It's also a little hard to square that enemy with the earlier enemy of "...anti-merit, anti-ambition, anti-striving, anti-achievement, anti-greatness." So we're opposed to credentialed experts in favor of "the real world" but also opposed to those who don't care about merit or achievement? Are credentials and expertise not a reasonable measure of merit and achievement and aren't excessive appeals to the wisdom of the average textbook anti-merit populist nonsense?
I'm actually a fan of the overall idea of techno optimism. But it's hard to get behind a version that starts out with the premise that we should exclude experts who've spent their lifetime focused on getting really good at knowing WTF they are talking about presumably in favor of billionaire VCs who can speak to the "real world". Don't get me wrong, if we're going to become a galaxy spanning civilization or whatever, we'll certainly need large and regular doses of reality. But we'll also need a lot of credentialed expertise.
> Are credentials and expertise not a reasonable measure of merit and achievement
I think the assumption behind their statement is that this in fact the case.
Media/politics use the words credentials and expertise interchangeably, and credentials invariably means those issued by universities. So a professor is assumed to always be an expert, even if they can't evidence that in reality. The result is a large number of ivory tower academics who call themselves experts in things, but who have no skin in the game and whose theories are never tested against reality. Hence the replication crisis, which Marc Andreessen is on the record as being very concerned/aware about.
Determining actual expertise is the Number 1 problem faced by both VCs and startup founders, and those are both communities who are famously rather indifferent to credentials.
I actually agree with the idea that we should judge people based on their popularity with customers rather than their peers. Credential are very often indicative of the former
I'm surprised at how many people took the bait to treat this as an either/or proposition. One criteria of evaluation is never sufficient to make a good decision - why not ask both? A smart consumer reads the product label and the user reviews.
With professionals it's their peers. Unfortunately that doesn't really help unless you're in the "club". In any community the other doctors all know who are the best surgeons and who are the butchers. But they won't publicly badmouth a peer or even privately tell you unless they really trust you.
On the other hand, we have seen how perverse incentive amongst experts work too. Academia is rife with fraud (e.g. publishing 500 paper a year), because certain incentives make it possible. I agree expert are important and should be judged by peers, but incentives around budget allocation and prestige should not be attached to performance, especially in science. However I understand it's a complex topic so I probably miss a lot of information, just my 2 c.
skin in the game. They paid for the product, and if the company's still in business, didn't sue it or convince everyone else not to. A good review costs a restaurant critic nothing.
I'm actually a fan of the overall idea of techno optimism. But it's hard to get behind a version that starts out with the premise that we should exclude experts who've spent their lifetime focused on getting really good at knowing WTF they are talking about presumably in favor of billionaire VCs who can speak to the "real world". Don't get me wrong, if we're going to become a galaxy spanning civilization or whatever, we'll certainly need large and regular doses of reality. But we'll also need a lot of credentialed expertise.