Generalist vs subject matter expert is a time-honored conflict that has taken on a sort of ideological valence as “expertise” became coded as left-wing. www.slowboring.com/p/have-exper... - ThreadSky

mattyglesias.bsky.social • 82 days ago

Generalist vs subject matter expert is a time-honored conflict that has taken on a sort of ideological valence as “expertise” became coded as left-wing.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/have-experts-really-gotten-worse

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douglips.com•82 days ago

Why would we compare midwit specialists with super smart generalists? Why wouldn't we compare super smart specialists with midwit generalists? Do you think super smart specialists don't exist? Do you think midwit generalists don't exist?

alexhenke.bsky.social•82 days ago

The irony here is that Nate is an extremely talented forecasting specialist who has incredibly stupid takes outside his field (school closures were worse than the Iraq War, and such).

cbhessick.bsky.social•82 days ago

Is it fair to characterize the generalists vs specialists debate as “intelligence” vs “credentials”?
I don’t think anyone believes specialists aren’t intelligent.
I also question whether this debate is a version of hedgehogs vs foxes, as it’s the generalist who are more inclined to use a single idea

funklordoentropy.bsky.social•82 days ago

“value intelligence over credentials” —so most experts (not the generalists) have PHD’s and are coded in this paragraph as “not intelligent”? this is textbook dunning kruger writing

anderspeterson.bsky.social•82 days ago

I think there's value in both groups. My main issue with the "experts" is not that I think they're necessarily wrong. It's that they're right at one thing (medicine, climate, etc) but they also think that makes them an expert in policymaking and should be obeyed blindly. Policy must be more nuanced.

jeffry-house.bsky.social•82 days ago

But those who knew “one big thing” per Berlin, were ideologues, not supersmart generalists. And MAGA isn’t made up of supersmart anybody.

alonlevy.bsky.social•82 days ago

The idea that subject matter expertise is midwit is so drunk.

mattyglesias.bsky.social•82 days ago

The best commentary on American mass transit comes from an Israeli mathematician who developed a hobbyist interest in the subject!

riccardoff.bsky.social•82 days ago

The fact that an hobbyist generalist can get to expert level in a field is just an indiction of the primitive state of that field.

alonlevy.bsky.social•82 days ago

The field isn't primitive, though... the thing I think of myself as the most advanced in, timetabling, turns out to rely on an advanced math scheme called tropical algebra, which I've written pure math papers in. It was a coincidence and the theory is very different, but I didn't start from 0.

riccardoff.bsky.social•82 days ago

Would you say that it is possible for a hobbyist to do interesting and hard work in a “non primitive” field, for example in mathematics?

alonlevy.bsky.social•82 days ago

In pure math? No, but pure math is atypical in how much theory you need to do anything. In college, I was reading papers in history (my ~minor) before I was reading papers in math. I can barely even read math papers in other fields of math, whereas history or economics papers I read just fine.

alonlevy.bsky.social•82 days ago

Yes, and is specialized to this topic and constantly seeks input from expert practitioners (almost none of whom is American). This is very much a critique of "your country is extremely behind in this field, here's how cutting-edge experts elsewhere do things."

alonlevy.bsky.social•82 days ago

It's also not really a matter of intelligence vs. credentials when so many of the soi-disant generalists aren't that smart - they make things up a lot and surround themselves by less smart people, is all. Charles Murray even moralized this as obligatory behavior to avoid being challenged by peers.

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