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Berder's avatar

You can't compare accuracy ratios across different fields. Some questions and some fields are much harder to be accurate about. Also, some fields are such that it doesn't matter if you're wrong 99 times as long as you get it right once. For instance, 99 failed attempts at proving a difficult theorem or inventing a better battery don't matter, if in the end you can produce a single successful attempt.

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Robert McGregor's avatar

"I'm confident that the elites are doing things in a way that effectively perpetuates their own social clout."

Isn't that what both elites and experts do--act to perpetuate their higher social status? Experts seem more "legitimate" than elites. Joe Biden is a "top elite," but I have more confidence in the piloting competence of the average commercial pilot. Tyler Cowen seems impressed and supportive of the veracity of both experts and elites. He feels he is both--expert and elite, and he is. But if a 767 pilot had the same accuracy ratio as Tyler Cowen, then he would be crashing the plane every other flight . . . an okay ratio for an economist, but fatal for a pilot.

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