Tetlock and the Taliban An Essay by Richard Hanania richardhanania.substack.com How a humiliating military loss proves that so much of our so-called "expertise" is fake, and the case against specialization and intellectual diversity. The lesson of Tetlock (and the Afghanistan War), is that while you certainly shouldn’t be getting all your information from your uncle’s Facebook Wall, there is no reason to start with a strong prior that people with medical degrees know more than any intelligent person who honestly looks at the available data. What excellence is experienceacademiaexpertise
The details of construction The housing developments in the Moscow suburbs were built mostly in the decades after the Second World War. Laid out as enormous chessboards, the suburbs stretch to the horizon across flat land sparsely planted with birch and aspen. The architectural design of the suburban buildings was good, but the state had not been able to command good-quality work. The signs of poorly motivated workers appeared in the details of construction. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman Designing detail