I've had similar personal experiences to you and work in health care, and share your skepticism.
What I think people are skeptical of today is not necessarily expertise, but credentialism and the idea that expertise should supercede other considerations.
For example, there are a ton of unwarranted assumptions being made when when assumes that someone with an MD knows more about a topic than someone without one, or that someone board certified in an area is more qualified than someone not certified in that area, or that people certified in the area are equally skilled. We substitute weak indicators of skill or aptitude for the actual skill or aptitude, as the indicators are perfect when they are far from it.
Credentials like degrees or background should be treated for what they are: imperfect indicators of expertise. But now we have this situation where the experts are given control and monopolies over domains. In the US healthcare system, for example, MDs are given a strong monopoly over care, to the exclusion of other professions, but is this really warranted? Skepticism about academic economists having a strong role in politics are somewhat similar, in that sure, we should pay attention to them, but should they have quite as strong a role as they do?
I worry also about the tone of these discussions. The problem isn't so much with expertise, for example, it's how we use it or overuse it, or grant it monopoly, or imbue it with meaning it doesn't have.
I'm even skeptical of the linked pieces. The injection of mention of genetics in the one article is odd, for example, and to me the arguments reek of bigotry. Overall, their arguments seem to be "well, expertise is unwarranted, except for the fields I'm in, and we all know this expertise derives from my superior genetic endowment in combination with feedback. You'll see."
The problem with the open versus closed system argument is that even in very chaotic, unpredictable domains, there's some level of experience that is worthwhile. In fact, research suggests that one of the problems is that people tend to overestimate their ability to predict; part of the expertise in such domains should be to recognize this. This is legitimate expertise, recognizing the scope of unknown unknowns.
Similarly, it's also important to note that often in such fields, it's not just that things are difficult to predict, it's that we know they are difficult to predict precisely because so many reasonable, sophisticated things have been tried and failed. If anything, this points to the importance of expertise, because it suggests that very reasonable sophisticated ideas can still be wrong. The author likes to point to physics as an example of a closed system, which is ironic, because certain areas of physics are well outside our current level of understanding. Should we then, say reject physics as a domain of legitimate expertise because we don't currently have a good understanding of the nature of time?
What I think people are skeptical of today is not necessarily expertise, but credentialism and the idea that expertise should supercede other considerations.
For example, there are a ton of unwarranted assumptions being made when when assumes that someone with an MD knows more about a topic than someone without one, or that someone board certified in an area is more qualified than someone not certified in that area, or that people certified in the area are equally skilled. We substitute weak indicators of skill or aptitude for the actual skill or aptitude, as the indicators are perfect when they are far from it.
Credentials like degrees or background should be treated for what they are: imperfect indicators of expertise. But now we have this situation where the experts are given control and monopolies over domains. In the US healthcare system, for example, MDs are given a strong monopoly over care, to the exclusion of other professions, but is this really warranted? Skepticism about academic economists having a strong role in politics are somewhat similar, in that sure, we should pay attention to them, but should they have quite as strong a role as they do?
I worry also about the tone of these discussions. The problem isn't so much with expertise, for example, it's how we use it or overuse it, or grant it monopoly, or imbue it with meaning it doesn't have.
I'm even skeptical of the linked pieces. The injection of mention of genetics in the one article is odd, for example, and to me the arguments reek of bigotry. Overall, their arguments seem to be "well, expertise is unwarranted, except for the fields I'm in, and we all know this expertise derives from my superior genetic endowment in combination with feedback. You'll see."
The problem with the open versus closed system argument is that even in very chaotic, unpredictable domains, there's some level of experience that is worthwhile. In fact, research suggests that one of the problems is that people tend to overestimate their ability to predict; part of the expertise in such domains should be to recognize this. This is legitimate expertise, recognizing the scope of unknown unknowns.
Similarly, it's also important to note that often in such fields, it's not just that things are difficult to predict, it's that we know they are difficult to predict precisely because so many reasonable, sophisticated things have been tried and failed. If anything, this points to the importance of expertise, because it suggests that very reasonable sophisticated ideas can still be wrong. The author likes to point to physics as an example of a closed system, which is ironic, because certain areas of physics are well outside our current level of understanding. Should we then, say reject physics as a domain of legitimate expertise because we don't currently have a good understanding of the nature of time?