Dunning-Krueger effect: I bet most Dr’s, Lawyers, Engineers all think they are at least “slightly above average” and many who are “average” think they are in the top quartile. Additionally, they probably assume you know less than you do, and any deficiencies they have are “in the margins” 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 aren’t terribly good at their field (due to motivation / experience/ suitedness to the field / training / whatever) aren’t going to be so obvious. They’ll say “we’ll according to the current American Cardiology guidelines, reducing saturated fat is more important than reducing carb intake” which is *true* even if it’s irrelevant (because that’s 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 “cop out” you have to do more. Maybe look for those who do like you describe: they can discuss the problem at 10000’ 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 “problem statement” section (the first 66-75%) of this article. But you lost me as soon as you ignored the Dunning-Krueger effect: I bet most Dr’s, Lawyers, Engineers all think they are at least “slightly above average” and many who are “average” think they are in the top quartile. Additionally, they probably assume you know less than you do, and any deficiencies they have are “in the margins” 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 aren’t terribly good at their field (due to motivation / experience/ suitedness to the field / training / whatever) aren’t going to be so obvious. They’ll say “we’ll according to the current American Cardiology guidelines, reducing saturated fat is more important than reducing carb intake” which is *true* even if it’s irrelevant (because that’s 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 “cop out” you have to do more. Maybe look for those who do like you describe: they can discuss the problem at 10000’ 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?