No one can know everything, and when we are confronted with a problem outside of our comfort zone we often defer to the judgment of experts in that area. Are the experts necessarily better?
The latest CoBank Outlook newsletter features an interview with Prof. Russell Roberts of George Mason University about the economist Friedrich Hayek. (Related posts: Keynes vs. Hayek - The Non-Rap Version and Keynes vs. Hayek - The Rap Version.)
The Outlook newsletter quotes Prof. Roberts as follows:
"The underlying insight of Hayek is to be skeptical of the ability of experts and individuals to steer complex systems."
Long-time readers of this blog may recall a post two years ago that discussed similar thoughts by the physicist Richard Feynman: What is science?
"Learn from science that you must doubt the experts."
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
"The experts who are leading you may be wrong."
Hayek and Feynman were both PhD's. Hayek won the Nobel prize for economics in 1974. Feynman won the Nobel prize for physics in 1965. So, there you have it. Two experts advising us to be skeptical of experts. Surely there's a little humor in that.
There was not much humor, however, in the financial crisis of 2008. That crisis provided a clear example of the dangers that Hayek and Feynman were talking about. A year ago I wrote about the dangers of relying too much on experts, in this case "experts" armed with mathematical models: What went wrong?
