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Kai! Long time since the LiveJournal days! Fantastic post - was listening with rapt attention to the ā€œproblem statementā€ section (the first 66-75%) of this article. But you lost me as soon as you ignored the Dunning-Krueger effect: I bet most Drā€™s, Lawyers, Engineers all think they are at least ā€œslightly above averageā€ and many who are ā€œaverageā€ think they are in the top quartile. Additionally, they probably assume you know less than you do, and any deficiencies they have are ā€œin the marginsā€ 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 arenā€™t terribly good at their field (due to motivation / experience/ suitedness to the field / training / whatever) arenā€™t going to be so obvious. Theyā€™ll say ā€œweā€™ll according to the current American Cardiology guidelines, reducing saturated fat is more important than reducing carb intakeā€ which is *true* even if itā€™s irrelevant (because thatā€™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 ā€œcop outā€ you have to do more. Maybe look for those who do like you describe: they can discuss the problem at 10000ā€™ 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?

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