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
Weighing up UX An Article by Jeremy Keith adactio.com Metrics come up when we’re talking about A/B testing, growth design, and all of the practices that help designers get their seat at the table (to use the well-worn cliché). But while metrics are very useful for measuring design’s benefit to the business, they’re not really cut out for measuring user experience. Two levels of vetoOur obedience to the king metricsuxbusinessresearchethics
Two levels of veto At Clearleft, every staff member has two levels of veto on client work. You can say “I’m not comfortable working on this”, in which case, the work may still happen but we’ll make sure the resourcing works out so you don’t have anything to do with that project. Or you can say “I’m not comfortable with Clearleft working on this”, in which case the work won’t go ahead.
Our obedience to the king Going back to the question of whether it’s ever okay to use a deceptive dark pattern, here’s what I think… It makes no difference whether it’s implemented by ProPublica or Breitbart; using a deceptive dark pattern is wrong. But there is a world of difference in being a designer who works at ProPublica and being a designer who works at Breitbart. That’s what I’m getting at when I say there’s a danger to focusing purely on user experience. That focus can be used as a way of avoiding responsibility for the larger business goals. Then designers are like the soldiers on the eve of battle in Henry V: For we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.