How to spot real expertise

April 23, 2024

Thanks go to Travis (from the Clearer Thinking team) for coauthoring this with me. This is a cross-post from Clearer Thinking. How can you tell who is a valid expert, and who is full of B.S.? On almost any topic of importance you can find a mix of valid experts (who are giving you reliable information) and false but confident-seeming "experts" (who are giving you misinformation). To make matters even more confusing, sometimes the fake experts even have very impressive credentials, and ev...

Weird but potentially valuable new roles we could have in our society

November 18, 2020

There are certain roles in society that come with special training, powers, and responsibilities. For instance: doctors (can prescribe medicine), lawyers (client-attorney privilege), judges (can bindingly interpret law), etc. Here's my list of some weird but potentially really valuable roles in society that don't exist but maybe should: Role 1: Truth Teller They wear a special, very noticeable hat. When wearing it, they are not permitted to say anything they know to be untrue (they...

What is the REAL effect of circumcising men?

January 27, 2014

Those who grow up in the U.S. are often surprised to find out that in many European countries almost no men are circumcised. In the U.S., where the majority of men have had the procedure performed on them, it is pretty common to hear people say that foreskin is unclean, ugly, or even unhealthy. On the other hand, Europeans tend to find the idea of circumcision bizarre. "Why would you cut off a healthy part of your body?", they wonder. And "How would you feel about a culture that cut off their ch...