Experts are paid for one thing: to provide certainty. Someone complained that economic forecasters are as blind as ancient soothsayers. The purpose of experts is misunderstood. Their function is not to provide knowledge, and still less clear thinking. Instead, it is to provide (the illusion of) certainty. People hate dissonance, doubt and uncertainty. Experts help dispel these.
Economic forecasters' job is to provide an impression that the future is knowable. If the expert fails to provide that certainty, people will find other ways of achieving an illusory certainty anyway. They need certainty to avoid the uncomfortable fact that the world is uncertain, that mistakes are inevitable, and that we are not as in control of things as we think. Blaming experts for being wrong is like complaining that the economy is not yellow. It's a category error so howling as to be nonsensical.
6 comments:
Paid experts may provide another thing as well: accountability.
Just like other workers, the expert is paid to deliver, not paid to work. This property of experts also commonly allows alleviating responsibility for mistakes.
You mean an ex-post-factum expert opinion on a fuck-up ? Sure.
Nothing compares to a discussion among two experts in a court. It beats Sherlock Holmes novels any day.
Not necessarily just that.
Consider (a bogus example of) an expert recommending I develop an application for the yPhone, because that's going to be the most popular platform in 2 years.
(There are probably simpler examples of this.)
When that forecast turns out to be not true, and also not based on anything real, the one who took the decision is covered. After all, he depended on an expert!
But lorg, you choose the wrong expert! That responsability you cannot avoid.
Part of being an expert is predicting the future. This is an extraordinarily interesting subject; for instance, what is and what is not predetermined, and how to make decisions under uncertainty (which many people cannot cope with).
Anyone interested should check out the websites of Volterra Consulting (Paul Ormerod) and the Cynefin Centre (David Snowden). These are successful businesses with expanding clientele. They must be doing something right.
But the websites also provide much of philosophical and social value.
Thanks, Anonymous.
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