The saving grace of anti-expert populists is that they do discredit themselves, simply because policies originating from the gut tend to be lousy.
…Democracy is strengthened, not weakened, when it harnesses experts.
Read the whole essay, which gives you insight into Mallaby’s world view, as well as a few tidbits from his biography of Greenspan. I strongly recommend the book, although I am quite opposed to his world view.
A Sebastian Mallaby or David Brooks will ask: who would you rather have in charge? An expert, or a random guy in a bar?
If that indeed is the choice, then give me the expert. But I want an option that says “None of the above.” Or, to put it another way, I want an expert with so much humility that the expert does not try to mess with orders that emerge naturally. Unfortunately, we live in a society in which “humble expert” has become an oxymoron.
William Buckley had it right-
“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
I came to say the same thing. While it is true that I would choose the (single) expert over the (single) guy at a bar, applying Condorcet and increasing N from 1 to 400 puts me on Buckley’s side.
Mallaby’s vision appears to be of a monolithic expertise; if you’re an expert, you must necessarily be more right than a non-expert. In general, sure, this is what we mean by “expert.” But consider that “we” for a moment.” This is what ordinary people mean by an expert. Within academic disciplines, considered as disciplines of inquiry, disagreement is fundamental. Getting an advanced degree (becoming a true participant in the discipline) is not a matter of learning (or mastering) all the “right answers.” What the Cult of the Expert is offering us is a high school version of expertise: the job of the student is to sit down, shut up, and listen to the expert, follow the expert, and do what the expert says. Leading the country – or any major institution – is far beyond high school.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in _The Black Swan_ proposes that “Some fields don’t have experts.”
Paul Meehl suggested that actuarial prediction could outperform expert evaluation.
Daniel Willingham in _Why students don’t like school_ asked how many findings from educational research actually went beyond the things your grandmother could have told you.
And then there is this, from Greg Cochran:
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/the-experts/
Far, far too often it isn’t society harnessing experts- it is experts harnassing society. That should be your problem with Mallaby’s world view.
Having read Mallaby’s article hurriedly, he makes a valid point. I don’t think he is totally off base. in that sense my first post above was perhaps off topic.
Regularly I think of Taleb’s quip that “Some fields don’t have experts.” The next question is “which fields?”
You will see internet ads about personal coaching that say “Would you like to find a coach…or become a coach?”
You don’t see the same thing for brain surgeons. There is no equivalent ad that asks “would you like to find a brain surgeon–or become a brain surgeon?”
We also don’t let “the guy in a bar” build bridges unless he is qualified.
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Taleb talks about “skin in the game,” and “educated idiots.”
Thomas Sowell has written about intellectuals engaging in “verbal virtuosity,” while in turn real expertise often turns on “mundane specifics.”
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I believe that running a central bank requires experts, and we can’t make that problem go away. What the solution is–it isn’t clear to me.
Re central banks
In Australia, they tell me the central bank governing board is made up of a mix of economists, business people and others.
Economics being the key discipline, but others are in there as they have a much closer ‘feeling’ for what’s happening and likely effects of changes in interest rate setting (mixing the expert with the practitioner form a decision making team).
Or so I read somewhere once.
If one is going to be ruled by experts that are supposed to arrive at the one objectively correct scientific policy, then why bother with the democracy in the first place?
Economists know all the “all else equal” stuff. But in most cases, not all else is equal. “The field” often knows more than the expert, because the field knows all the exceptions to the rules. The stock market is a good example of the failure of experts. In any given stock, there are dozens of experts who have access to a small part of the big picture. That’s one reason why the internet is so powerful, it brings you into contact with all those people who have access to that very specific information. Sites like Glassdoor are treasure troves of valuable information about stocks & the economy.
Andrew would you be able to provide a link?
I do like to read about stocks in the way that you say on sites like Seeking Alpha – I’m not sure they really sway me to change a buy/sell/hold/watch position say – but I think they add up to providing a loose mesh of understanding and insight which will ultimately improve my stock picking.
A bit like Arnold’s point about economics giving us insights rather than hard facts.
Never trust a guy named Sebastian.
Seriously though, “democracy is strengthened” as a string is used as a religious mantra. It doesn’t mean anything.
May be that in your field, economy, the expertise of the experts is doubtful. As a civil engineer, I would never trust a non-expert’s opinion on anything physical. Experts can be wrong, of course, but there are thousands of others searching for mistakes only to humiliate him/her publicly. Moreover, building mistakes tend to collapse making a lot of noise.
This brings to mind the Technocracy movement of the 1930’s, which was founded by a flimflam guy named Howard Scott.
This reminds me of Herb Stein’s old quip about the President that wanted one-handed economic advisors because whenever they discussed policy solutions — a hypothetical policy A — the economists would always say, “on the other hand…” and discuss what could go wrong if policy A were adopted.
It seems to me the problem is Presidents and policymakers now get what they want — we have far too many one-handed economists in the policy arena today.
Indeed, I think the more important challenge is to define very carefully the scope of what “in charge” means.
David brooks is a dinosaur that no one pays attention to anymore
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether it’s experts or the chump at the end of the bar. Our problem isn’t who is crafting policy. Our problem is that we don’t have any method to assess where a policy achieved its intended purpose or getting rid of policies that clearly didn’t achieve their intended purpose.
Until the system is modified to allow for failure and the ability to learn from those failures we are just going to pile bad policy on top of bad legislation on top of bad regulation.