The Catholic Church used to sell “indulgences”; you gave them cash and they gave you the assurance that God would let you sin without punishment. If you are at all suspicious about whether this church can actually deliver on their claim, this seems a bad deal. You give them something tangible and clearly valuable, and they give you a vague promise on something you can’t see, and can’t even check if anyone has ever received.
Robin your description of why professions are allowed special status: because we want to associate with high status people sounds reasonable. But how do professions emerge, in the beginning? Also why do the professions act all 'holier-than-thou'?
I think they get their start because the profession fields are complicated and so they attract smart people who can navigate coalition politics. These coalitions of workers build monopolies and they also compete inside these monopolies in an arms race. By creating a pecking order of 'most knowledgeable/skilled' they build a knowledge base for the field which is an obstacle to outsiders being able to enter (also note that it never stops growing). But we have norms against overt coalition politics like this so the professions have to appeal to 'holier-than-thou' motives, and appearing high status so that outsiders don't break their monopolies up. Do people think that this is the pattern that explains professions?
That does not answer my question. You've asserted that "X is a problem" and suggested it should be done away with, but without addressing the concerns X is intended to address. When pressed for alternative solutions you offer none. That's just intellectually dishonest.
Interesting. Seems like there are a lot of bargains going on:
1. We believe in our own expertise at something and expect respect for that, so we reciprocate to others who claim to have different expertise and allow that this may be true in exchange for the hope that we will be respected, too.
2. Some groups of like-minded, self-proclaimed experts, bargain with politicians for special protection in exchange for financial support. This form of bargain seems to dominate every major industry.
There are a lot more bargains packed into the mix, making it difficult to forecast. But, it seems the bargains are less about measurable performance and more about power, so it's almost certain that specialized experts won't be dis-intermediated soon.
On the other hand, technological advances broke the medieval guild structure, so....
And you don't think bringing wholly uninformed parties into the mix will lead to the same race-to-the-bottom wrt substance that happens everywhere else? What would these options be, exactly?
Asserting options exist without specificity is not constructive or useful.
Asserting a problem without evidence is worse than that: It's counterproductive at best, and potentially destructive at worst.
Buying a Papal Indulgence in the middle ages bought something plenty concrete: Better relations with the Church as a political institution. It would have been easy enough to tell if you got what you paid for.
As you indicate, I believe the advent of Massive Online Open Courses are going to be less disruptive to our institutional secondary education market than many sages predict. Secondary education seems to be as much about signaling to the world what sort of prestige you are capable of rising to and what you are willing to pay for as much as it is an honest quest for knowledge, which is diffuse and harder to value.
Of the three examples of eagerness to associate with prestigious professionals cited, two of them are dominated by institutional mandates.
Most of us do not have the freedom to select our medical professionals. Unless a person is in the tiny population who can afford to pay cash for medical treatment, that determination is mostly made by our insurance carrier. For everyone else it is mostly made by the government. The government and insurance must both make a choice before it becomes available to a meaningful segment of the population.
Students do not choose how college courses are conducted. This determination is made primarily by universities and departments, and finally by the professor. Even so, in my experience it is not the case that the same course can be taken with in person lectures or video lectures - it is one or the other, so the student has no choice either way. While it is certainly true I could watch available lectures from top professors without going to a university, this puts everyone with whom I might want to work in the bad bargain position: they have my vague and untested assurances that I totally learned what I claim, without the evidence of evaluation and certification of minimum performance.
In the cases of both medicine and law, the track record is not determined solely by the professional. I would argue that the merits of the case set the bounds on success, and the professional is only the variance. This leaves aside the large segment of the legal work that is handled by public defenders in the United States, who are appointed in any case.
If we had an organized system of tracking outcomes for doctors and lawyers, I expect the dominant outcome would be neglect of difficult cases.
As a few other people have pointed out in the comments, your description of indulgences in the Catholic Church is quite wrong. Your basic point is reasonable enough regardless of this, and I realize there is no reason why you would be closely acquainted with Catholic practices, but the statement as it stands is very misleading.
Good article. People are over-optimistic on this. Tech won't do as much to solve this issue as lots of people hope. We should work harder on regulatory reform, but that route is very hard too, considering how powerful these vested interests are.
As an actual expert whom people regularly consult, I have a very good idea what the limits of my knowledge are, and I refer to others when I am not in my depth. You are probably assuming that when anyone claims to be an expert that they actually are, but they probably aren't. That's dishonesty, not assumption.
I deal with this a lot too. People often assume that they know about processes which occur either before or after their involvement because the overall process which they were only a small part of is successful, but they are discounting or even oblivious to the contributions of many others.
They may in fact be experts, even genius, in a particular area, but not in all areas and they are in error to assert or more often allow others to assume that they have expertise which they don't actually have. In these cases I would say they are *not* in fact experts rather than make foolish accusations about the validity of expert advise or testimony.
Minor nitpick: nurse practitioners are not normal nurses. They are nurses who have also gone through additional years of medical school to become licensed as nurse practitioners (they can legally prescribe medications; normal RNs can't). They're much more like a physician assistant than a nurse.
Your main point still holds, though. Most people would rather see an MD than a PA or NP.
Robin your description of why professions are allowed special status: because we want to associate with high status people sounds reasonable. But how do professions emerge, in the beginning? Also why do the professions act all 'holier-than-thou'?
I think they get their start because the profession fields are complicated and so they attract smart people who can navigate coalition politics. These coalitions of workers build monopolies and they also compete inside these monopolies in an arms race. By creating a pecking order of 'most knowledgeable/skilled' they build a knowledge base for the field which is an obstacle to outsiders being able to enter (also note that it never stops growing). But we have norms against overt coalition politics like this so the professions have to appeal to 'holier-than-thou' motives, and appearing high status so that outsiders don't break their monopolies up. Do people think that this is the pattern that explains professions?
That does not answer my question. You've asserted that "X is a problem" and suggested it should be done away with, but without addressing the concerns X is intended to address. When pressed for alternative solutions you offer none. That's just intellectually dishonest.
Late reply, but here's one summary: http://www.nea.org/home/409...
Interesting. Seems like there are a lot of bargains going on:
1. We believe in our own expertise at something and expect respect for that, so we reciprocate to others who claim to have different expertise and allow that this may be true in exchange for the hope that we will be respected, too.
2. Some groups of like-minded, self-proclaimed experts, bargain with politicians for special protection in exchange for financial support. This form of bargain seems to dominate every major industry.
There are a lot more bargains packed into the mix, making it difficult to forecast. But, it seems the bargains are less about measurable performance and more about power, so it's almost certain that specialized experts won't be dis-intermediated soon.
On the other hand, technological advances broke the medieval guild structure, so....
And you don't think bringing wholly uninformed parties into the mix will lead to the same race-to-the-bottom wrt substance that happens everywhere else? What would these options be, exactly?
Asserting options exist without specificity is not constructive or useful.
Asserting a problem without evidence is worse than that: It's counterproductive at best, and potentially destructive at worst.
... Is the implicit claim here that no profession should be independent, autonomous, and self-determined?
What options exist to involve non-experts without turning things into a market for lemons?
Buying a Papal Indulgence in the middle ages bought something plenty concrete: Better relations with the Church as a political institution. It would have been easy enough to tell if you got what you paid for.
As you indicate, I believe the advent of Massive Online Open Courses are going to be less disruptive to our institutional secondary education market than many sages predict. Secondary education seems to be as much about signaling to the world what sort of prestige you are capable of rising to and what you are willing to pay for as much as it is an honest quest for knowledge, which is diffuse and harder to value.
Of the three examples of eagerness to associate with prestigious professionals cited, two of them are dominated by institutional mandates.
Most of us do not have the freedom to select our medical professionals. Unless a person is in the tiny population who can afford to pay cash for medical treatment, that determination is mostly made by our insurance carrier. For everyone else it is mostly made by the government. The government and insurance must both make a choice before it becomes available to a meaningful segment of the population.
Students do not choose how college courses are conducted. This determination is made primarily by universities and departments, and finally by the professor. Even so, in my experience it is not the case that the same course can be taken with in person lectures or video lectures - it is one or the other, so the student has no choice either way. While it is certainly true I could watch available lectures from top professors without going to a university, this puts everyone with whom I might want to work in the bad bargain position: they have my vague and untested assurances that I totally learned what I claim, without the evidence of evaluation and certification of minimum performance.
In the cases of both medicine and law, the track record is not determined solely by the professional. I would argue that the merits of the case set the bounds on success, and the professional is only the variance. This leaves aside the large segment of the legal work that is handled by public defenders in the United States, who are appointed in any case.
If we had an organized system of tracking outcomes for doctors and lawyers, I expect the dominant outcome would be neglect of difficult cases.
As a few other people have pointed out in the comments, your description of indulgences in the Catholic Church is quite wrong. Your basic point is reasonable enough regardless of this, and I realize there is no reason why you would be closely acquainted with Catholic practices, but the statement as it stands is very misleading.
Good article. People are over-optimistic on this. Tech won't do as much to solve this issue as lots of people hope. We should work harder on regulatory reform, but that route is very hard too, considering how powerful these vested interests are.
As an actual expert whom people regularly consult, I have a very good idea what the limits of my knowledge are, and I refer to others when I am not in my depth. You are probably assuming that when anyone claims to be an expert that they actually are, but they probably aren't. That's dishonesty, not assumption.
I deal with this a lot too. People often assume that they know about processes which occur either before or after their involvement because the overall process which they were only a small part of is successful, but they are discounting or even oblivious to the contributions of many others.
They may in fact be experts, even genius, in a particular area, but not in all areas and they are in error to assert or more often allow others to assume that they have expertise which they don't actually have. In these cases I would say they are *not* in fact experts rather than make foolish accusations about the validity of expert advise or testimony.
On the contrary I reckon it's the 'experts' who often presume they have much more knowledge than they actually do. ...
"led"
Minor nitpick: nurse practitioners are not normal nurses. They are nurses who have also gone through additional years of medical school to become licensed as nurse practitioners (they can legally prescribe medications; normal RNs can't). They're much more like a physician assistant than a nurse.
Your main point still holds, though. Most people would rather see an MD than a PA or NP.