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How to Spot Real Expertise

clearerthinking.org · 1,552 words · saved by 1 readers

On almost any topic of importance you can find a mix of valid experts (who are giving you reliable information) and false but confident-seeming "experts" (who are giving you misinformation). To make matters even more confusing, sometimes the fake experts even have very impressive credentials, and every once in a while, the real, genuine experts are entirely self-taught. Here are 12 signs we look for in an expert to help us determine whether they are trustworthy. Let’s start with the obvious: for most topics, a lot of factual knowledge is required before you can have genuine expertise. This means that a genuine expert will have an impressive command of the relevant (non-debated) facts on the topic of their expertise. Thankfully, it's a lot easier to tell if an expert has a strong command of the non-debated facts than whether they are correct about more controversial claims. Not all knowledge is equally well-established. Even theories that are widely accepted enjoy different levels of su

How can you tell who is a valid expert, and who is full of B.S.? On almost any topic of importance you can find a mix of valid experts (who are giving you reliable information) and false but confident-seeming "experts" (who are giving you misinformation). To make matters even more confusing, sometimes the fake experts even have very impressive credentials, and every once in a while, the real, genuine experts are entirely self-taught. Here are 12 signs we look for in an expert to help us determine whether they are trustworthy. 1. They have deep factual knowledge Let’s start with the obvious: fo

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