I have always been baffled by people that can find a deep, often lifelong interest in one "thing". I have taken to describing myself as interested in concepts and ideas over a wide range of subjects. I know a little bit about the surface of lots and lots of topics but when the digging begins, as soon as the subject starts to be dissected, I quickly lose interest.
I think that those with truly expert knowledge in one narrow field often have bizarre gaps in their knowledge about other things. When I respectfully listen to their expertise I can sometimes pick out assumptions that they have about other subjects that are just obviously incorrect. It makes me wonder, "If you don't know that, what else don't you know?". A good example is that scientists often talk about philosophical concepts in a dismissive way that is toe curlingly naive, they are much less likely to possess epistemic humility. They don't know what they don't know. Philosophers seem, in my experience, to be much more clued up on science. Similarly, people like Rowan Williams and David Bentley Hart can talk about Science, Philosophy, Theology and Culture in a way that puts people like Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson to shame.
“Yeah, yeah, I know a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. However, it’s only dangerous if you overestimate your ranking.” Well said. I saw a comment the other day that went something like, “I don’t need to read thousands of pages of Aquinas proving the existence of god…” and I was tempted to reply, “You’re right, you don’t. His proof for the existence of god was something like three paragraphs.”
This is good but doesn't address interdisciplinary areas and particularly areas where practical application has significant restrictions unaddressed by theory.
I think there's quite a large difference between fields on knowledge here based on how much depth vs breath they have. It's actually not that hard to make a contribution to many fields of knowledge - for instance strong undergraduates can make contributions to combinatorics or topics in efficient algorithms and datastructures.
On the other hand, there are fields that have exstoridinary depth where you need a relevant phd to even understand the topic adequately, like topology.
There are also many fields that rely on observational statistics, where an amateur can meaningfully do their own reaserch if they have adequate statistical training, particularly if the subject in question is what view one should draw from some set of results.
I've been trying to say all this for years, in various ways. 100% agree. I think most of us wildly underestimate how much the top-level experts know in comparison to those of us who dabble. It really is like "I played center field for my high school baseball team" vs. Aaron Judge.
A friend of mine calls it the curse of the single A player. Someone at that level is the best ballplayer they have ever met. They are still far from making the show.
I have always thought of myself as knowing a little bit about a number of things, whilst not being an expert (wahtever that truly means) on any one thing in particular. I think the danger for the average (dangerous word that) person doing 'research' is unconcious bias. We remmber and latch onto those things that reinforce our existing beliefs while disregarding that which goes against them.
Very few of us understand, or even care to understand, what goes on in Government yet most of us feel, and often express, that we could do a better job. Then, almost in the same breath, state that we're not 'into' politics and it's all BS. Such contradictions!
"This is why I’m tempted to pat effective altruists on the head and say, “aren’t they cute? They just discovered utilitarianism! Bless their hearts.” You need to know when you are a 3.0 player and have the appropriate humility. "
Loved to read this, it articulates points I've vaguely felt, as I've dived into different topics at different levels of depth.
But one thing that hasn't been mentioned here, is that sometimes entire fields of study and knowledge can reveal themselves to be entirely wrong-headed. In the soft sciences there have been multiple replication crises, and entire academic study fields have been taken by dogmas like blank slatism which ended up being wrong. The result is lots of people exploring data in increasing levels of detail, but all on the basis of a wrong assumption. I don't know the details, but I'm sure similar things have happened in philosophy too — as great as the greeks or the medieval thinkers may have been, the proverbial treatise on the number of angels on the head of a pin probably existed, or something like it.
So I'd like to raise a (careful) hand for the outsider who is nowhere near expert at a field, observes it for a while, and says "this smells like bullshit to me". They may be right, and they may have what it takes to be justified in their belief.
I agree with you that professional fields very often have made foundational mistakes. In one sense, this is exactly how we should expect the progress of knowledge to go. We try out some promising avenue of inquiry, find out that it’s not quite right, or it is a dead end, or it evolves into something else altogether. Alchemy evolves into chemistry, Newtonian mechanics turn out to not be quite right and we need relativity theory, we find that Lamarckianism is a dead end. I can’t think of a single example where the advance came from some outsider who just smelled bullshit. The replication crisis in psychology, for example, was raised by the psychologists themselves.
Yeah I agree, outsiders who smell bullshit are not going to be equipped to raise the alarm, and if they do, they will be shot down with all kinds of specialist-level counter-arguments. I still find it interesting that, despite the high technicality of professional fields (as you explain), it can still be possible for an outsider to accurately smell the rot.
Thank you for the article! I enjoyed it, but I have a few nits to pick.
I'd rather be halfway up a ladder I want to climb than at the top of one I don't. People don't trust experts mostly because they don't trust their areas of expertise. For example, there were a number of tenured Marxist economists at my university. They have deep expertise in whatever it is they spend their time on, but I wouldn't trust them to make actual economic policy decisions.
Similarly, conspiracy theorists think that cancer research is hopelessly compromised by corrupt pharmaceutical companies - if that's your starting point, you probably *should* trust some reddit forum more than an world-renowned establishment researcher.
It's been a rough few decades for experts. Foreign policy experts led us into Iraq, financial experts led us into the Great Recession, medical experts led us into the opioid epidemic, political experts led us to Trump, and so on. Frankly, I think the experts would benefit from humility more than the amateurs.
Finally, you want to "pat effective altruists on the head for discovering utilitarianism"? Does that include, say, Peter Singer, William MacAskill, and Nick Bostrom? While it relies more on force of argument than appeals to authority, effective altruism isn't amateur philosophy.
Thanks for the comment. A couple of points. One, the fact that someone starts by believing a dumb conspiracy theory does *not* mean they are justified in trusting a rando on Reddit more than a “world-renowned establishment researcher.” You can’t get justified beliefs out of unjustified ones. Just because I believe my bones are made of steel, that does not mean it is reasonable for me to not wear a seat belt.
I agree that there is a crisis of expertise, and maybe I’ll write something on this in the future. But I don’t think your examples show it. Foreign policy experts did not lead us into Iraq. G.W. Bush, eager to find a scapegoat after 9/11, did. He puffed up intel that even the intelligence community said was dodgy. Financial experts did not lead us into the Great Recession. That was straight up fraud— false valuations and bogus financial products not grounded in fundamentals. Same for the opioid crisis—why do you think the Sackler family is getting sued for billions? And I don’t know what “experts” you think led to Trump.
As far as effective altruism, the ring leaders are not the circus. Also, I think Singer in particular has been flogging the same intuition pumps (e.g. drowning child) for years, without, IMHO, seriously addressing the numerous well-known theoretical problems with utilitarianism. But I’m no ethics expert, so take that thought with a grain of salt.
Left out of your disarmingly frank and interesting levels of knowledge typology, Steve. And, by extension, your levels of the expertise hierarchy, is any mention of the damage partisans of “post-modernism” have inflicted on American culture.
That is, the tendency to see claims of knowledge as merely individual or social perspectives, no more. Or the mere product of the male or female “gaze,” which allegedly colors many claims to know with significant biases that beg to be debunked (corrected).
Not to mention the all-too-fashionable gamesmanship of “deconstructionism.” Recall this invites critics to “see through” the knower, or his or her claims to know. These blindspots are said to be driven by the knower’s social class, power, or privilege. Hence truth claims are only doubtfully backed by empirically checkable evidence, as philosophers and scientists traditionally assert.
Finally, the usual glibness of these post-modern skeptics, and their contorted attacks on even the possibility of objective knowledge, has invited a contagious attitude of epistemological relativism. At worst, it has invited a virulent cynicism against both experts and their hard won expertise.
Folks just don’t trust experts like they used to. Increasingly, they think expert opinion can be purchased by the wealthiest bidder or corporation. If so, this reduces our formerly respected experts to post-modern prostitutes.
I agree with you that there is and has been an increasing distrust of domain experts. I think the reason for that is complex and multi-causal. It is also interestingly not present in certain areas. The expertise of elite soldiers, master carpenters, or airline pilots is not dismissed, for example.
Agreed, it’s not a universal skepticism I am observing. But rather a glib tendency to discount “experts.” You can add brain surgeons to your examples of rarely doubted experts. That is, folks who need one suddenly check and demand expert credentials medical credentials.
There has definitely been an erosion of trust in expertise, but I don't think it was post-modernist leftists and the deconstructionists that were responsible for sharpie revisions of NOAA forecasts, or vaccine skepticism, or promoting ivermectin as a covid cure. Jewish space lasers is not a post-modern boogeyman. The right has its own problem - a post-truth culture to match the left's post-modernism. The problem of respect for expertise is not a partisan one; surely we can approach it that way here.
And really, I thought the last great herds of deconstructionists went extinct in the wild back in the 90's, and are only found now in zoos. Certainly any "fashion" for it is rather last century.
Yes. If I dove deeply into this subject on subjects of study, I'd say that it needs some economics, at least sense of opportunity costs (one subject versus another), the gains of specialization, or comparative advantage, and the need for deep-divers to approximate inter-subject connectivity (generalists). Some specializations exist as these generalists but are not generally recognized as such (the librarian for example).
Generalist as a specialty. We need that more than ever. Calling everything elite is part of the method in the madness to dissatisfy our lives and drives us into authoritarianism (narcissists in uniform). Sow distrust and the oyster of the world rots from within.
Full disclosure: I read widely and work as a librarian. The rest is not economics but anthropology by way of Mary Douglas.
Where loyalty is being substituted for the rule of law, generalists will be outlawed, not just ignored in the name of disruption. They connect, where identity politics seeks to divide or double-down on difference in the name of greatness or some other lame emotion. (Border walls are lame, losers like Berlin have walls, let get greatness by extending borders). (gee I wonder why Berlin got a wall?).
Like whataboutism, 'do your own research' is about more about spreading, or confirming, low morale by isolating, as in alienating, folk from their neighbours. (Everythingiseffed) This can become an enjoyment of depression, which does two things, ① increases dissatisfaction which can be puddled together into rivers of emotion, which ② in turn breaks the connective tissue of societies, increasing dissatisfaction (positive feedback, the fractals of emotion beckon at the edge of chaos that the strongman surfs like a bull in a china shop) and turns all this into to resentment, which is hoped to be turned into personal fealty as the then, by comparison, safest option, and suddenly there are no football teams, just a bunch of people running hither and thither while the rich kid takes their ball and goes home saying they do not deserve me.
I may have written that as if it was a directly planned programmed. But it's not. It's a failure of policing narcissism on our own sides. It just happens as opportunists come along and seek to claim credit for our failure to police them. This is why history repeats.
I think there's a qualitative difference between these two inquirists which your analysis doesn't capture, and which I think is at the heart of the "do your own research" problem:
1) An observer of physics who reads Sean Carroll, Stephen Hawking, and George Smoot
2) A physics major in their junior year of college
Those are both, as best I can calibrate, level 2. But they are not the same thing at all with respect to their nature as inquirists. It's a difference perhaps best summed up as "knowing things" vs "knowing about things."
When people get confused and start to think "knowing about things" is the same as "knowing things," they put themselves at risk of falling for the cranks - "knowing about" doesn't equip one with the tools to make critical judgments about truth values. And that's where "do your own research" leads to the reinforcement of compelling falsehoods.
I agree there is a difference, but I’d put the junior physics major at level three: the deep diver. They are able to produce physics, work physics, but they are not yet doing original physics. I think that’s analogous to writing a think piece; it’s more than a casual interest, but less than a real pro.
Something about the deep diver-pro distinction seems a bit off to me, but I can't quite put my finger on why yet. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it seems somewhat like you're making a distinction between genre rather than knowledge here. I get that you're not saying that these are the precise requirements for each of these levels, but it seems to me that it would be possible for someone to prefer writing think pieces over scholarly articles for whatever reason (and there are quite a few good ones nowadays given the issues with academic publishing), despite having the capability to do the latter just as well. It also seems somewhat domain dependent, as there are certain fields where discourse doesn't take place in scholarly journals. Though that last point may be going beyond the scope of what you're talking about here — I'm thinking more about the expertise a novelist or composer might have, which won't fit neatly into this framework. However, I wonder if that does point to an issue with framing the levels in terms of accomplishments, as excluding other "non-paradigmatic" fields might be an indication that it doesn't quite get to the heart of the issue, and that there would be some other more reliable metrics to go by. That said, I do basically agree with the levels and the overall point, and I liked the article. Just some thoughts I had while reading the exchange here.
You are right that there will be different kinds of demonstrations of skill levels for different fields. Tennis, for one. Guitar playing, novel writing, bookbinding, composing, etc. In traditional guilds with masters, journeymen, and apprentices there are tests required to demonstrate skill level. While I also agree that someone might prefer writing think pieces over scholarly articles, a capacity to do the first is not good evidence of a capacity to do the latter. But if you can write a scholarly article, it’s pretty likely you can write a think piece.
Yeah, I think the framework you set out is pretty fair when attempting to categorize levels of propositional knowledge — at least in fields where scholarly journals are a mainstay. I just wonder if there's potentially a unifying framework that could work for both propositional and tacit knowledge. There are certain fields, like music production, that seem to require high degrees of both to really become an expert, i.e. you need to know quite a bit *about* what you're doing and you also need to develop the *skill* of actually doing it to be an expert. There's a parallel to physics there, as a good physicist doesn't just know physics, but has facility with the mathematics and applications.
Granted, I do think that the propositional/implicit divide I gave here is somewhat artificial, as all fields require that facility with the material to achieve mastery — those skills are just a bit more transparent for some fields (philosophy knowledge and skill *looks* very similar from the outside). So perhaps that is actually where the split between deep-diver and professional lies? The deep diver has amassed a large amount of facts and can summarize them in interesting ways, but they haven't yet gained the skills that allow mastery over the material, and that sort of tacit knowledge is what's required for originality. Sort of like what Tim was proposing.
I find this pretty interesting, as I'm trying to develop myself in philosophy, Buddhism, and music, and I think you can apply this same divide between 3 and 4 to all of them, but it's entirely different in each field, despite retaining some type of recognizable similarity. Maybe I'll develop these thoughts a bit further and write a reflection on your piece. It's a very interesting topic — glad you put it out there!
I wonder if you (and Tim) are getting at the distinction between knowing how and knowing that. I’m not sympathetic to the propositionalists who want to collapse that distinction. I think there is a similar structure of ability levels even though they are different kinds of tasks. Note too that you could know how to do a thing while lacking the ability to do so. A cyclist who becomes paralyzed still knows how to ride a bike.
Yes, the know-how vs know-that distinction is what I meant by propositional vs. implicit knowledge. I don't know what the propositionalist stance is beyond what you've said here, but if their stance is that there is no distinction between those two, then I disagree with them.
What I was beginning to think is that the shift from 3 to 4 may actually come from a movement from know-that to know-how (or maybe vice versa in some cases). Or maybe a deeper integration of the two. Taking philosophy as an example, you can know quite a bit about philosophy without developing the skills to really "do" it. In something like philosophy, that divide is very murky because, yes, technically anyone in a freshman intro to philosophy course is doing philosophy, and I don't want to be exclusionary, but I'm referring specifically to doing philosophy in what you'd call a professional sense, i.e. publishing journal articles. In my experience attempting to do that (and not yet succeeding), it requires a very different skill set from writing a think piece, so I agree with what you said. From what I can tell, the switch comes from not just having amassed a large amount of knowledge, but having a developed a skill in regards to how to use it, which includes being able to know when you are lacking knowledge and how to find it. In my own experience writing this paper, I notice that the key factor doesn't seem to be that I know so much more than I need to know for a think piece, but that I engage some other faculty that makes me aware of when I'm on shakey ground and helps me fill in gaps about what I don't know through research. Maybe that's what Bryan Frances, who I saw was also active on the comments here, would refer to as intellectual wisdom.
On the flipside, even in fields that are primarily know-how, I think the experts or masters tend to be the ones that actually have quite a bit of know-that as well. A master guitarist has an extensive knowledge of the minutiae of guitars, strings, acoustic, etc. that extend beyond the know-how. I.e., "if I get a guitar with this wood and play it with these strings in this room, it will sound warmer than a guitar with this other wood." That's know-that, but even though they may only rarely express that kind of knowledge propositionally, they have it nonetheless.
I think you over-estimate the readiness of most juniors to actually participate in the field, but that's okay, let's make it sophmores or freshmen. I think the point is that there is an important qualitative difference here between being vaguely familiar with the terms describing phenomena in physics, and having an understanding of those phenomena that qualifies you to draw conclusions. (Similarly in other fields.)
I have always been baffled by people that can find a deep, often lifelong interest in one "thing". I have taken to describing myself as interested in concepts and ideas over a wide range of subjects. I know a little bit about the surface of lots and lots of topics but when the digging begins, as soon as the subject starts to be dissected, I quickly lose interest.
I think that those with truly expert knowledge in one narrow field often have bizarre gaps in their knowledge about other things. When I respectfully listen to their expertise I can sometimes pick out assumptions that they have about other subjects that are just obviously incorrect. It makes me wonder, "If you don't know that, what else don't you know?". A good example is that scientists often talk about philosophical concepts in a dismissive way that is toe curlingly naive, they are much less likely to possess epistemic humility. They don't know what they don't know. Philosophers seem, in my experience, to be much more clued up on science. Similarly, people like Rowan Williams and David Bentley Hart can talk about Science, Philosophy, Theology and Culture in a way that puts people like Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson to shame.
“Yeah, yeah, I know a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. However, it’s only dangerous if you overestimate your ranking.” Well said. I saw a comment the other day that went something like, “I don’t need to read thousands of pages of Aquinas proving the existence of god…” and I was tempted to reply, “You’re right, you don’t. His proof for the existence of god was something like three paragraphs.”
This is good but doesn't address interdisciplinary areas and particularly areas where practical application has significant restrictions unaddressed by theory.
I think there's quite a large difference between fields on knowledge here based on how much depth vs breath they have. It's actually not that hard to make a contribution to many fields of knowledge - for instance strong undergraduates can make contributions to combinatorics or topics in efficient algorithms and datastructures.
On the other hand, there are fields that have exstoridinary depth where you need a relevant phd to even understand the topic adequately, like topology.
There are also many fields that rely on observational statistics, where an amateur can meaningfully do their own reaserch if they have adequate statistical training, particularly if the subject in question is what view one should draw from some set of results.
I've been trying to say all this for years, in various ways. 100% agree. I think most of us wildly underestimate how much the top-level experts know in comparison to those of us who dabble. It really is like "I played center field for my high school baseball team" vs. Aaron Judge.
A friend of mine calls it the curse of the single A player. Someone at that level is the best ballplayer they have ever met. They are still far from making the show.
I have always thought of myself as knowing a little bit about a number of things, whilst not being an expert (wahtever that truly means) on any one thing in particular. I think the danger for the average (dangerous word that) person doing 'research' is unconcious bias. We remmber and latch onto those things that reinforce our existing beliefs while disregarding that which goes against them.
Very few of us understand, or even care to understand, what goes on in Government yet most of us feel, and often express, that we could do a better job. Then, almost in the same breath, state that we're not 'into' politics and it's all BS. Such contradictions!
"This is why I’m tempted to pat effective altruists on the head and say, “aren’t they cute? They just discovered utilitarianism! Bless their hearts.” You need to know when you are a 3.0 player and have the appropriate humility. "
Also, Sam Harris in _The Moral Landscape_.
Loved to read this, it articulates points I've vaguely felt, as I've dived into different topics at different levels of depth.
But one thing that hasn't been mentioned here, is that sometimes entire fields of study and knowledge can reveal themselves to be entirely wrong-headed. In the soft sciences there have been multiple replication crises, and entire academic study fields have been taken by dogmas like blank slatism which ended up being wrong. The result is lots of people exploring data in increasing levels of detail, but all on the basis of a wrong assumption. I don't know the details, but I'm sure similar things have happened in philosophy too — as great as the greeks or the medieval thinkers may have been, the proverbial treatise on the number of angels on the head of a pin probably existed, or something like it.
So I'd like to raise a (careful) hand for the outsider who is nowhere near expert at a field, observes it for a while, and says "this smells like bullshit to me". They may be right, and they may have what it takes to be justified in their belief.
I agree with you that professional fields very often have made foundational mistakes. In one sense, this is exactly how we should expect the progress of knowledge to go. We try out some promising avenue of inquiry, find out that it’s not quite right, or it is a dead end, or it evolves into something else altogether. Alchemy evolves into chemistry, Newtonian mechanics turn out to not be quite right and we need relativity theory, we find that Lamarckianism is a dead end. I can’t think of a single example where the advance came from some outsider who just smelled bullshit. The replication crisis in psychology, for example, was raised by the psychologists themselves.
Yeah I agree, outsiders who smell bullshit are not going to be equipped to raise the alarm, and if they do, they will be shot down with all kinds of specialist-level counter-arguments. I still find it interesting that, despite the high technicality of professional fields (as you explain), it can still be possible for an outsider to accurately smell the rot.
Thank you for the article! I enjoyed it, but I have a few nits to pick.
I'd rather be halfway up a ladder I want to climb than at the top of one I don't. People don't trust experts mostly because they don't trust their areas of expertise. For example, there were a number of tenured Marxist economists at my university. They have deep expertise in whatever it is they spend their time on, but I wouldn't trust them to make actual economic policy decisions.
Similarly, conspiracy theorists think that cancer research is hopelessly compromised by corrupt pharmaceutical companies - if that's your starting point, you probably *should* trust some reddit forum more than an world-renowned establishment researcher.
It's been a rough few decades for experts. Foreign policy experts led us into Iraq, financial experts led us into the Great Recession, medical experts led us into the opioid epidemic, political experts led us to Trump, and so on. Frankly, I think the experts would benefit from humility more than the amateurs.
Finally, you want to "pat effective altruists on the head for discovering utilitarianism"? Does that include, say, Peter Singer, William MacAskill, and Nick Bostrom? While it relies more on force of argument than appeals to authority, effective altruism isn't amateur philosophy.
Thanks for the comment. A couple of points. One, the fact that someone starts by believing a dumb conspiracy theory does *not* mean they are justified in trusting a rando on Reddit more than a “world-renowned establishment researcher.” You can’t get justified beliefs out of unjustified ones. Just because I believe my bones are made of steel, that does not mean it is reasonable for me to not wear a seat belt.
I agree that there is a crisis of expertise, and maybe I’ll write something on this in the future. But I don’t think your examples show it. Foreign policy experts did not lead us into Iraq. G.W. Bush, eager to find a scapegoat after 9/11, did. He puffed up intel that even the intelligence community said was dodgy. Financial experts did not lead us into the Great Recession. That was straight up fraud— false valuations and bogus financial products not grounded in fundamentals. Same for the opioid crisis—why do you think the Sackler family is getting sued for billions? And I don’t know what “experts” you think led to Trump.
As far as effective altruism, the ring leaders are not the circus. Also, I think Singer in particular has been flogging the same intuition pumps (e.g. drowning child) for years, without, IMHO, seriously addressing the numerous well-known theoretical problems with utilitarianism. But I’m no ethics expert, so take that thought with a grain of salt.
Left out of your disarmingly frank and interesting levels of knowledge typology, Steve. And, by extension, your levels of the expertise hierarchy, is any mention of the damage partisans of “post-modernism” have inflicted on American culture.
That is, the tendency to see claims of knowledge as merely individual or social perspectives, no more. Or the mere product of the male or female “gaze,” which allegedly colors many claims to know with significant biases that beg to be debunked (corrected).
Not to mention the all-too-fashionable gamesmanship of “deconstructionism.” Recall this invites critics to “see through” the knower, or his or her claims to know. These blindspots are said to be driven by the knower’s social class, power, or privilege. Hence truth claims are only doubtfully backed by empirically checkable evidence, as philosophers and scientists traditionally assert.
Finally, the usual glibness of these post-modern skeptics, and their contorted attacks on even the possibility of objective knowledge, has invited a contagious attitude of epistemological relativism. At worst, it has invited a virulent cynicism against both experts and their hard won expertise.
Folks just don’t trust experts like they used to. Increasingly, they think expert opinion can be purchased by the wealthiest bidder or corporation. If so, this reduces our formerly respected experts to post-modern prostitutes.
I agree with you that there is and has been an increasing distrust of domain experts. I think the reason for that is complex and multi-causal. It is also interestingly not present in certain areas. The expertise of elite soldiers, master carpenters, or airline pilots is not dismissed, for example.
Agreed, it’s not a universal skepticism I am observing. But rather a glib tendency to discount “experts.” You can add brain surgeons to your examples of rarely doubted experts. That is, folks who need one suddenly check and demand expert credentials medical credentials.
There has definitely been an erosion of trust in expertise, but I don't think it was post-modernist leftists and the deconstructionists that were responsible for sharpie revisions of NOAA forecasts, or vaccine skepticism, or promoting ivermectin as a covid cure. Jewish space lasers is not a post-modern boogeyman. The right has its own problem - a post-truth culture to match the left's post-modernism. The problem of respect for expertise is not a partisan one; surely we can approach it that way here.
And really, I thought the last great herds of deconstructionists went extinct in the wild back in the 90's, and are only found now in zoos. Certainly any "fashion" for it is rather last century.
Yes. If I dove deeply into this subject on subjects of study, I'd say that it needs some economics, at least sense of opportunity costs (one subject versus another), the gains of specialization, or comparative advantage, and the need for deep-divers to approximate inter-subject connectivity (generalists). Some specializations exist as these generalists but are not generally recognized as such (the librarian for example).
Generalist as a specialty. We need that more than ever. Calling everything elite is part of the method in the madness to dissatisfy our lives and drives us into authoritarianism (narcissists in uniform). Sow distrust and the oyster of the world rots from within.
Full disclosure: I read widely and work as a librarian. The rest is not economics but anthropology by way of Mary Douglas.
Where loyalty is being substituted for the rule of law, generalists will be outlawed, not just ignored in the name of disruption. They connect, where identity politics seeks to divide or double-down on difference in the name of greatness or some other lame emotion. (Border walls are lame, losers like Berlin have walls, let get greatness by extending borders). (gee I wonder why Berlin got a wall?).
Like whataboutism, 'do your own research' is about more about spreading, or confirming, low morale by isolating, as in alienating, folk from their neighbours. (Everythingiseffed) This can become an enjoyment of depression, which does two things, ① increases dissatisfaction which can be puddled together into rivers of emotion, which ② in turn breaks the connective tissue of societies, increasing dissatisfaction (positive feedback, the fractals of emotion beckon at the edge of chaos that the strongman surfs like a bull in a china shop) and turns all this into to resentment, which is hoped to be turned into personal fealty as the then, by comparison, safest option, and suddenly there are no football teams, just a bunch of people running hither and thither while the rich kid takes their ball and goes home saying they do not deserve me.
I may have written that as if it was a directly planned programmed. But it's not. It's a failure of policing narcissism on our own sides. It just happens as opportunists come along and seek to claim credit for our failure to police them. This is why history repeats.
I think there's a qualitative difference between these two inquirists which your analysis doesn't capture, and which I think is at the heart of the "do your own research" problem:
1) An observer of physics who reads Sean Carroll, Stephen Hawking, and George Smoot
2) A physics major in their junior year of college
Those are both, as best I can calibrate, level 2. But they are not the same thing at all with respect to their nature as inquirists. It's a difference perhaps best summed up as "knowing things" vs "knowing about things."
When people get confused and start to think "knowing about things" is the same as "knowing things," they put themselves at risk of falling for the cranks - "knowing about" doesn't equip one with the tools to make critical judgments about truth values. And that's where "do your own research" leads to the reinforcement of compelling falsehoods.
I agree there is a difference, but I’d put the junior physics major at level three: the deep diver. They are able to produce physics, work physics, but they are not yet doing original physics. I think that’s analogous to writing a think piece; it’s more than a casual interest, but less than a real pro.
Something about the deep diver-pro distinction seems a bit off to me, but I can't quite put my finger on why yet. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it seems somewhat like you're making a distinction between genre rather than knowledge here. I get that you're not saying that these are the precise requirements for each of these levels, but it seems to me that it would be possible for someone to prefer writing think pieces over scholarly articles for whatever reason (and there are quite a few good ones nowadays given the issues with academic publishing), despite having the capability to do the latter just as well. It also seems somewhat domain dependent, as there are certain fields where discourse doesn't take place in scholarly journals. Though that last point may be going beyond the scope of what you're talking about here — I'm thinking more about the expertise a novelist or composer might have, which won't fit neatly into this framework. However, I wonder if that does point to an issue with framing the levels in terms of accomplishments, as excluding other "non-paradigmatic" fields might be an indication that it doesn't quite get to the heart of the issue, and that there would be some other more reliable metrics to go by. That said, I do basically agree with the levels and the overall point, and I liked the article. Just some thoughts I had while reading the exchange here.
You are right that there will be different kinds of demonstrations of skill levels for different fields. Tennis, for one. Guitar playing, novel writing, bookbinding, composing, etc. In traditional guilds with masters, journeymen, and apprentices there are tests required to demonstrate skill level. While I also agree that someone might prefer writing think pieces over scholarly articles, a capacity to do the first is not good evidence of a capacity to do the latter. But if you can write a scholarly article, it’s pretty likely you can write a think piece.
Yeah, I think the framework you set out is pretty fair when attempting to categorize levels of propositional knowledge — at least in fields where scholarly journals are a mainstay. I just wonder if there's potentially a unifying framework that could work for both propositional and tacit knowledge. There are certain fields, like music production, that seem to require high degrees of both to really become an expert, i.e. you need to know quite a bit *about* what you're doing and you also need to develop the *skill* of actually doing it to be an expert. There's a parallel to physics there, as a good physicist doesn't just know physics, but has facility with the mathematics and applications.
Granted, I do think that the propositional/implicit divide I gave here is somewhat artificial, as all fields require that facility with the material to achieve mastery — those skills are just a bit more transparent for some fields (philosophy knowledge and skill *looks* very similar from the outside). So perhaps that is actually where the split between deep-diver and professional lies? The deep diver has amassed a large amount of facts and can summarize them in interesting ways, but they haven't yet gained the skills that allow mastery over the material, and that sort of tacit knowledge is what's required for originality. Sort of like what Tim was proposing.
I find this pretty interesting, as I'm trying to develop myself in philosophy, Buddhism, and music, and I think you can apply this same divide between 3 and 4 to all of them, but it's entirely different in each field, despite retaining some type of recognizable similarity. Maybe I'll develop these thoughts a bit further and write a reflection on your piece. It's a very interesting topic — glad you put it out there!
I wonder if you (and Tim) are getting at the distinction between knowing how and knowing that. I’m not sympathetic to the propositionalists who want to collapse that distinction. I think there is a similar structure of ability levels even though they are different kinds of tasks. Note too that you could know how to do a thing while lacking the ability to do so. A cyclist who becomes paralyzed still knows how to ride a bike.
Yes, the know-how vs know-that distinction is what I meant by propositional vs. implicit knowledge. I don't know what the propositionalist stance is beyond what you've said here, but if their stance is that there is no distinction between those two, then I disagree with them.
What I was beginning to think is that the shift from 3 to 4 may actually come from a movement from know-that to know-how (or maybe vice versa in some cases). Or maybe a deeper integration of the two. Taking philosophy as an example, you can know quite a bit about philosophy without developing the skills to really "do" it. In something like philosophy, that divide is very murky because, yes, technically anyone in a freshman intro to philosophy course is doing philosophy, and I don't want to be exclusionary, but I'm referring specifically to doing philosophy in what you'd call a professional sense, i.e. publishing journal articles. In my experience attempting to do that (and not yet succeeding), it requires a very different skill set from writing a think piece, so I agree with what you said. From what I can tell, the switch comes from not just having amassed a large amount of knowledge, but having a developed a skill in regards to how to use it, which includes being able to know when you are lacking knowledge and how to find it. In my own experience writing this paper, I notice that the key factor doesn't seem to be that I know so much more than I need to know for a think piece, but that I engage some other faculty that makes me aware of when I'm on shakey ground and helps me fill in gaps about what I don't know through research. Maybe that's what Bryan Frances, who I saw was also active on the comments here, would refer to as intellectual wisdom.
On the flipside, even in fields that are primarily know-how, I think the experts or masters tend to be the ones that actually have quite a bit of know-that as well. A master guitarist has an extensive knowledge of the minutiae of guitars, strings, acoustic, etc. that extend beyond the know-how. I.e., "if I get a guitar with this wood and play it with these strings in this room, it will sound warmer than a guitar with this other wood." That's know-that, but even though they may only rarely express that kind of knowledge propositionally, they have it nonetheless.
I think you over-estimate the readiness of most juniors to actually participate in the field, but that's okay, let's make it sophmores or freshmen. I think the point is that there is an important qualitative difference here between being vaguely familiar with the terms describing phenomena in physics, and having an understanding of those phenomena that qualifies you to draw conclusions. (Similarly in other fields.)