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 every once in a while, the real, genuine experts are entirely self-taught.

Here are 12 signs we look for in an expert to help us determine whether they are trustworthy. 

1. They have deep factual knowledge

Let’s start with the obvious: for most topics, a lot of factual knowledge is required before you can have genuine expertise. This means that a genuine expert will have an impressive command of the relevant (non-debated) facts on the topic of their expertise. Thankfully, it’s a lot easier to tell if an expert has a strong command of the non-debated facts than whether they are correct about more controversial claims. 

2. They communicate their confidence levels

Not all knowledge is equally well-established. Even theories that are widely accepted enjoy different levels of support from the relevant evidence. When an expert regularly pretends that all their claims are equally well-established, they demonstrate they are willing to make you believe something is certain when it isn’t.

It’s a good sign that someone treats their subject with the nuance expected from genuine expertise, when they indicate how confident they are (e.g., “It’s been shown in many high-quality studies that…”, or “My best guess is…”), and they explain limitations in the evidence they are using (e.g., “this is unfortunately based on just one study, but that is all that currently exists”)

3. They admit not knowing

Genuine experts also sometimes say that they don’t know the answer to a question, or that the answer is generally not known by anyone. This is important because every topic will have some unknowns, and no expert can know everything about a topic. Telling you when they don’t know is a sign that, when they say they do know, they actually do know.

4. They tell you to look at sources other than themselves

This might happen when an expert doesn’t know the answer to a question, or when they want to help you go beyond the answer they can give you. Genuine experts don’t seek to be seen as a sole arbiter of knowledge or authority on a topic (which can be an indication that ego, rather than truth-seeking, is a primary motivation for them), but instead encourage you to look at resources other than the ones they have produced.

5. They use logic and evidence

Anyone can use rhetorical devices like emotional appeals, no matter how wrong they are, but a well-reasoned argument that uses valid logic and strong evidence will tend to point toward truth. Or, put another way, using strong logic and strong evidence is easier to do when you’re right, whereas emotional appeals are no easier when you’re right than when you’re wrong.  

6. They cite high-quality evidence

Some evidence is much more reliable than other evidence, and those who rely on the less reliable kinds when the more reliable kinds exist probably aren’t doing the best job they can at figuring out the truth. For this reason, genuine experts cite high-quality evidence when it exists (e.g., looking at multiple randomized controlled trials for causal claims) rather than low-quality evidence (e.g., just talking about personal anecdotes), and when high-quality evidence doesn’t exist, they cite the highest quality evidence that does exist.

7. They acknowledge the consensus

Consensus views among experts are more often correct than the idiosyncratic views of just one or two experts. The consensus will not always be right, of course, but often it will be the best understanding we have available. That’s why reliable experts are transparent about the degree to which their opinion differs from the majority of experts, provide reasoned explanations for any deviations, and they are cautious not to present fringe theories as mainstream. This shows a deep engagement with the topic of their expertise and also an adherence to ethical standards of honesty and accuracy in communication.

8. They change their mind

Genuine experts will change their minds about topics within their expertise in response to evidence and arguments. It’s hard to become an expert in something without having been wrong from time-to-time.

That means that anyone claiming to be an expert who has never changed their mind probably has not found and corrected their mistakes. Relatedly, changing one’s mind in response to evidence is also a sign of the epistemic humility associated with genuine expertise.

Of course, if someone has a long history of being wrong, that is evidence against them being a genuine expert, not in favor of it. But, since everyone makes some mistakes, if they make mistakes from time to time and then note they were wrong and improve their beliefs, that is a sign that they are following the evidence where it leads rather than continuing to believe what they do regardless of the evidence.

9. They Steelman

When you ‘straw man’ an argument, you misrepresent or oversimplify someone else’s position to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of dealing with the actual argument, you replace it with a weaker version that distorts the original point, which you then argue against. The opposite of this is called ‘steelmanning’, and it involves presenting the strongest possible version of an argument you’re objecting to, even if it’s more robust than the one originally presented. This approach aims to strengthen the opposing case in order to facilitate a more genuine and constructive debate. 

The most reliable experts will accurately present the strongest arguments made by those that disagree with them while pointing out flaws in those arguments, rather than focusing on just weak arguments from the other side or just mocking the other side (including ad hominem attacks rather than focusing on the substance of the claims of the other side). This is important because knocking down a weak argument from the other side of a debate does little to show the other side is wrong; you have to refute the strongest claims of the other side to actually show they are wrong. Additionally, demonstrating a knowledge of the strongest arguments against your own position shows a deeper level of expertise than only understanding the opposing point of view at a superficial level.

10. They clearly explain their reasons for believing

The philosopher Daniel Dennett has said: “if I can’t explain something I’m doing to a group of bright undergraduates, I don’t really understand it myself.” This sentiment is echoed by philosopher John Searle, who said “In general, I feel if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.” 

When communicating with non-experts, genuine experts are often able to give clear, easy-to-follow (and, ideally, checkable) explanations for why they believe what they believe – without dumbing down the points. They avoid unnecessary jargon and technical language (which sounds smart but makes their arguments very difficult for their audience to follow). Not every genuine expert is able to do this, but the ability to do this well is a sign of genuine expertise. This is important because an expert who cannot explain their ideas clearly will end up requiring you to believe them based on their authority rather than engaging with the arguments themselves. And sometimes, people claiming to be experts will hide behind technical expertise and jargon so that you won’t notice that their arguments are actually weak.

11. They have a track record

Sometimes genuine experts will have track records of predictions or successes that you can check, and this provides direct evidence of their knowledge or skill. Unfortunately, this only applies to some fields, like chess masters, martial experts who fight in tournaments, experts who make public predictions about the economy or politics, etc.

12. They use multiple lenses

The world is complex and multi-faceted, and any one simple theory is going to fail to explain a lot of what’s really going on. For this reason, genuine experts tend to look at problems from multiple frames and perspectives; they don’t act as though one way of looking at things solves all problems, or that one solution works for all problems, or that one simple theory explains everything.

So the next time you hear claims from an alleged expert on a topic that is important to you, you may want to consider: how many of these signs of expertise do they exhibit? You can use this checklist, considering if they:

1. have deep factual knowledge
2. communicate their confidence levels
3. admit not knowing
4. tell you to look at sources other than themselves
5. use logic and evidence
6. cite high-quality evidence
7. acknowledge the consensus
8. change their mind
9. steelman
10. clearly explain their reasons for believing
11. have a track record
12. use multiple lenses

And if you’re seeking to be an expert in something yourself, you may want to ask yourself: “to what extent do I exhibit these traits?”Being able to discern genuine expertise from B.S. requires good judgment. If you’d like to improve your skills at making accurate judgments, why not try our Calibrate Your Judgment tool, created in partnership with Open Philanthropy.

This piece first appeared on Clearer Thinking.org on April 16, 2024, and first appeared on my website on April 22, 2024.

Yet, there’s something extremely odd about wisdom: nobody agrees on what it means.

Here are six thought-provoking definitions of wisdom that l find it useful to reflect on:

1) Wisdom as self-consistency: 

Wisdom is an equilibrium where you find alignment between all combinations of your:

• values

• beliefs

• actions

Inspiration: Justin Shovelain and Elliot McKernon

2) Wisdom as causal control: 

Wisdom is the ability and propensity to consider complex sets of circumstances and then, through a deep understanding of causal mechanisms regarding oneself, humans, and the world, choose actions that will (on average) lead to beneficial outcomes.

Inspiration: Vervaeke/Ferraro

3) Wisdom = Knowledge x Goodness

If you know nothing, then you have no wisdom. On the other hand, if you use your knowledge purely to seek harm, you also lack any wisdom.

Wisdom is the combination of what you know and how good the ends are that you use that knowledge to pursue.

4) Wisdom as a virtue: 

Wisdom comes about through the accumulation of character strengths like:

• factual knowledge, self-knowledge, understanding

• first-hand experience, common sense

• compassion, altruism

• impartiality, non-attachment, objectivity, epistemic humility

• courage

5) Wisdom as search: 

Developing wisdom means pursuing the virtues and knowledge of the good, exploring the essential truths about life and the causes and effects of things, and practicing applying these insights to both theoretical and real-life situations.

6) Wisdom as perspective: 

Wisdom involves seeing a situation from multiple viewpoints and weighing the strengths and limitations of each one while incorporating knowledge of psychology, biases, ethics, and the nature of reality to make judgments that reliably produce flourishing.

This piece was first written on August 1, 2023, and first appeared on this site on August 9, 2023.

A. our theoretical understanding of what things are “really” like (physics, atoms, etc.)

with

B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans.

Examples:

(1) Ethics – most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g., murdering children). Yet it’s unclear what, in the universe of atoms (or in physics), could make (or explain) something being “wrong.”

(2) Free will – we feel as though we constantly make choices (e.g., picking options that we didn’t have to pick). Yet the possibility of choices is hard to square with the existence of laws of physics as we know them. Where could a choice possibly fit into those laws?

(3) Consciousness – we each know we are conscious (in the sense of having experiences / there being something it is like to be us) because we directly witness our own experiences. Yet it’s unclear how or why configurations of atoms could ever give rise to internal experiences.

(4) Identity – we feel like we have a unique, persistent, indivisible identity. Yet, if we imagine thought experiments involving splitting, copying, or rebuilding brains in the physical world, it’s hard to see how a unitary identity could be maintained in those circumstances.

(5) Knowledge – there seem to be many things we each intuitively know to be true (our own names, what orange juice tastes like, how to tie our shoelaces), yet it’s hard to explain what the state of “knowing” these things corresponds to in the world, or to define what “knowing” is.

(6) Mathematics – we all know it’s true that 1+1 = 2 and that the number 2 “exists” in some sense. But it’s hard to say in what sense this is true/existent because numbers and addition don’t seem to exist in the physical realm the way that, say, a particular sandwich does.

This piece was first written on December 23, 2020, and first appeared on this site on April 17, 2023.

The space of possible ideas is ABSURDLY, almost UNBELIEVABLY large. If we thought about a different idea every second for our entire lives, we wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface.

As a simple example, let’s consider the number of two-player competitive games played on an 8×8 chessboard, where each player starts with 16 pieces and each piece has a pre-determined fixed rule for how it moves across the board and captures other pieces. There are far more than a quintillion (i.e., 1,000,000,000,000,000,000) such games, and while many of these games are less than entertaining, there will be games in this set that are far better than chess along any dimension of gaming that you should care to consider. In other words, chess is our limited human attempt to mine a tiny corner of game space.

Of course, this type of 8×8 board game is just a tiny subset of all types of games, which is, in itself, a minuscule subset of all types of ideas.

This VASTNESS of idea space is why I find it so valuable when a person or book mentions a powerful, plausible idea that I’ve never heard before, even if no evidence is provided for why I should believe the idea.

The chance that you would independently have thought up an idea that someone tells you about is vanishingly small (even if you feel like you COULD have thought of it). The act of raising a powerful, plausible hypothesis to your awareness can be hugely valuable. Mere identification of a point in idea-space can involve a ton of work, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

Of course, we can then do our own vetting of ideas, even if the people who bring them to our attention don’t give us strong reasons to believe them. For instance, we can check them against facts that we already have strong reasons to believe. And we can ask ourselves, “does this idea contradict the evidence we have, or line up nicely with it? Does it explain things that confused us before and gel with other things we know to be true?” If we’re serious about testing the idea, we can even go out and gather new evidence about whether it’s true.

Some great ideas seem obviously true once you hear them. In fact, I’m a really big fan of trying to state the obvious; but not just any obvious things. The obvious things that people have likely not yet consciously considered. That is, what I like to call the “obvious and unsaid.” It bothers me when people dismiss obvious but rarely encountered ideas on the grounds that they seem obvious once you hear them because obviousness can be an asset rather than a liability.

These obviously true ideas can be especially valuable because they are easy to vet as being correct, yet due to the vastness of idea-space, they very easily could never have occurred to you before. So, stating obvious ideas that are rarely thought about, but which have important implications, can be an extremely efficient way to transmit value to others.

On a related point, when people say “everything’s already been done” or “there are no new ideas left,” the only way these statements could be sensible is if we interpret them as claims about humans rather than claims about ideas. For instance, as a claim that human minds are so similar to each other that, in the VAST space of possible ideas, we’re confined to a sad, well-trodden, little corner of derivative pseudo creativity.

However, I’m much more optimistic than this: while much is derivative, I think there are new ideas all over the place that we can learn to look for. As one person finds a new idea in a corner over there, and they share it over here, human knowledge advances. What’s more, I think that seeing new ideas as “derivative” is kind of missing the point.

Yes, good new ideas are often built from pieces of old ideas, but there’s nothing bad about that. Bricks are the building blocks of houses, and ideas are the building blocks of ideas.

So why don’t we always do what we know we should?

1. Habit. Have you ever tried to correct bad posture? At some point you’ll notice that your shoulders are hunched and you’ll make a correction, only to notice them hunched again two minutes later. Habits are behaviors that are done automatically. Frequently, we’re not aware of doing them as they occur, so our conscious mind doesn’t have the chance to stop them in action. Intellectually knowing what you should do won’t help if you aren’t consciously aware of what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

To permanently correct a bad habit, it often takes a large number of repetitions of a different behavior, in the context where you would normally engage in the habit. Eventually the old habit will be replaced with a new one. Ideally, you want it to be the case that the context automatically triggers the good habit.

Suppose that you are using an ineffective tennis swing. You would ideally practice a better swing a large number of times (starting without a ball, and then eventually doing it with a ball, and finally doing it while hitting back and forth with another player). Eventually, the correct motion would feel more natural than the incorrect one.

To give another example, suppose that you’d like to correct a habit of pronounce certain words incorrectly. Ideally, you would make a list of these words and the correction pronunciations, and practice saying each correctly a few times a day (to yourself, and then eventually in conversation) until the correct pronunciations no longer required thought.

An approach like this requires a lot of effort, and the willingness to put time into repetitive practice, but it can really pay off. Think about what habit you’d like to instill instead of the one you currently have. Now think about what you could practice to instill this new habit. For complex actions, the practice should be simple to start, and then grown in complexity as you master the basic components (e.g. practice your tennis swing without a ball before doing it with a ball). Finally, schedule time on your calendar to actually perform the practice. Note that one practice session very likely won’t be enough (you may need quite a lot of practice to overcome strongly ingrained habits).

Note that even if you don’t currently have a bad habit, it may be well worth it making an effort to install a good habit. Practice doing what you’d like yourself to do, in the context you’d like yourself to do it. Try to do this good behavior as consistently as possible, to make the new habit form faster.

2. Conflicting desires. You may want to lose weight, but you also want to eat that cupcake. To say you know you shouldn’t eat that cupcake, is to imply that overall, the weight loss is more valuable to you than the pleasure you’ll get from the cupcake. The problem is that when these two desires come into conflict at the moment while that cupcake is sitting in front of you, your desire for the pleasurable taste may win out. Since our desires shift due to context, it may well be the case that 5 minutes prior, when the cupcake hadn’t yet been placed in front of you yet, your desire to lose weight was in fact stronger than your desire to eat a tasty treat. But when you start to salivate at the sight of cupcake, your desires change in magnitude.

If conflicting desires cause you to do things that are not in your own long term interest, there are a few strategies you can try. First, you can try making your desire stronger for the good behavior. For instance, try vividly imagining yourself after having lost the weight and mentally basking in how good that will feel, and the benefits you will get from it. Immediately follow this visualization by a second one where you mentally contrast that desired state with how things currently stand. This second part is critical to help build motivation (rather than just basking in wishful thinking).

A second approach is to try to make your desire for the bad behavior weaker, for instance by imagining yourself gaining weight as you eat unhealthy food. The idea is to build a stronger association between your desire and the negative consequences associated with it, so that when the desire is triggered, the negative thought is triggered simultaneously, reducing your overall desire. One way to carry this out is to make a list of the negative consequences of the bad behavior, and then imagine each of these negative consequences occurring.

A third approach to dealing with conflicting desires is to try to arrange your environment so that your desires are unlikely to shift in a way that will yield behaviors that aren’t what you want. For instance, if you’re trying to lose weight, don’t keep unhealthy foods around your house, and don’t go to cupcake shops.

It’s worth noting, that sometimes we have conflicting desires that we aren’t consciously aware of. For instance, you might know that you should start searching for a job, but without having acknowledged it explicitly, be terribly afraid of rejection. Hence, you may find that you mysteriously become anxious every time you start looking at job postings, which leads you to procrastinate.

To better understand whether conflicting desires are involved in causing you to avoid what you know you should do, try the following exercise: Ask yourself “what are the benefits that I get out of NOT doing this good behavior?” Make a list of whatever you can think of. Doing this may make you realize that you have reasons for not acting that you weren’t even aware of. Now, make a list of the costs of not doing the desired behavior. Reflect on this list of costs and benefits, and reflect whether those benefits are really worth the costs.

3. Lack of motivation. Sometimes you’ll know intellectually that something would be a good idea to do, but for some reason feel an utter lack of motivation to actually do it. For instance, you may be aware that it is much more efficient from a learning perspective to take notes on articles and non-fiction books you read, and review those notes later (or better yet, make flashcards from them), than to merely read passively. But there’s a good chance that you don’t feel any significant motivation to actually take notes while you’re reading.

When lack of motivation strikes, it may help to perform a cost benefit analysis. Make a list of the benefits and costs of doing that action (compared to the baseline state of not doing it). Read this list over again. If the action really is worth doing, this list of reasons why you should do it may give you greater motivation.

You also might find it helpful to try to boost your desire through visualization (as in the conflicting desires case above). Visualize your future after you have done the desired behavior, and imagine the benefits that you are likely to get out of it. Now, remind yourself of how things currently stand, and mentally contrast this with the desired future.

4. Forgetting. You might know what is good for you, but simply forget to do it. For instance, for the last two months you may have been in desperate need of a haircut, but what with your busy life, you never think to make an appointment. Or maybe you made an appointment, but forgot to show up for it.

There are at least four strategies you can use to combat forgetfulness. First, write down whatever you want to remember, and put that note somewhere that you’ll be forced to notice it (e.g. stick it on your sock drawer).

Second, put the thing you need to remember in your calendar. So if you think to yourself that you need a haircut, but right now its after business hours, put a reminder in your calendar to book one tomorrow at 10am.

Third, for important things that you keep forgetting to do (especially major things that you really aren’t looking forward to doing), you can ask a friend to act as an enforcer. Tell them how important it is for you to do this thing, and when you want to have it done by. Ask for their help with making sure you get it done, giving them free reign to nag you as much as is necessary. This social pressure can be very effective for some people.

The fourth, and best strategy, is to (whenever possible) act immediately at the moment when you do remember what you should do. So when you happen to recall that you need a haircut, don’t assume that you’ll remember to make an appointment tomorrow, just pick up the phone immediately and book it. You’ll likely be better at getting yourself to act immediately if you start viewing your brain as a buggy machine, which occasionally forgets important things for long periods (I know mine does, at least). Taking this perspective means that when you remember something important that you should do, you can’t just assume that your brain will eventually take care of it. If you don’t act now, who knows when you’ll remember to do it again, if you ever even remember to act at all. So act now, to save yourself from your buggy brain later!

5. Lack of knowledge. Even if you know what you should do to improve your life, you may not know how to do it. For instance, you might want people to view you as being more confident, but have little idea how to get yourself to act in a more confident manner. If you keep telling yourself what you “should” do, but you don’t know the steps to carry it out, you’re unlikely to change your behavior for the better.

When you lack sufficient knowledge as to how to achieve a behavior, take steps to correct your lack of knowledge. Ask someone who knows more, or do some research online, or try breaking down the action by taking twenty minutes to write down the small, simple components that make up whatever you’re trying to do. Even very complex actions can usually be broken into simple steps, each of which is fairly straightforward. For instance, suppose you want to learn to write computer programs, but you don’t know the first thing about programming. You might break this task up as follows: Step 1. Talk to friends who are knowledgable about computer programming, and ask them what programming language you should learn based on your goals. Step 2. Install the required software on your computer in order to be able to write programs in the language that your friends suggested. Step 3. Google to find a few tutorials on the language. Run them by your knowledgable friends to see which tutorial they think looks best. Step 4. Complete one of these tutorials on the language. etc.

To get yourself to do what you know is good for you, the first step is to diagnose what is holding you back form acting. Are you trying to break a bad, sticky habit? In that case, you may need to devote time to practicing a better habit to replace it. Are you dealing with a case of conflicting desires? If so, use visualization to increase your desire for the good action and reduce your desire for the bad action, while you try to avoid contexts that cause your desires to flip in a way that is counterproductive. Are you feeling a lack of motivation to behave how you know you should? Write down a list of pros and cons for the good action, and try visualization to increase motivation. Do you keep forgetting to do the desired behavior? Put notes in places where you’ll be forced to see them, use your calendar to schedule when you’re going to do your helpful behaviors, and try to build a habit of acting immediately when you remember something important to do. Know what you want to do, but lack the knowledge how to do it? Ask those who know more than you do how to start, do some research, and try to break the task down into simple, easy steps.

Unfortunately, all of this advice is problematic: what if you don’t feel like taking the advice, or you do want to take it but will likely forget to do so? What if you have existing habits that will make taking this advice difficult? In other words, how do you get yourself to do what this article says you should? The solution is to set the stage right now for following this advice in the future. Namely, apply the advice of this article, right now, to get yourself to take this article’s advice in the future.
Perform the following steps (right now!) so that you can benefit later:

Step 1. Consider the following reasons for not acting. Which of these do you think is most likely to prevent you from acting on the advice from this article?

(1) Habit (you have existing habits that may stand in the way).
(2) Conflicting desires (you have desires that conflict with your desire to take this advice).
(3) Lack of motivation (you don’t feel motivation to do what this article says).
(4) Forgetting (you are likely to forget to follow the advice of this article).
(5) Lack of knowledge (you don’t know how to follow this article’s advice).

Step 2. Go and reread the section of this article corresponding to whatever you selected in Step 1.

Step 3. Schedule at least two different times on your calendar for when you are going to do what that section you reread suggests.

Step 4. Schedule a time on your calendar when you are going to reread this entire article.

Step 5. When the scheduled events come up on your calendar, actually do them!

Click here for the talk slides.

Surprise is the emotion you feel when a prediction made by your brain’s model of what you are going to experience deviates substantially from what you actually experience. If you discover a large mark on your hand that you didn’t know was there, you will feel surprised. Your model of your hand did not match the visual experience produced by the light reflecting off of your hand. If you drop a baseball and it flies towards the ceiling, you will be even more surprised. Your model of what happens when you drop an object was just massively violated.

Our brain is making predictions constantly. Most of the time, these predictions are pretty accurate. When our sensory experience is in line with what our brain expects, it not only does not produce the feeling of surprise, but usually does not even push information about what was just observed into our conscious awareness. Making predictions and then checking these predictions against experience acts as a filtering mechanism. Since we can only keep a very limited amount of information in conscious awareness, it makes sense not to waste this space by filling it with boring stuff that your brain already predicted was going to happen. From the point of view of the survival of our genes, surprising experiences (i.e. ones that your brain mispredicted) are much more useful to reflect on consciously than unsurprising ones.

One thing to note about our brain’s predictions is that they do not correspond to a single, exact pattern of sensory experience. When you are in the forest, and you turn to the left, your brain cannot possibly predict the precise layout of leaves you will now see. But it does expect that you will see leaves, and that they will be (roughly speaking) within a certain range of colors, a certain range of sizes, and so forth. As long as this turns out to be true, you probably won’t even think about the fact that you are now looking at a different pattern of foliage than you were before. But if instead of trees there is a man standing next to you that you did not expect, you’ll immediately become consciously aware of that man.

By taking note of surprise when it occurs, we can learn to have truer beliefs about the world. To see how, imagine that you just heard about the Asch conformity experiments, and you find yourself surprised to learn that most people in the experiment publicly gave the wrong answer to an obvious question just because a large number of other people publicly gave this wrong answer before them. Your surprise signifies an opportunity to know something that you didn’t before, and increase the accuracy of the beliefs in your model of reality.

But how should your model be updated based on this information? A naive updating would be to add a fact to your set of beliefs such as “If 35 people incorrectly claim that one line is bigger than another, then a large percentage of people will publicly claim the same belief as the group.” The problem is that when added in this way, the fact has not truly been incorporated into you web of beliefs. It has merely been glued to the web as a dangling outlier, without altering the web itself to naturally accommodate the new information.

To usefully incorporate surprising pieces of information, ask yourself:

• Why did I find this information surprising? This can help you hone in on what parts of your model need updating.
• What prior beliefs of mine does this information contradict? Your credence in these prior beliefs should then be lowered.
• Which prior beliefs of mine does this information bolster? Your credence in these prior beliefs should be increased.
• Which beliefs of mine are most natural to tweak so that this fact is no longer surprising? Once the new information no longer seems surprising, it means it has been absorbed into your belief network.

If you find the results of the Asch experiments surprising, it may be that you underestimate what people will be willing to do to avoid looking like an outsider. Or it may be that you underestimate the extent to which people will doubt their own sensory experience when it is contradicted by the opinions of others. In either case, the information you learned from the experiment should alter what you think about things besides what will happen in that precise experimental setup. For instance, this new knowledge may update your views about how cults create agreement among their members. Or it may make you realize that if dissent is not encouraged within an organization, there is a danger that conformity will take over, and the entire group may eventually succumb to obviously wrong, but socially reinforced beliefs.

If after you have updated your model the information you have learned still seems surprising, this indicates that your beliefs need further tweaking to accommodate the new information. You should not be surprised by the same (or very similar) information twice. If a friend cancels plans on you three times in a row, and you didn’t anticipate that they may cancel that third time, you failed to sufficiently process the first two occurrences.

The next time you find yourself feeling surprised, remember that it is a valuable opportunity to update your beliefs.

• Making Observations
• Formulating Theories
• Making Predictions
• Testing Predictions
• Developing Happiness

Making Observations could include exercises where students make and record observations about the physical world, biological world, social world, political world, cultural world, etc. The tools students would learn about and employ could include stop watches and rocks to study how gravity works, telescopes to study the stars, microscopes to analyze blood, newspapers to study the government, and televisions to examine culture. Students would learn to operate these tools, pay attention, record, summarize, categorize, explain and simplify.

In Formulating Theories, students could learn about equations, probability, data, evidence, induction and deduction. They could study how various physical, psychological, economic, literary, musical and artistic theories arose. And they could be asked to develop their own theories about art, literature, culture, physical phenomena, psychological facts, and so on.

The subject Making Predictions would involve the study of many of the powerful theories from physics, economics, chemistry, and psychology, and students would learn to use each of these theories to make predictions about what one should expect to see.

In the study of Testing Predictions, students could learn about the scientific method, falsification, statistics, markets, computer prediction algorithms, the prediction algorithms of the brain, and randomized controlled trials. They could also learn how to do thorough research in order to be able confirm or disconfirm their future predictions based on knowledge gathered by others.

For Cultivating Happiness, there would be an emphasis on art appreciation, literature appreciation, food criticism, movie criticism, creative writing, art creation, meditation, exercise, health, positive psychology, cognitive therapy, etc. all directed towards learning how to increase pleasure, enjoyment and fulfillment as well as reduce misery. This could also involve a study of what makes humans happy and what makes them unhappy, which could lead to discussions of governmental systems, psychology, sociology, ethics, history, etc.

New ways of carving up knowledge can give us new ways of thinking about education.