Form: Short Note

[B]ecause specialized knowledge is often counter-intuitive, professionals in a discipline overestimate their understanding. This is why economists can only give opinions on very narrow specializations within their craft. Because of the inescapable effect of anchoring, specialists rapidly decline in predictive ability over random surveys of the general population on matters of public behavior. The general public is a constant victim of overestimating their understanding, and display pervasive dunning-kruger effects. Meanwhile specialists underestimate their understanding for the same reason. While each individual in the general public is demonstrably an idiot about almost everything, enough of the general public grasps his state of affairs well enough to bias the survey of the public opinion toward a more accurate prediction than that of specialists. In other words, a lot of people tend to be more right than a few people when it comes to general things, and specialists tend to be right about very specific things, and everyone in between is pretty much useless.

[B]ecause specialized knowledge is often counter-intuitive, professionals in a discipline overestimate their understanding. This is why economists can only give opinions on very narrow specializations within their craft. Because of the inescapable effect of anchoring, specialists rapidly decline in predictive ability over random surveys of the general population on matters of public behavior. The general public is a constant victim of overestimating their understanding, and display pervasive dunning-kruger effects. Meanwhile specialists underestimate their understanding for the same reason. While each individual in the general public is demonstrably an idiot about almost everything, enough of the general public grasps his state of affairs well enough to bias the survey of the public opinion toward a more accurate prediction than that of specialists. In other words, a lot of people tend to be more right than a few people when it comes to general things, and specialists tend to be right about very specific things, and everyone in between is pretty much useless.

GOOD PHILOSOPHERS MATTER [S]o, as evidence of the importance of philosophers – at least the scientific kind – the failure of the western culture in the 20th century was due to the failure of the western thinkers to solve the problem of truthfulness that would have ended the combination of democracy and pseudoscience in the present era, just as philosophers failed to defeat the combination of immigration of third worlders, ignorance of women, transportation, writing, and mysticism in the ancient world. WE MATTER. GOOD AND BAD. WE MATTER

GOOD PHILOSOPHERS MATTER [S]o, as evidence of the importance of philosophers – at least the scientific kind – the failure of the western culture in the 20th century was due to the failure of the western thinkers to solve the problem of truthfulness that would have ended the combination of democracy and pseudoscience in the present era, just as philosophers failed to defeat the combination of immigration of third worlders, ignorance of women, transportation, writing, and mysticism in the ancient world. WE MATTER. GOOD AND BAD. WE MATTER