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...

I’m an extreme non-credentialist – what about you?

February 28, 2024

I'm an extreme (>99th percentile) non-credentialist. Does that mean if I find out someone has a nutrition Ph.D., then I don't think they know more about nutrition than most random people? Of course not. Credentials are evidence of what someone knows (e.g., having a nutrition Ph.D. is evidence that you have nutrition knowledge). But part of what makes me an extreme non-credentialist is that if I spend an hour watching someone with a nutrition Ph.D. debate a completely self-taught person, a...

Oversimplifiers vs. Difference Deniers: a dynamic regarding group differences that leads to rage and confusion

December 17, 2023

Here's a misery-filled dynamic that I believe commonly plays out regarding small observed differences between groups: (1) Two groups have a small (but meaningful) difference in their average value of some trait, with heavily overlapping distributions. (2) Some people ("Oversimplifiers") observe this difference (in their everyday life or media reports) and turn this small average difference into a (sometimes very harmful) oversimplification: "A's are like this, B's are like that." (3) O...

False Beliefs Held by Intellectual Giants

July 15, 2023

Even many of the smartest people that have ever lived convinced themselves of false things (just like the rest of us). Here are some fun and wild examples: (1) Linus Pauling won TWO Nobel prizes - one in peace and one in chemistry. Unfortunately, he eventually became obsessed with and widely promoted the false (and sometimes still repeated) idea that high-dose vitamin C cures many diseases, including HIV and snakebites. (2) Isaac Newton, who co-invented calculus and discovered t...

Five metaphorical tools to help you climb your personal mountains

May 19, 2023

You're on a mountain range, trying to reach the highest mountain peak you're capable of reaching. That peak reflects the total sum of your achievements according to your intrinsic values. This may include, for instance, your happiness, the happiness of your loved ones, your positive impact on the world, living virtuously, achieving your deeply meaningful goals, and so on. Unfortunately, the mountains you face are foggy as hell. Plus, they have dense forests, huge boulders, and bra...

How do we predict high levels of success?

September 12, 2021

Below, I outline 13 approaches to predicting high levels of success with differing levels of complexity, including my own mega model at the bottom. Note: here, I use the term "success" merely in terms of achievement, career success, or high levels of expertise, NOT in terms of happiness, living a good life, morality, having strong social bonds, etc. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful in the way this post focuses on. But if you DO want "success" in the sense in...

Three big reasons we struggle to find the truth

June 3, 2021

As I see it, there are three main causes for our struggles to see the truth on any particular topic: 1. Mimicry: when our in-group promotes falsity that we copy 2. Incentives: when we predict that knowing the truth would feel bad or harm our objectives 3. Complexity: when the truth is hard to figure out Examples: 1. Mimicry • Some are Christians because all their friends and family are, too; some are atheists for the same reason. • Some think that it makes sense to ...

Why is Confirmation Bias So Common?

May 5, 2021

Written: May 5, 2021 | Released: June 18, 2021 People often talk about what a problem "confirmation bias" is. But we rarely discuss what causes so many of us to search for information in a biased way. Let's explore some of the forces: 1. Echo chambers: our routine sources of information tend to support our worldview. Much of this is due to social ties (we tend to talk to people who are similar to us in age, geography, religion, etc.) We also trust news sources more if they share o...

Soldier Altruists vs. Scout Altruists

April 23, 2021

There is an important division between people who want to improve the world that few seem to be aware of. Inspired by Julia Galef's new book (The Scout Mindset), I'll call this division: Soldier Altruists vs. Scout Altruists. 1. Soldier Altruists think it's obvious how to improve the world and that we just need to execute those obvious steps. They see the barriers to a better world as: (i) not enough people taking action (e.g., due to ignorance, selfishness, or propaganda), and ...

Twelve Recursive Explanations

March 21, 2021

Photo by Fred Romero (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

If the Overton Window were not inside of itself, you'd think I was crazy for writing this.Is it just me, or has the Baader-Meinhof effect been popping up all over the place ever since I learned about it?It's hard to justify learning about opportunity costs when there are so many other things you could be doing with that time.I don't think the idea of being Pareto Optimal has made anyone better off without making at least one person worse off.What can we infer from the fact that we find ourselve...