Experts
Gideon Rose wrote a great post for the blog at the Economist, in which he criticized progressive bloggers for their constant criticism of (attacks towards) experts – whether those experts be Middle East experts, Social Security or Military experts.
Matt Yglesias responded to Gideon’s post, and makes some good points, but I find Gideon to be the more convincing of the two; especially because I speak out of personal experience. Let me, therefore, quote from Gideon’s article first:
The lefty blogosphere, meanwhile, has gotten itself all in a tizzy over the failings of the “foreign policy community.” The funny thing is…hell, I’ll just come out and say it: the netroots’ attitude toward professionals isn’t that different from the neocons’, both being convinced that the very concept of a foreign-policy clerisy is unjustified, anti-democratic and pernicious, and that the remedy is much tighter and more direct control by the principals over their supposed professional agents.
The charges the bloggers are making now are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don’t deserve to be listened to in the future. (Take a look at pretty much any old Jim Hoagland column and you’ll see what I mean.) Back then, the neocons directed their fire primarily at the national security bureaucracies—freedom-hating mediocrities at the CIA, pin-striped wussies at the State Department, cowardly soldiers at the Pentagon. Now the bloggers’ attacks are generally aimed at the think-tank world.
He then links to and quotes from this post by Matt Yglesias in which Matt basically argues that all people working for think tanks are politicians – and if not know they will be so in the future: in other words partisan ideologues, not experts. Gideon:
This is the kind of thing that sounds smart and brave but actually isn’t. First, many of the people in the various national security bureaucracies are indeed Humphreys, and deserve to have their every move and utterance treated with great skepticism. Second, many of the people at Brookings or CSIS or other top think-tanks are fully as noble, disinterested, serious-minded, and knowledgeable as the best people inside the system, and the notion that they’re not is just cheap cynicism. Third, the idea that there is some Chinese wall separating the professionals inside the system from those outside it is just silly: the higher ranks of the bureaucracies are filled with political appointees, many outside experts have extensive experience inside the system, and the good people in all places tend to know and respect each other.
Gideon’s response:
Bottom line, there just isn’t a good clean answer to the question of how much deference foreign-policy professionals should get from other citizens in a democracy. The populist answer “none” might be appropriate in terms of democratic theory, but it would yield pretty crappy policies in practice. But obviously something like a Federal Reserve for foreign policy would also be absurd, given how nebulous, limited and fallible “professionalism” in this area actually is. Jefferson told us to pay a “due respect to the opinions of mankind”—that seems about right for people with specialized knowledge and experience in the policy arena as well.
As for me, I too think that those who criticize experts often have a point. I do believe that one needs not to have a master’s degree in any given subject in order to know (much) about it. In the end, and this is something we all need to remember, university is not so much about giving the student a lot of knowledge (which is part of if of course), as it is about teaching a student how to think (as in what processes, how to think logically, how to argue, etc). To me, I consider someone who has lived in any given area for 15 years, who thought things through, but who does not have a master’s degree in a study about that region, to be an expert about it – or at least not less of an expert than someone who lives in a completely different part of the world but who did study the area and its people through books and articles.
Now, the ‘real’ experts – of course – are both: they have both lived in a certain area and have studied it. These people are something like superexperts. These are the people who have the most knowledge and to whom we should listen carefully. However, we should always remember that they too can be wrong. Quite often, experts disagree with each other. It is then up to politicians to listen to both sides of the debate and, then, to decide what to do. It is not the responsibility of experts to decide what policies to implement, but to convince politicians that they are ‘right.’
As such, one could say that the best politician is the person who listens best to experts and who more often than not makes the right decisions based on the opinions of experts.
Of course, John Doe who really is not an expert at all, can weigh in, but John Doe’s opinion should not be sacred. This is, actually, one of the downsides of democracy: suddenly, the opinion of John Doe is declared holy. John Doe often does not know what he talks about, and the masses are John Does. This means, in short, that politicians should not listen to John Doe about what to do.
5 Responses to “Experts”
Michael – I have been following this debate in the blogs closely. The issue that drives me (and others) crazy is the lack of accountability by the “experts”. Pundits and think tanks produce reams of analysis and predictions. Yet as time passes, they NEVER seem to go back and determine if they are wrong and publish that fact. When they are right, of course, they trumpet their virtues. In my mind, they lose all credibility when this happens and they should no longer hold their exaulted positions.
As humans we always make mistakes and errors of judgement. However, to pretend that that is not true is the mark of an idiot – not an intellectual. In my business career I ran an operation with $25 billion in revenue and 30,000 employees. From middle management on up. I forced people to make predictions on strategy, tactics and how products should perform. When things turned out different, I wanted explanations. If I got excuses – they were out the door that day. When they understood and admitted their errors, I shook their hand and told them to”go get’em next time”. I’ve read a lot of pundits who I would have “shown the door”.
This is I think the essential argument that progressive bloggers are making – no one is fessing up.
John: you do make a good point about your errors. Those experts should, if they want to keep their credibility, publicly acknowledge that they were wrong and they have to be able to explain why they were wrong. Not because ‘we deserve it’ or anything, but simply because they have to learn from their mistakes just like everyone else.
Well, it seems to me that they take that fight a bit too far. Such a point is far, but does not warrant a complete war and almost an automatical dismissal of whatever it is experts say.
Michael,
People, regardless of their level of education, tend to respond to incentives. So if we’re wondering why experts who wind up being wrong so frequently refuse to admit to it, perhaps we should look at the incentives they face.
What happens to people who admit error in the political arena?
Scenario #1: If we wanted to encourage a willingness to admit error, then the response to such admissions would be supportive and diagnostic. Those who admit error would be invited to collaborate in a process of finding the cause of the error so that it could not recur and so that the advocate could be more effective in the future.
Scenario #2: If, however, we wanted to discourage people from admitting error, we would punish those who did. We would subject them to a humiliating process where their previous opponents laughed at them or kept saying, “I told you so”. We would cite their error as a reason to exclude or marginalize them from future deliberations.
Now, which of these is closer to what we actually do? Clearly, #2 is much closer to how the current political environment operates. Admitting error does not, in fact, maintain credibilty, but rather forfeits it indefinitely, as opponents then wield a rhetorical club with which they can beat up the error-admitter whenever another difference of opinion arises. The combative, nasty, and zero-sum nature of current political combat makes it a strategic blunder to admit error and thus give your equally-fallible-but-less-honest-about-it opponents an unfair advantage.
Thus, it is completely unsurprising that those who err (left OR right — both have plenty of errors) so often refuse to admit to error.
Actually it reminds me of how many conservatives treat climatologists.
I can’t judge how much this is part of the progressives’ outlook, but for many people, a genral distrust of experts began when the economy began to have real negative effects on many individual lives, while the experts kept on ballyhooing the excellence of the US economy. The stark gulf between personal experience and what the experts were claiming created a feeling that experts had removed themselves to an alternate reality uninhabited by real people experiencing real new threats to their well-being.
Aside from economics, I sense a pervasive mistrust of all authoritative voices. That includes government, all politicians, the news mdia and blogs. It could be a real opportunity for false prophets, because, at hearrt people long to trust something and to believe in the truthftulness of someone. I worry a lot about who will sieze this opportunity.