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I’ll second that, thus our faith in expertise should not be blind.

People rely too much on conjecture and forecasting without really understanding that it is (at best) just a probability. Most of the time it is completely baseless and uninformed opinion.

For instance, this morning I read some “common behavioral interview questions”. One of which said, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?” To which I’d answer, “I don’t know where I’ll be in 6 months much less 5 years… 10? Ha!”

Un-expected outcomes … is just normal is normal, apart from that it breakes so many companies, jobs and lives. Reason is that too many businesses rely much on forecast, analyst expectations, research firms market assessments and the likes. It has even become a formal exercise to ask CxOs their vision of the maket ? of their results ? etc … as if it was mandatory to become a full time Oracle. Result is most product roadmaps and business plans are backed by analysts studies. Wonder few know how those analysts came to “Xbillions market ” by 20xxx.

I think all these forecasts, pressure for getting expected financials results, etc … is what has locked many groundbreaking innovations. Analysts do not innovate. and most innovations are “unexpected” so there is logical plan to get them.

TBKAMA

lol. If you want to work in today’s mainstream, you’ve got to play up that posture and conjecture. Hope to see things a lot different in 5 or 10 years, but I’m not holding my breath.

The problem is with the definition of the word “expert.” For instance, how can an economist even be an expert in the first place?

“The Black Swan” and “Fooled by Randomness,” both by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, are must-reads on this topic.

It’s not just the word “expert”, it’s the way “unexpectedly” gets used these days – simply as an scale-free adverb to make the story sound more important than it deserves.

I generally mentally replace unexpectedly and more/less than expected with “the one or two people that the author needlessly asked to put an exact figure to what was always going to be a guess got it wrong [on the low or high side]”

It’s a similar trick with how pretty much every general business story begins with something along the lines of “Stock markets across the world fell on news that…”. Fell could mean 1 point or 1000 points (read more to find out)

“Expert” is used poorly, dammit. As someone whose day job is about attempting to unlock expertise in order to make the insights more generally available and applicable, I know a little something about how to tell an expert from a glib talker.

a) Historical perspective. An expert can tell you what happened fifty years ago (or 500) and why that still matters – or not. b) Knowledge of change over time. An expert is aware of and accounts for change. Combine that with historical perspective and you find a deep appreciation for cultural consistency, as well as the ability to tell if today’s tempests are actually just squalls or if they are in fact hurricanes. c) Admitting mistakes. An expert has a willingness to discuss their own mistakes (and to use them as teaching aids). d) Always learning. An expert has a willingness to admit they still can learn something new and surprising.

Non-experts generally suck at history, think everything current is an unprecendeted crisis, never make mistakes, and know it all. In other words, they’ve never stopped being 18.

I do not, however, know how to format a comment on the internet. Apologies for making the above more difficult to read.

If something is as expected, it isn’t in the news. News is all about reporting the unexpected, rare and surprising events. For every unexpected financial result in the news, there must be tens or hundreds that were close enough to the prediction to be boring.

The effect is very similar with crime news: if something is in the news, it must be far too rare to be afraid of. Things that are so common that they are never reported are the real danger.