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Experts vs. Imitators

garciasn
74 replies
23h35m

Imitators may get frustrated by the need to go deep with others because they can’t, but to say that experts don’t share that same frustration is nonsense.

There are many audiences who want you to go deep, but are not capable of a necessary level of understanding. In fact, these audiences are the ones who become what the author claims are imitators; pretending to understand when they do not.

Experts are experts not because they’re teachers; they’re experts because they’re experienced and are executionally excellent.

nickelpro
70 replies
23h20m

In my career I've at times been a leading expert on, as is the way of these things, a couple niche technologies. I'm speaking from that perspective.

While certainly there are those who struggle to connect with layman audiences, especially in academia, a complete inability to communicate the challenges and successes of a technology, technique, or theory to laymen is a huge demerit against a claim of expertise.

There's a huge difference between walking through technical and theoretical mechanical specifics, and being able to communicate about a subject at different levels of abstraction. The greatest experts can often walk with a laymen right down to and rub against the jargon-filled specifics in a way that leaves no doubt they're able to step over that line without problem.

This is important because we don't perform ideation, architecture, or structural problem solving in the terms of white papers and technical specifications. If an expert does not have an abstract internal narrative with which to navigate the mechanics of the subject, they are likely not an expert at all.

mjburgess
50 replies
23h3m

This isn't really true for anything but the basics.

If you're having a conversation with someone who asks more than surface-level questions, but hasnt more than surface-level knowledge, the answers can require many years of study -- or, at least, hours of conversation to get anywhere. This situation is incredibly frustrating if you're an expert, often because these question-askers aren't at all willing to listen to hours of you explaining many things to them.

Consider a person who says, "I heard rust was better than python because its safe" -- where would one even begin? Suppose now you're dealing with a person who knows enough to make the claim, but isnt patient enough to have memory safety, garbage collection, interpreters, etc. explained

This is often the situation experts are in. Indeed, it's a majority of hackernews threads.

Espressosaurus
36 replies
22h56m

It's easy.

"Rust is better for safety than C because it makes it harder or impossible to make certain kinds of mistakes that are easy to make than C."

"What kind of mistakes?"

"There are times when you need to acquire some shared resource. Let's say memory. In Rust, it's easy to ensure you return that memory when you're done with it. In C, it's easy to forget to return that memory when you're done with it. This is called a memory leak, and you might find that eventually there's not enough memory for other programs to run."

"What's memory?"

"Think of a program as a recipe you're performing. Memory then is like working space. Like your counter space in your kitchen. If you run out of counter space, you don't have room to chop up more vegetables or temporarily store your cooked meat or what-have-you. Maybe you ran out of counter space because you left last night's dirty dishes on it. Rust automatically puts the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. In C, you have to remember to do that yourself, and sometimes you forget to."

And so on.

There's an easy explanation as long as you're not expecting them to perform detailed analysis. And I'm not.

edit: eventually you'll get to your limit of simplicity, things like "what is fire?" and maybe you need to say "I don't know, let's find out together!" We all have limits to our expertise, after all.

mjburgess
16 replies
22h39m

I said python, not C. Answering the C vs. Rust question would be presumably easier, because the claim is true (ie., it doesnt rest on a misunderstanding) and the person asking is likely familiar enough with the relevant concepts.

The person claiming Rust is safer than python is so whoely confused this 2min tap-dance isnt good enough.

When you're dealing with people with a-bit-more-than-surface understandings, the main problem is their head is full of misunderstandings. It is these that can take hours, or years, to undo.

To suppose otherwise is to suppose that all questions can be answered in a cute couple of setences. This is, indeed, the opposite lesson of expertise.

Espressosaurus
6 replies
22h29m

I shifted it to C because I am intimately familiar with C's drawbacks. I don't have the same understanding of Python's drawbacks.

And it's always about explaining to the target person's level of understanding. A layman isn't going to know the difference between languages and why pick one vs. another. That's a long digression. Explaining why to use Rust to a Python expert is a very different discussion.

An expert can switch between explanations as required for the audience. Non-experts, in my experience, cannot tailor the explanation for the audience. They typically bottom out at a level that leaves them unable to meet the questioner in the middle.

Hell, I've been the non-expert, especially when it comes to something like why a particular material was acting like a diode instead of not passing the signal or passing the signal intact. I can regurgitate that the half-rectified signal from the aggressor is bleeding into the signal of interest, but I can't tell you why. That's when I'll tell you to talk to the EE team for specifics on why, as well as what they plan to do to fix it.

mjburgess
3 replies
22h21m

The purpose of my choosing python is that the comparison is essentially a category error. Python's semantics, and that of all GC'd interpreted languages, make memory safety irrelevant.. there is no manual allocation of memory in the language.

I chose this example as I assumed it would be clear and non-controversial enough to make my point, ie., I assumed most HN readers would appreciate that a person claiming Rust's memory safety model made it safter than an interpreted language would be a person clearly deeply confused about the meaning of any of these terms.

kenjackson
1 replies
17h23m

There are still unsafe constructs possible in GC’ed languages. I think we’re conflating GC with memory safety.

mjburgess
0 replies
8h56m

Well some GC'd languages can take pointers to memory (eg., C#) -- even actually CPython can since it has the cffi/etc. stuff to do so.

In general though, GC means automatic memory management which is effectively a kind of dynamic memory safety.

kstenerud
0 replies
1h59m

Going on your original example "I heard rust was better than python because its safe", this would be a case where you ask: "What did the person who told you this say was safer in rust than in python?"

If they don't know anything specific, then it's pretty safe to say "Well, there are some differences in the languages, and you might choose one over the other for performance or ecosystem reasons, but they're both pretty safe overall. You probably don't need to worry too much about it, TBH."

wruza
1 replies
22h2m

You and the commenter above are confusing expertise with ability to determine and speak someone’s language. It’s just a distinct skill.

You may not understand their level, and may be unable to negotiate it due to vocabular barrier (people invent non-standard vocab all the time). Your oversimplifications may bear unintended consequences, etc. You must take that into account and create a plan to make it clear.

And when you have that skill without any expertise, they call you politician. Only a politician may answer “easy” on a hard question and tell something unrelated for few paragraphs cause he doesn’t know anything on the original one.

johnny22
0 replies
20h45m

You may not understand their level, and may be unable to negotiate it due to vocabular barrier (people invent non-standard vocab all the time). Your oversimplifications may bear unintended consequences, etc. You must take that into account and create a plan to make it clear.

This isn't actually bad in all cases though. It's like learning about science in primary school. You're gonna get some things simplified in a way that might be considered incorrect by those who are experts, but without some base layer of understanding to bootstrap from, you won't be able to become an expert.

kragen
5 replies
20h34m

it's somewhat true, though; python is vulnerable to concurrency errors that rust isn't (rust's concept of safety isn't just memory safety), and while python can detect type errors reliably at run time, that only makes the program fail in a way that is easy to debug and probably won't corrupt your data. for many purposes that is not an adequate substitute for detecting the problem at compile time so that it cannot fail at run time

on the other hand, python is more productive than rust, so if you're time-constrained, sometimes using python will get you a higher-quality product, for example because it's better tested or has a less error-prone or more forgiving user interface. both python and rust fail only at run time when they detect index errors, and users can make dangerous errors with any potentially dangerous program

on the gripping hand, rust runs enormously faster than python, and sometimes optimization trades off against testing time and ui iteration time in the same way that writing more code does, and while writing python is faster, reading it often isn't, so there may be some size of program above which python has no advantages

so i think it's better to say that the question is based on an oversimplification rather than an error. to explain this to a layman i would probably tell some stories of programmers working late nights and delivering unusable guis

tomp
4 replies
18h36m

There are no concurrency errors in Python.

Every bytecode instruction is implicitly wrapped in a lock.

Of course, you could still get semantic errors by locking the wrong things at the wrong time; but you can do that in Rust as well.

kragen
3 replies
18h34m

those semantic errors are what i'm talking about, not bugs in the interpreter! rust's borrow checker rejects such 'data race conditions' at compile time (though there are ways to explicitly opt out of it)

tomp
2 replies
18h21m

You’re either mixing stuff up or need to be more precise in your communications.

A “data race” is simultaneous access of memory from multiple threads, where at least one access is a write. It’s undefined behaviour in modern compilers (including LLVM therefore Rust).

Rust prevents that (except unsafe), as does Python.

All “semantic” concurrency bugs that can be written in Python can also be written in Rust.

kragen
1 replies
17h42m

that's a correct definition of a data race at one level of abstraction, although the definition of 'simultaneous' required to make it a correct definition is broader than the one you're using; the relevant definition of 'simultaneous' is hairy, but in the case of two threads making a single access each, it is that either thread can be first. it doesn't require the accesses to literally happen in the same clock cycle

another definition of a data race condition is that it's a case where different interleavings of thread accesses to shared data produce different results. see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition for more details and background on the concept

such bugs can be written in rust with unsafe, but not without it

hmm, thinking about it more, i wonder if what i'm saying makes sense

hansvm
0 replies
15h2m

What you're saying makes sense, but I still don't think it's right. Imagine the classic broken bank-balance update algorithm from concurrency 101. It's safe Rust to individually wrap every operation with a lock instead of wrapping the entire transaction [0]. Both Rust and Python prevent data races as narrowly defined by the Rust docs [1], but semantic bugs like that can easily sneak into your code if you aren't careful.

Not to mention, Rust chose not to do anything about the memory fence problem. You're probably mostly fine on x86, but acquire/release semantics and all that nonsense still apply when writing concurrent algorithms in Rust (you'll often get lucky if you have something like a queue/channel and use message passing, since implementations of those often have a few fences internally, probably the fences you need for semantic correctness in your own algorithms). You're a lot more likely to see that sort of problem crop up in embedded work.

[0] That's obviously a bad idea, but more intricate concurrent algorithms are tricky to write in Rust for the same reason they're tricky to write in other languages. You get a bit of help from the compiler which you wouldn't really in Python if you design things to leverage the type system and prove the invariants you need to uphold, but the compiler doesn't know about any of those invariants aside from data races.

[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/races.html

User23
1 replies
19h47m

Rust is safer than Python though, at least until the inevitable Rust rewrite of cpython. A hosted language is going to inherit the safety or lack thereof of the host language, barring a level of rigor (think theorem proving) that so far as I know cpython doesn’t have.

mysterymath
0 replies
18h36m

Meh. Rust's safety guarantees typically depend on:

- Soundness of their semantics at a conceptual level

- Correct implementation of the semantics in rustc (in Rust)

- Correct translation of those semantics to LLVM IR targeting OS syscalls in rustc (in Rust)

- Correct translation of LLVM IR to native code in LLVM (written in C++)

- Correct implementation of OS syscalls (typically in C)

Python's safety guarantees typically depend on:

- Soundness of their semantics at a conceptual level

- Correct implementation of the semantics in CPython (in C)

- Correct translation of C to LLVM IR targeting OS syscalls in Clang (in C++)

- Correct translation of LLVM IR to native code in LLVM (written in C++)

- Correct implementation of OS syscalls (typically in C)

Both are typically contingent on correct implementation of a huge swath of C/C++ and Rust code. Even if the entire stack were written in Rust, it still wouldn't be sufficient to guarantee memory safety, since bugs anywhere in the stack could introduce memory unsafety into compiled Rust code.

Rust's guarantees come entirely at the first two layers of the stack: If the semantics are sound, and the semantics are implemented correctly in rustc, then the generated LLVM IR (treated abstractly) has memory safety. Python has similar guarantees: if its semantics are sound, and the semantics are implemented correctly in CPython compiler/interpreter, then the resulting execution of the interpreter has memory safety.

darkerside
0 replies
18h21m

An expert dealing with a novice will often get the best outcome by answering the question they should have asked instead. Oftentimes, the novice won't even know the difference.

Meanwhile, the expert who got everything technically correct gets in an argument over irrelevant trivialities.

alexey-salmin
6 replies
22h43m

what is fire

Funny you ask, this was the most frustrating question in my childhood because no one could give a satisfactory answer of what exactly is the visible part of fire or whether it even exists as a body.

mjburgess
4 replies
22h25m

fire is a fundamentally organic phenomenon. you heat dry organic material until there's a gas-like emission of particles, these are then nearly instantaneous oxidised causing more light and heat. The emission of heat and light in this gas-like state ("plasma") then causes more emission and so on.

jcynix
2 replies
22h11m

You can burn certain metals (magnesium, sodium, sulfur, even iron (wool)) neither of which is "organic". So fire isn't a fundamentally organic phenomenon ...

mjburgess
1 replies
20h55m

Well I meant several things with that claim, which is why, per the theme of the thread, you cannot summarise these matters in cute sentences.

Fire is only possible in an atmosphere with extraordinarily high accumulations of oxygen on planets with an atmosphere, etc. The only known process to bring this about, as far as I know, is life.

Generically, lighting is the 'original' fire on earth. But I take it the commentor was thinking more in their school days of the sustained sort of burning commonly called 'fire'.

nanomonkey
0 replies
19h57m

While oxygen is the most common oxidizer, it's entirely possible to have combustion without it. Such as utilizing halogens.

throwaway173738
0 replies
17h3m

The part about emission of light from a plane is basically correct. It’s really about oxidation producing energy, and that energy pushing electrons well out of their orbitals, and then the thermalization of electrons resulting in transmission of electromagnetic radiation in the visible and infrared spectrum.

bragr
2 replies
22h36m

In my experience, very few people are able to articulate their lack of understanding with straight forward questions like "What's memory?", and that's before we get into cognitive blind spots. For example, you've completely skipped over what it means to aquire and free memory, so I'm not sure your explanation is as clear as you think.

kloop
0 replies
13h54m

What's memory?

Room full of buckets. And each of those has 8 light switches in it.

And on modern computers, the janitor keeps the buckets he's used most recently next to his desk.

exe34
0 replies
22h18m

They usually make several leaps of imagination from the lack of understanding to the question they actually ask.

hurril
1 replies
22h47m

This hinges on a thorough understanding of safety. It also does not even mention trading things off. Both of which are topics that will require further clarifications. And as it were: and so on.

Espressosaurus
0 replies
22h44m

"Why doesn't everyone use Rust then?"

"Because it turns out that people aren't using the language too much yet, and it makes some things that are easy to do in C, hard to do in order to keep the language safe. It's all tradeoffs."

At some point the person asking is satisfied and that tangent ends. This is how conversation works.

You aren't trying to teach a layman how to write production-ready Rust code, and they aren't interested in learning how.

TheOtherHobbes
1 replies
22h15m

That's not an explanation, it's a description-by-analogy.

If you think they're the same, consider why we need explanations at all if a description-by-analogy does the same job.

ToValueFunfetti
0 replies
22h10m

If someone thinks that they're the same, they probably don't already agree that we need both

kaba0
0 replies
20h38m

Okay, now do explain your paper’s result on this specific JIT compiler optimization that allows vectorization in certain cases?

Like, I never got further than “computers can only execute and understand these few specific commands” before the layman party gave up.

It is absolutely the same with plenty of mathematical topics (like, just the field of abstract algebra is absolutely mind boggling for almost everyone), physics, engineering, etc. Sure, one might bring up Feynman, but physics does have several topics that are easy to grasp - it’s literally about the world around us, and while a layman may not understand anything about the complex calculations about, say, an internal combustion engine, they will find it accessible due to the common ground.

jdefr89
0 replies
20h35m

Ironically Rust binaries link to libc.

charleslmunger
0 replies
21h57m

In Rust, it's easy to ensure you return that memory when you're done with it.

This is a false explanation though - the problem is that memory is returned before you're done with it.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch15-06-reference-cycles.html

This is extra-wrong as python has a garbage collector to break reference cycles. If giving a simplified explanation to a layman, it's important that if they repeat the explanation to another expert they don't hear "well that's wrong".

AlotOfReading
0 replies
22h38m

Notice that you've shifted the parent's question from Rust vs Python to the entirely different discussion of Rust vs C.

a_wild_dandan
2 replies
22h28m

"If you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it." - Richard Feynman

Experts deeply understand their subject, and tailor answers to meet the audience where they're at. If you express genuine interest in someone's passion, they'll be ecstatic. That's what the OP is talking about. It's not about how experts (or anyone) interacts with belligerent and dismissive interlocutors. And observing teaching moments is just one aspect of a larger smell test for detecting imposters. I think it's a good heuristic within that scope!

oefrha
0 replies
15h23m

That's oft cited but usually by people who know Feynman from the shuttle explosion. I've never heard a physicist cite it, and as a former physicist (high energy theorist) myself I have a few qualms with it.

I would say even the Feynman Lectures for undergrads aren't simple, but that's arguable, so let's talk about Feynman diagrams, a supposedly intuitive invention of Feynman. Pretty little line drawings of particle interactions are indeed useful for surface level explanation, but physics is quantitative (that's how we verify anything) and staring at line drawings gets you nowhere in that regard. So the layperson might ask, "how do physicists calculate anything with Feynman diagrams?" at which point Feynman himself would probably be speechless. The path integral calculations for the simplest case in QED is like a page long, which is complete gobbledygook for the mathematically unprepared (>99.5% of the general population), and even for the mathematically prepared, the calculations mean nothing without tons of theory buildup. I have on the shelf right next to me the classic tomes on quantum field theory: >800pp Peskin & Schroeder, >800pp Schwartz, three volumes of Weinberg, all filled with dense mathematics. You need to study at least about a quarter of those to properly understand the aforementioned topic, no to mention all the prereqs: various formulations of classical mechanics, some classical electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, special relativity. There's no shortcut, anyone claiming to have an intuitive understanding of Feynman diagrams (the real deal, not just the line drawings) by reading some "simple" explanations is lying, regardless of whether they have genuine interests. (Btw, the ones with genuine interests are sometimes the worst: the "my theories are correct, I'm just bad at math!" alt scientists who love to email their papers to our entire department.)

In conclusion, there are fields where there's really no way to explain things beyond the extreme surface level in simple terms, and ironically Feynman's own is one of those.

jwandborg
0 replies
22h1m

Experts deeply understand their subject.

- Experts that tailor their answers to meet the audience are experts, but not only experts, they also have the luck of finding good analogues for parts of a system or topic, and a skill, or luck, of story telling and structuring teaching.

- Individuals who use analogues and simplifications to describe a system or topic are not necessarily experts, they can also be lucky or skilled imitators, or just teachers.

- Experts who are experts by the definition of having a deep understanding of the subject, but who are incapable or unwilling to simplify and/or structure the story well (in your subjective opinion), are still experts, but unless you also become an expert on the topic, it will be hard for you, or anyone else, to trust their expertise.

MrJohz
2 replies
22h39m

I think you're both right, but I think you're talking about different kinds of knowledge transfer.

Imagine, as a simple model of expertise, three different levels of knowledge in a subject: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. In my experience, an expert can always explain their knowledge to the next level down: if you've got someone at the advanced level in a room of intermediates, then if the person at the advanced level should be able to explain what's going on to their intermediate peers. If they can't, I would be deeply sceptical that they know their stuff.

But beyond that - someone at the advanced level in a room full of beginners, for example - communication gets harder, and the expert usually needs to be skilled in teaching in addition to their specialist subject in order to effectively explain what they're on about.

So in your example, the expert is dealing with someone who only knows the basics, and so will need to do a lot of explaining to get them up to speed. But if instead the expert was asked something like "How does the use of ADTs in Rust change how you would model data in comparison to Python?", then the person they're dealing with probably knows enough that the expert only needs to explain the relevant specifics to them.

So in summary: yes, teaching someone who knows relatively little compared to you requires a lot of specific teaching skills, even as an expert. But if you really are an expert, you should be able to explain your expertise to peers who just don't have the specific knowledge you have.

philipswood
0 replies
11h31m

Your point reminds me of ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS by Scott Alexander [1]

“You’re talking about an infinite regress”, I said, when I had finished the glass.

“Not infinite. Architects. Teachers. Teachers of teachers, but the art of teaching teaching is much the same as the art of teaching. Three levels is enough. Though the levels have to mix. The teacher who trains the next architect must be a master both of teaching and of architecture. I will spare you the math, but one needs a series of teachers at different points on the teaching-skill/architecture-skill tradeoff-curve. One will be a master teacher who has devoted decades to learning the textbook-writing skill, and who can write a brilliant Introduction To Architecture textbook that makes the first ten years of architecture ability seem perfectly natural and easy to master. Another will be a mediocre teacher who knows enough advanced architecture to write a passable textbook on the subject. Still another will do nothing but study pure Teaching itself, in the hopes that he can one day pass on this knowledge to others who will use it to write architecture textbooks. In practice we are limited to a few strategic points on the tradeoff curve.”

[1]:https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/

kaba0
0 replies
20h27m

This is a very wise point I haven’s seen written out this concretely, thanks! I really do feel this additional detail is necessary to the above claims. No matter how much of an expert someone is, there are topics that have so many dependencies themselves, that are alsk advanced knowledge, that explaining it in one go is just not possible.

There are some topics where analogies can sidestep some of this difficulty in teaching by basically keeping the shape of the dependency graph, and replacing it with one that happens in ordinary life. But I don’t think that every expert topic can have such a homology, fundamentally so. Complexity is unending, while “problems common in ordinary life” has limited complexity. That math paper that 10 people understand on Earth will not be readily accessible to Aunt Mary not even by the smartest person on Earth.

noobermin
1 replies
22h43m

Consider a person who says, "I heard rust was better than python because its safe" -- where would one even begin? Suppose now you're dealing with a person who knows enough to make the claim, but isnt patient enough to have memory safety, garbage collection, interpreters, etc. explained

This means that the asker is impatient, not the expert. An expert can explain everything from 0, and might even enjoy it.

kaba0
0 replies
20h25m

Let the expert be a native Indonesian person who speaks no English, and I don’t speak a word of his native tongue.

Can he explain anything to me, given such a language boundary? Even though he knows stuff from 0, that doesn’t translate over to ability to explain.

8n4vidtmkvmk
1 replies
20h57m

Reminds me of Feynman on magnets. He said something awhile back...basically said "ya'all are too dumb to understand magnets". That was my take-away anyway.

jwiz
0 replies
20h31m

My takeaway was more that it was along the lines of "you can't explain this in terms of other things because it is fundamental to the nature of reality."

treflop
0 replies
22h45m

It’s all about analogies. You can explain anything to anyone.

Rust is safer than Python in the way same way as having a backup sensor in your car versus not. Sure, you won’t need most of the time but it may catch you that one time that you almost backed into a wall because you were still groggy after a night out.

You got their attention and they understand your expert PoV. If they’re still curious and want to know more, you go deeper.

sqeaky
0 replies
21h50m

If I were presented such questions I would provide some basic context in a sentence or two and then ask why they care about the difference. Perhaps something like this:

Sqeaky: rust and python are both good programming languages rust is good for high performance, safety oriented, systems development. While python is good for hooking two systems together or processing a little data right in front of me. Why do you ask what are your goals, maybe some context would help me understand?

Q: I'm a new developer and I want to build a web page I wasn't sure what to use?

Sqeaky: well let's get into what programming you know and let's discuss some Libraries Python and rust both have options!

Q: ...

And the conversation would carry on from there based on the context the asker provided, because contextualizing conversations, questions, and data around a topic is part of having expertise.

TeMPOraL
0 replies
21h35m

"Python is like your kid's room - clean and dirty clothes mixed up in the wardrobe and in random piles and boxes on the floor. Every now and then you come, take the dirty laundry away, and put the rest in some order - in programmer terms, you're acting as 'garbage collector'."

"Rust is like the room of Steve, you know, the one with OCD. Separate drawers for underwear, separate for socks, all subdivided by days of the week. And nothing, nothing is. ever. out. of. order. Sounds like a lot of work up front, but you know what Steve never is? Late. Or in dirty or mixed up outfit. Or unsure whether something is lost or who was it lent to."

"Now, some programming is more like writing experimental music; other is more like double-entry bookkeeping for a company. The flexibility Python gives you is great for the former, but you'd likely prefer something more strict for the latter."

edgarvaldes
8 replies
22h30m

Not so sure. It implies that a bad communicator can't be an expert at anything.

g4zj
5 replies
22h9m

This is my take. As an autistic individual, I struggle a lot with communication in general, especially speaking in-person as opposed to typing slowly and carefully like I am doing now.

No matter how well I understand something, my ability to relay that information effectively to another individual will always be another matter entirely. It's true that I can't explain something I don't understand, but it doesn't logically follow that I only truly understand something if I can explain it.

sqeaky
3 replies
21h41m

I think a little piece of that idiom is left out for the sake of making it a good sound bite. An expert can explain something to an eager listener. Would you be able to explain something you're an expert in to a patient lay person who actually listened and tried to ask the best questions they could?

It is an entirely different skill to educate someone with your expertise when you don't get their feedback (tv, radio, youtube) or when they don't want to learn (classroom teacher, office politics around bean counters). Those are two kinds of education and they are important skills all on their own but are in no way tied to other kinds of technical expertise.

If we were both working on a project that needed your and my expertise. If I understood that you had different sensibilities about social norms. If I respected those while asking questions about parts of your explanation I didn't understand. Would you be able to explain a detailed topic to me?

g4zj
2 replies
21h34m

Yes. I can answer questions far more easily than I can coherently give an impromptu explanation of a complex topic on which I am something of an expert.

Even if the listener knows little to nothing about the subject, being eager to understand and asking questions while respecting my sensibilities, however realistic that expectation may be, makes all the difference for me.

sqeaky
1 replies
21h30m

One interesting thing about most communication is the implied context. It is no slight against you, but based on what you said here you think differently than others and you will imply different contexts.

I know of no easy answer but I have met people like this and seen them succeed. I hope you're able to successfuly wrangle this extra complexity that the neurotypical will foist upon you and not even understand that they've done it.

g4zj
0 replies
54m

Thank you for listening and understanding. :)

edgarvaldes
0 replies
19h55m

Agree. Another thing I notice in this thread is that the implied context is a professional environment where you are expected to showcase your expertise to other teammates, colleagues, etc. As if solitary people, masters of their craft, could not exist in isolation.

lachaux
0 replies
16h56m

This. Many arguments ignore this implication or commit other logical fallacies.

james_marks
0 replies
21h58m

I sense some self-selection that experts tend to be decent communicators, at least in some mediums.

How would anyone know they are an expert if they can’t make themselves understood?

Espressosaurus
4 replies
23h1m

Agreed. My experience with experts--both being one in my domain and working with others in their domain--is that if they can't explain how it works to a layman, chances are they don't know how it works.

True experts can understand from the layman's perspective and tailor the response to that level of understanding.

77pt77
2 replies
21h33m

True experts can understand from the layman's perspective and tailor the response to that level of understanding.

The Feynman paradox:

if you can't explain it to a six-year-old you don't understand it yourself

but also

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize

The former probably apocryphal.

qrian
1 replies
16h56m

Interestingly I have recently watched a video of Feynmann essentially saying "I cannot explain it to you because you don't have relevant background knowledge" to a question of "What makes magnets repel or pull each other?". Which agrees with the latter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

77pt77
0 replies
16h3m

Of both quotes the latter is definitely closer to the truth.

jltsiren
0 replies
19h5m

Then there is the corollary: a topic is shallow, if an expert can explain it to a layman before the layman loses interest.

I've been working with experts on highly technical topics most of my career. They can explain the big picture to a layman just fine, but if the layman asks something within the actual scope of their expertise, it takes a long time to get there.

tetha
1 replies
22h9m

There is also a similar thing many experienced people complain about: Eventually, you'll have to be able to explain the cost and merit of a technical decision in business terms.

Like, yeah I'm able to explain our postgres HA setup + DC-redundancy at fairly detailed technical level. But then a member of the board asks "Yeah but what does it cost and what benefit does it bring the customers and why?"

Finding a satisfying and comprehensive answer to that question takes a whole new perspective and made me understand a few things more. And question a few more.

sqeaky
0 replies
21h33m

Being able to contextualize such data and such facts into actionable knowledge or wisdom is definitely a facet of expertise. It takes a different sort of expertise, some kind of communication expertise, to interject the need for actual study or research in the space.

In my career I have many times been asked to understand a system and to evaluate it and come back with an explanation to the non-technical. The first few times I made no accommodations for cost or support planning. And when asked how much such a thing would cost I inevitably gave wrong answers based on sticker prices or cost of hardware or something similarly trivial. Today I'm always evaluating systems I work in in terms of technician and expert hours in addition to the cost of the things we purchased for them to work on.

If somehow I were surprised today and asked to give a price of standing up such a system, I would know enough to say I need to do some review and formal planning. I would staunchly, but politely, refuse to give up any numbers and say that I can come back with a detailed plan with itemized costs after I actually write down all my notes because even after having worked and software for 20 or more years there are just too many little details that can add a million dollars to a project. After having bought such time I would write down all my thoughts and gather all my notes and look around for things I missed. Then provide such costs and benefits to the bean counters in the only language they all speak dollars, and I would be sure not to put a single number for any field they would all be ranges possible minimums and maximums. And I've been asked why they are ranges in the past, and those help to articulate uncertainty. That is another whole discussion but people who don't work with the technology often don't understand the uncertainty that come from these very certain, digital, and predictable machines.

yencabulator
0 replies
20h29m

a complete inability to communicate the challenges and successes of a technology, technique, or theory to laymen is a huge demerit against a claim of expertise.

Hard disagree. A person can be an internationally recognized expert working on e.g. a novel mathematical theory useful for cryptography, without being able to explain any of it to anyone without a university-level math education.

I posit you're combining two orthogonal properties, expert knowledge and being a good communicator, into one axis because that's a useful combo, or the make-up of an expert that you'd like to know and/or hire.

nazka
0 replies
7h31m

The greatest experts can often walk with a laymen right down to and rub against the jargon-filled specifics in a way that leaves no doubt they're able to step over that line without problem.

Unfortunately I think it’s naive. I saw people ready to say BS things with a touch of acronyms getting more traction and at higher levels compared to some experts. It’s true experts can walk a layman into deeper subjects but so people used to half BS and know how to convince people…

I remember getting a technical interview with the CTO of a startup. He knew all the vocabulary of DDD, Event Sourcing and the like and was talking length about it but he couldn’t explain even what he was saying like what is an aggregate, etc… I’m sure he was convincing to other officers and the tech team but not to me.

Because of that I feel like almost only experts can detect non experts.

The world is full of people like that. Consultants are sometimes literally all they do.

hnlmorg
0 replies
19h53m

The problem isn’t always whether an “expert” can, it’s whether they want to.

I’ve worked with plenty of experts who are also impatient, short and condescending with anyone who doesn’t grasp things straight away. That doesn’t mean they’re an imitator, it just means they’re an arsehole.

People aren’t binary. An expert isn’t automatically a good teacher. And, in fact, some imitators are actually better teachers. It’s almost as if teaching and “doing” are different skills ;)

zh3
0 replies
22h1m

Indeed, this article could easily - and possibly should have - equate imitators to current AI (which tend to fail on deep knowledge, and - unlike experts - show inflexibility when challenged).

Which is not to say that shallow knowledge (whether AI or human) is a bad thing. I'm very happy to be helped out by ChatGPT in places where I'd be in the shallow knowledge ('imitator') camp. Still, the limitations of current AI seem quite similar to the 'imitators' described here (noting that plenty of humans aren't above making stuff up either).

qp11
0 replies
13h47m

Worth also pointing out as Rate of Change around the Expert increases they become executionally non excellent, while still being called Experts.

So that kind of confuses everyone including the experts.

Network growth, trade growth, capital growth, info growth all are happening faster than expert growth.

Justsignedup
0 replies
20h43m

What I found as an interesting point is the concept that an imitator can't really tell it a different way, because to explain something from a different angle requires you to see it as a 3d object, and not as a flat painting just seeing the result, not everything that goes behind it.

Thinking up how to use that.. How to use the concept of explain something to me, and me not understanding to see how deeply they get it.

doctorhandshake
16 replies
22h39m

In my line of work, clients are often looking for something new - something that hasn’t been done before or is at least substantially novel in important ways. I’ve noticed that the difference between neophytes and experts in my biz is that amateurs say ‘I’ve never done that before but how hard could it be?’, whereas experts say ‘I’ve never done that before but I assume it’s full of unknowns and traps.’

mrtksn
4 replies
20h35m

I’ve never done that before but how hard could it be

Funny, the founders of a lot of successful startups usually tell an anecdote similar to this. They will often undertake a challenge, naively thinking that it’s easy only to find out how colossal actually is. Then this becomes their moat or differentiator.

kaba0
3 replies
20h18m

Sounds like survivorship bias.

mrtksn
1 replies
20h4m

How so? Moat by definition is something hard to do, its only normal for many to fail trying.

Naiveté can be a factor which would amplify number of people trying.

Wololooo
0 replies
19h51m

"We did it not because it was easy, but because we thought it was going to be easy."

intended
0 replies
12h26m

I mean yes ? In that Startups mostly fail, so the ones that survive are survivors ?

I’m not sure who has the bias in this case.

The startup ? The parent comment ?

etbebl
3 replies
22h24m

There's something like this as well in academia or at least science: because only successful studies get published (the file drawer problem), it's easy for someone who's read a lot of papers but not gotten their hands dirty yet to think that a technique is much easier and less failure prone than it actually is. Of course it's necessary to try new things and every so often they succeed, but if there are 50 papers on some system and none of them have been able to answer a question that seems obviously important, there's probably a reason why. I realized this too late and am now dealing with the consequences as a senior grad student.

ramenbytes
2 replies
21h34m

Soon-to-be grad student here. Could you expand a bit? Is there anything you recommend doing ahead of time to weed out some of these tarpits, or is the already mentioned heuristic the best we've got so far?

etbebl
1 replies
18h59m

I think the best way is to seek out the advice of people familiar with what you're trying to do and learn from their past mistakes/take their thoughts on what is a good it bad idea very seriously. My main problem was that I was branching out into techniques that neither my advisor nor any of his collaborators was familiar with. I underestimated the importance of talking to and learning directly from the people who know how to do it. Later I tried to make contact with some of those people, but had limited success because they are protective of their time and expertise (though if you're lucky you might find someone who's unusually generous).

ramenbytes
0 replies
12h8m

Solid, actionable advice. Thank you, and good luck!

tpoacher
1 replies
6h24m

By definition your expert is not an expert.

An expert would have a pretty decent idea how and what kind of pitfalls to prepare for, even if the specifics are largely undefined.

Otherwise your expert is simply a neophyte on this context, even if possibly with more transferrable experience in the more general sense.

doctorhandshake
0 replies
3h57m

I see what you mean but as I mentioned, my business is the business of doing things that haven’t been done before. You might attempt to argue that there is no way to be an expert in this line of work but you’re getting into philosophy at that point.

yencabulator
0 replies
20h27m

The true expert is the one who can say "yeah we've done something like that before, here's what's going to be the hardest part".

richrichie
0 replies
18h25m

This is perhaps why MBAs tend to me more successful than PhDs. MBAs don't know stuff deeply enough to be encumbered with a priori skepticism. They just execute.

kstenerud
0 replies
1h50m

I always say ‘I’ve never done that before but how hard could it be?’. I've been doing it for 30 years, and it's resulted in so many products and so much expertise.

And crucially, so many things that were supposed to be impossible...

jeffrallen
0 replies
21h7m

An expert can also say, "I've never done that before, but I did this other thing, and if we adapt your requirements like this, we can derisk the problem by applying part of the previous solution".

fizx
0 replies
18h57m

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ~ G.B. Shaw

To make progress, you have to keep the optimism of a neophyte.

When going about the unreasonable, I tend to ask myself 3 questions:

1. Has this area recently been unlocked by progress elsewhere? e.g. ML with cheap GPUs

2. Have I built skills that make me uniquely suited to tackle this?

3. Is this problem relatively unsexy? Everyone wants to build a better javascript framework, no one wants to wear the pager.

I find the most promising areas to be unlocked when I can answer yes to all three things.

michaelhoney
7 replies
21h12m

Buffett this, Buffett that. People could do better than idolise someone whose wealth came from parasitic speculation on productive activity.

jiggawatts
5 replies
20h11m

Buffett is rich precisely because he’s not just running off with a fraction of a percent stolen from real investors. He’s the real investor.

His strategy is to take a controlling stake in a struggling company with good fundamentals but poor management. Then he’ll “fix up” the small problems and return the company to profitability.

How exactly is that parasitic?

risenshinetech
2 replies
19h52m

How exactly is that parasitic?

Because shallow dismissals of wealthy / successful people is all the rage. Surely none of these people can actually have any talent. They're all just lucky or irredeemably evil, right?

zelphirkalt
1 replies
11h20m

If we all did what they did, who would do the actual work?

H8crilA
1 replies
15h14m

Actually his strategy is mostly to buy businesses that are so fundamentally solid that even an idiot could run them (because one day an idiot will). The whole "fixing it up" thing is for the so called activist investors.

The basic problem is that people do not want to appreciate the social value of capital allocation, well because a side effect of it is often making millions or even billions of dollars for yourself. And yet not having this mechanism is precisely the reason why the USSR collapsed.

jiggawatts
0 replies
15h5m

He’s explained in interviews that he’ll buy things like a steel mill for less money than its scrap value, then install his own (competent) accountants and start making an actual profit on top of that.

Imagine this from the perspective of the employees: years of bad management, facing down the barrel of unemployment in a shrinking industry. Suddenly Buffett turns up, fires the bad managers and tells you profits are up so here’s a Christmas bonus. Capitalism at work.

wudangmonk
0 replies
20h56m

I got a chuckle out of having the 'expert' be Buffet and the subject be finance. I don't think there is a worse example of a subject that lacks first principles and where vocabulary is used to obfuscate and give it a veneer or credibility. Why not pick astrology? those guys will give insight and agree with each other at a higher rate than anyone in economics.

nimbius
6 replies
22h47m

"If you want the highest quality information, you have to speak to the best people."

what a silly thing to say. High quality information is derived from accurate sources subjected to scientific rigor over time. The best people? Best at what? Character and competence arent the same.

skilled
3 replies
22h46m

High quality information comes from direct experience.

g4zj
2 replies
21h52m

So do anecdotes. How does one tell the difference?

richrichie
0 replies
18h27m

"anecdote" is a point in the sample. "knowledge" is the population statistic discerned from the sample.

oopsallmagic
0 replies
21h46m

Epistemology is not new.

paulpauper
0 replies
22h5m

High quality information withstands the test of practice or evidence. It's not time, as bad practices can still persist a long time. It's more like, what produces the best results.

agumonkey
0 replies
21h18m

it should be 'the people which can bridge your pov with the domain' .. a lot of advanced masters are incapable of matching impedance with most lay persons. Sometimes an intermediate craftsman can be a better catalyst here.

swayvil
4 replies
23h27m

Experts may have a deep understanding etc but it's the imitators that you want to invite to the party.

yonz
0 replies
23h25m

Party maybe, your company hard no.

thot_experiment
0 replies
23h21m

100% disagree, often I meet bullshitters and I think, well this is a person I would never invite to anything.

jdlshore
0 replies
23h24m

I think you’re implying that imitators are more interesting or fun, but I disagree. I’m in a field that became very popular and lucrative. It has far more imitators than experts. Some of them are interesting and fun, but a lot are shallow snake-oil salesmen. Namedropping and self-promotion abounds.

Espressosaurus
0 replies
22h48m

Why?

mikemitchelldev
4 replies
22h52m

I've heard some professors stop publishing once they receive tenure not wanting to risk losing the aura of being an expert with a low-quality research.

a_wild_dandan
1 replies
22h16m

A more charitable explanation: universities use publication frequency as a proxy for your academic worth. Once the "publish or perish" pressure is released, you can focus on paper quality over quantity. Given the fire hose of trivial academic publications filling up journals, that's good news for everyone.

bonoboTP
0 replies
16h8m

It never ends. After tenure it's about getting grants to have resources (equipment etc) and to hire a large enough team of PhD students and postdocs. Universities cover some of this by default but they expect profs to draw in third party funding and without extra grants you can't really keep up with the competition. And for grants you needs lots of papers in good venues.

paulpauper
0 replies
22h2m

tenure means you can just coast . the incentives are misaligned

SubiculumCode
0 replies
21h38m

There are a lot of professors out there, so "some" doesn't really mean much by itself.

Tenure allows lazy to be lazy, perhaps, but 'most' are not lazy by any reasonable standard. Tenure does allow tackling harder, more risky or non-normative research programs, which is probably a huge net positive

sarreph
3 replies
20h36m

I find it kind of ironic that an article about misperceiving expertise fails to mention the Dunning-Krueger effect[0], especially with passages like:

Imitators don’t know the limits of their expertise. Experts know what they know, and also know what they don’t know. [...] Imitators can’t. They can’t tell when they’re crossing the boundary into things they don’t understand.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

LegionMammal978
1 replies
20h17m

I don't think that D–K really has much to do with it: as originally presented, it predicts that the worst performers tend to think of themselves as close-to-average performers, not as the best performers. (In particular, there's no "U curve" of self-assessment.) Imitation of expertise is more of a kind of personal bravado.

dustincoates
0 replies
12h55m

This is the funny thing about people who mention Dunning Kruger: they are often getting it wrong themselves.

The actual definition is what you said, while the popular definition is that the worst performers think they're experts.

paavope
0 replies
20h29m

IMO Dunning-Krueger has become such a cliche that it’s more refreshing to _not_ read a reference to it in a piece where one could’ve been made. Kinda like quantum mechanics and that stupid cat in a box.

pojzon
2 replies
21h41m

I have met many engineers with senior and expert engineer titles.

I can count on a single hand the number of ppl I considered experts in their field.

Titles are not given based on expertise but how many years of experience you have and how many ppl you know.

shepherdjerred
0 replies
15h2m

"Senior" engineer is a meaningless title consider most companies mark that as ~5 YOE.

arp242
0 replies
21h9m

The problem is that if you're using a reasonable and modest way to describe your level of knowledge, then that's a good way to shaft yourself over if the other guy is bullshitting with titles like "senior" and "expert", either in terms is salary or not getting the job at all.

upmind
1 replies
22h10m

> Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level Not sure about others but I feel like most engineers (I know) only learn what they need, are these engineers all imitators? How does one become an expert?
pojzon
0 replies
21h35m

You become an expert by spending absurd amounts of time on something practicing it and having a specific set of additional characteristics that help you get to that level like excellent memory, excellent analytical thinking, excellent ppl skills.

A real expert is extremely rare to find.

Ppl who think and present themselves as experts in the field is plently.

You will know you met a real expert when you talk to them long enough. Ive met few, the knowledge difference was a canyon the approach to solving problems was superb.

I try to keep contact with those ppl coz out of few hundred devs I met I considered only 3-5 a real expert.

steelframe
1 replies
19h42m

Because I'm a senior engineer I am giving a lot of "Expertise" interviews for my company. Recruiters tend to presume that seniority implies broad expertise. In my case it doesn't. There's really only one subject that I feel I'm qualified to assess for expertise, but hardly anyone who interviews at the company claims anything about that subject on their resume.

Ninety percent of the time when I interview on that subject the candidate ends up getting a "hard no" from me just based on the first ~10 minutes of the interview, but on a very rare occasion I run across someone who's actually an expert in the field. I'll know because we'll quickly blast past all of the "<subject> 101" questions in the first 5 or 6 minutes, and then I can quickly adapt to deep-dive into technical details, giving them what I know to be fairly novel problems in the domain and then seeing how they apply first principles to tackle them. The "interview" ends up looking more like a collaborative brainstorming session at that point. It's incredible when that happens, which sadly is only maybe once or twice a year.

But usually I end up giving an "Expertise" interview for whatever it is they claim expertise in, whether I myself possess expertise in that subject or not. For the past several months the most prominent subject on literally every single resume has been AI/ML. I certainly don't claim expertise in that field, although I did take a graduate course on computational machine learning theory at university. That gives me "just enough" of a handle to not come across as a completely incompetent interviewer, but it feels like a farce.

With all this AI/ML hype I feel like the "Expertise" interview just ends up being someone pretending to have expertise in AI/ML being interviewed by someone pretending to be able to assess expertise in AI/ML.

beacon294
0 replies
14h26m

What is your expertise?

cess11
1 replies
22h35m

It's just an ad?

Anyway, doesn't work on me, I'm not afraid of not being able to tell bullshitters from people with experience, and I'm also not afraid of listening to bullshitters.

As the Principia Discordia reminds us, "bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that is beautiful".

datadrivenangel
0 replies
17h0m

And nobody understands emperor Norton.

Tao3300
1 replies
22h32m

This is an effect you see on Reddit a lot. The fitness sub used to have some pretty knowledgeable people in it, but over time it got clogged up with imitators who would just parrot answers from more credible accounts. It's one of the worst side effects of the dopamine rush from fake internet points. I haven't read it in probably a decade for that reason, but that's how it was at the time.

paulpauper
0 replies
22h3m

Which fitness sub? there are so many of them

Joel_Mckay
1 replies
22h9m

The article is conflating buzzword laden hype-cycles with qualitative artifacts.

It takes experience to recognize most software is still garbage, but more importantly determine which parts of the garbage heap is useful.

The primary problem is the very definition of any unique terminology or product is distorted by the industry itself to fit a marketing niche.

After a few years people sound like they had a stroke, and bought a Turbo Encabulator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag

paulpauper
0 replies
22h6m

yeah I m not sure why that blog is so popular. A lot of its analysis is shallow and easily countered. It subscribes to a view that it's possible to reduce the world to logical heuristics. This works sometimes but often fails greatly too.

whartung
0 replies
13h49m

In my experience, the aspect that delineates an expert is that experts can fix things.

Gaining knowledge isn’t particularly difficult. But expertise comes from actually applying that knowledge in the real world. The real world is messy and chaotic.

It’s also multidisciplinary. Acquired knowledge tends to be limited to the topic at hand. We find topics we like and learn more about them. But the rough edges where disparate disciplines meet is where expertise grows.

wesleyd
0 replies
4h27m

To this I would add: Not everyone who claims not to be an expert ... isn't.

As you practice a craft, you build up positive knowledge - what works. And you build up negative knowledge - what doesn't work. But you also build up humility; the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know.

Knowledge increases sub-linearly, assuming a modicum of curiosity, but humility is like a parabola. The "experts" of this article are those at the bottom of the humility parabola. They have quite a bit of positive knowledge, some negative knowledge, but they don't really know yet what they don't know.

_Many "experts" don't consider themselves experts._ They all too often say "Hmm, interesting question, I don't know, but...". They are defined by humility and curiosity.

Imagine the question "Why is the sky blue?". Somebody who has just finished an undergraduate degree in theoretical physics and happens to have learnt learnt about Rayleigh scattering will sound much more like an expert than somebody who says "Hmm, interesting question, I don't know, but..." and then spends fifteen minutes figuring it out on the spot.

Like the phenomenon of the newish driver: nobody seems more of an expert driver than somebody who passed their test three months ago. They have learnt all the rules, they think they know everything, they often don't have much curiosity, and they have yet to learn humility.

Of course, this often doesn't matter. Many people don't want an actual expert - they want somebody who sounds like an expert _to other people_. Oracle don't advertise to people who buy software. They advertise to the people who second guess the people who buy software.

To quote a wonderful ex-co-worker, "Most people need a generalist. But they want - and are willing to pay for - a specialist."

tpoacher
0 replies
6h28m

Plot twist: the person who wrote this is not an expert.

tlogan
0 replies
21h42m

Nonsense post.

If you are not familiar with the area there is no way distinguish experts vs. imitators. In order words, imitators are not stupid: they are just not expert in the field.

stanleykm
0 replies
23h16m

This is better off as a linkedin post.

skybrian
0 replies
17h30m

This is a harder test to pass and I recommend it, but bear in mind its limitations. Without actual subject knowledge, it could be gamed too.

rramadass
0 replies
7h47m

The article is simplistic with too many assumptions.

There are no "Experts" but only "Levels of Expertise"; and the only way to identify the correct level of someone is to be at a particular level yourself based on a objective and honest appraisal of your own knowledge in that domain. Both the perceiver and the perceived are factors to be considered. In common parlance the title "Expert" is bestowed on somebody (usually to the bemusement of that person) when a sizable group of the population acknowledges (not necessarily logically since we have Marketing/PR/Spin/Propaganda/etc. involved) him/her to be at a higher-rung in the knowledge-ladder then themselves in a particular domain. The caveat is that given the complexity/depth of any domain today the vast majority of the population are not to be trusted in their opinions. You can only trust somewhat the judgement of the "peers" of the "Expert" in that particular domain. Knowledge is gained only through a) Direct Perception, b) Logical Inference and c) Valid/Authentic Testimony and all play a part here.

richrichie
0 replies
18h48m

Think of all the money managers who borrow their talking points from Warren Buffett. They might sound like Buffett, but they don’t know how to invest the way Buffett does.

Bad analogy. There are domains that admit experts e.g. numerical methods for partial differential equations. Investment management is not one of them. There is way too much luck involved and in Buffet like cases, size and reflexivity confound the matters more. Often, we look for experts in fields that do not admit experts and come away disappointed.

paulpauper
0 replies
22h18m

I have basically been an imitator my whole life...being reasonably good at approximating an expert in certain domains but never quite reaching the levels of true expertise--except for maybe one or two things. As Covid showed in which experts could not decide what policy, if any worked, or endless forecasts of recession/crisis that are worse than flipping a coin, the value of expertise in many respects is overrated anyway.

Think of all the money managers who borrow their talking points from Warren Buffett. They might sound like Buffett, but they don’t know how to invest the way Buffett does. They’re imitators. Charlie Munger once commented: “It’s very hard to tell the difference between a good money manager and someone who just has the patter down.”

The best ones will not take your money, or there is no easy way to invest (e.g. Renaissance Technologies) . the bad ones are practically begging for clients and spend lots of $ on advertising. Also, performance metrics...

newzisforsukas
0 replies
16h45m

Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level. Specific knowledge is earned, not learned, so imitators don’t fully understand the ideas they’re talking about. Their knowledge is shallow. As a result, when you ask about details, first principles, or nonstandard cases, they don’t have good answers.

Uh, or they just don't have answers to things off hand.

A college professor who lectures every semester multiple times about something is very good at reproducing knowledge and fielding questions on that knowledge.

However, someone whose expertise is largely procedural will have difficulty fielding answers to "deep questions".

move-on-by
0 replies
5h33m

Imitators can’t answer questions at a deeper level. Specific knowledge is earned, not learned, so imitators don’t fully understand the ideas they’re talking about. Their knowledge is shallow. As a result, when you ask about details, first principles, or nonstandard cases, they don’t have good answers.

I disagree. Successful imitators are highly skilled at misdirection and will be able to come up with good-sounding answers. Experts on the other hand might not have the best answers ready at hand. What the author is describing is simply an interview, and we all know interviewing is a skill on its own.

motohagiography
0 replies
20h56m

to add, an imitator can't tell the difference between the questions, "do you know this?" and "is this knowable?"

incognito124
0 replies
23h48m

That was on a today's newsletter

glutamate
0 replies
23h17m

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few" (Shunryū Suzuki)

Not always bad not to be an expert. And it's fairly rich to start with an example from asset management, which is an industry that habitually mistakes luck for expertise.

fullstackchris
0 replies
21h8m

sounds like every AGI huckster out there vs those who have been in the weeds with ML / NLP since 2010s

but yes AGI will be here in 2 years... if only I was an expert and could know this for sure!!! :D

elbear
0 replies
12h15m

A different way to put it:

many people understand the what

some understand the how

fewer understand the why

Or, put in a different way: many people understand the API; some understand the implementation, and fewer understand the constraints that shaped everything.

dmitrijbelikov
0 replies
20h3m

Real experts have earned their expertise and are excited about trying to share what they know.

Depends on a lot of things. Preferably not for free.

breck
0 replies
20h37m

It's a great post. However, I don't think I've ever met someone who was _trying_ to be an "imitator".

Keep in mind that the majority of the world's population grow up in places with little access to the information one needs to be exposed to to become an "expert".

So go easy on imitators. Help guide them to enlightenment.

Don't flip the bozo bit.

bjackman
0 replies
20h5m

I think a positive sign of expertise is when you question someone and they go "oh right, I neglected to establish this foundational concept before making my main point". Or "oh right, let me step back and answer the question again from a different angle".

Basically, sometimes if you bounce your ignorance off a true expert you can see it reflected back in a positive light as they try to massage ideas into your perspective. Bullshitters aren't able to do this.

begueradj
0 replies
21h36m

That's one of the consequences of the popular advice: "Fake it till you make it".

User23
0 replies
19h50m

How does this relate to imposter syndrome?

1vuio0pswjnm7
0 replies
21h0m

Is "AI" an imitator or an expert?

It is performing mimicry.

What happens when people try to "learn" from imitators.