The bitter fact that the credentialists never want to face up to is that, yes, a 99 percentile smart person can ABSOLUTELY come in and do their job MUCH MUCH better than them.

I'm talking 10-100x better output.

10/N pic.twitter.com/a8kcNtg4Kx

— The Last Contrarian (@lastcontrarian) October 14, 2021

Right. Life is not chess, and nearly nothing can be learned in general from chess about anything save chess. That entire thread was moronic.

And because so many institutions, fields and practices have been so politically captured, most experts are fairly worthless. So yes, I agree that for many fields, a smart person could come in and do it better than the “expert” if that smart person wasn’t already politically captured.

I find shockingly enormous mistakes experts make all the time. In papers, in public statements, all over the place. These are basic errors that someone who has read even one textbook in the field should never make, yet there they are.

The best experts are indeed pretty far above mere mortals. But many fields (even many STEM fields) have none or nearly none of these, so it’s not easy to beat out the “experts” there. I know because I do it all the time.