"Trust Me, I am an Expert!"

Continuing on the vein of Seth Roberts and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. David Friedman says that Experts are usually wrong.

I know just posting the links is stupid. My contribution only seems to be thinking of a good title and, in this case, I did not even have to do it. I just borrowed from the last line of David Friedman's piece!

It takes mental capacity to write your opinion on these topics and better not to write anything lazily. So I just these links as a personal reference.

perils of being a researcher

The last year of having been a member of the research community has taught me a lot about the attitude of being a researcher. It has been a great change from the causal going undergrad life where the law of diminishing returns was well understood. If you can spend 1 hour to get 8 out of 10 in an assignment and need to give 2 hours to get 10/10, then there is no contest. Take the first option anytime.

But things work differently in research. You have to be very accurate with what you present as your result, for people are literally hovering around as vultures to find any dead meat. But then this also, keeps you competitive and on your toes.
Another aspect, is that you take infinite trouble to go through each step of your reasoning. For you now know, sometimes by experience, that even a small logical error can have big big repurcussions.

While this attitude is commendable, I sometimes worry if it is practical. For in real life, you do not usually have the luxury of lots of time to go through each step carefully. You have to make decisions on less than sufficient knowledge. And take risks. Perhaps, I am concerned, that I am losing this ability while I am gaining the researcher's patience and stick-to-itivness.
The only solution that I can think of, is to take some side project in another topic where apply your old undergrad fundaes. But then that is easier said than done!

Addendum: A few hours after writing, I feel a bit stupid, because I dont think that my research skills are so developed that I can actually critique this mindset. But still, I am leaving this post as it is because this is a flaw that I believe exists and I suspected about this even in my undergrad days and mys suspicions are only getting stronger.
Overall, I guess it would be better to have the researcher mindset because there are tons of problems in life where you do have lots of time to analyze most of the decisions and then act. But in some activities, like in volatile business trading, socializing etc, the time available is pretty less.

On Stereotypes

In my previous post, I had an interesting discussion with Manjunatha and it certainly was highly educative to me atleast as it made me think more about my own positions. At one point, I was accused of thinking in terms of stereotypes. Now that certainly should be a damaging argument for we tend to assume being stereotyped means being biased, illiberal, narrow-minded etc. But I think that forming stereotypes is a natural process and the way our mind thinks. Its a way of organizing information.

We make use of information obtained through experience of our own and others to form stereotypes which help us in behaving in similar situations in future. Its a natural mechanism in psychology. But where it can go wrong is when we confuse the stereotype with reality and dont adjust our perceptions (i.e. stereotypes) to the reality.

There is a fascinating post by Amardeep Singh over at Sepia Mutiny on "The mth of "Martial Races" and I got this story from one of the comments there. Its worth a read. Found these parts especially interesting.


t is just the "habit" that causes trouble. Inseparable from us like the body and the shadow, it allows us to be satisfied with the current situation and stick to the established ways. The more of a so-called "expert" one is, the more one would easily fall into the trap of the "habit," rejecting the new information, new methods and new ideas, so as to defend one's vested interests and sense of superiority.