Saturday, February 25, 2017

Why experts are not always right

With the steadfast belief in experts, we ourselves have opened up a great door for manipulation. What is an expert? Basically, there are two varieties: experts with academic titles and experts by statement. Not everyone knows how academic careers come about. Even after the basic study, the specialization begins. The diploma thesis illuminates an even smaller field of knowledge, because, after all, it does not have to include the enumeration of empirical facts, but a mental performance of its own. Figuratively speaking, academics fall on a tiny part of the canvas and paint with a brush that has only one hair.


From the all-rounder to the Fachidioten?


Manipulation in everyday life


Inflation of the TV winners


Then comes the doctortitel. And if one wants to get it with serious scientific work, one has to find scientifically previously unfounded. The piece of canvas is becoming smaller and smaller, microscopically small. Then, years follow as a "postdoc" at any institute, university or free economy. Once again the scrap of research becomes smaller, to which the scientist can impress his name. To the longed-for professor's title, and so on and so on. In no case is one able to paint a large and splendid picture of his complete knowledge discipline with the help of a broad brush. On the contrary. After all, as a Nobel laureate (the ultimate stage of the academic career), you have become a specialist, but is shown as a genius on TV and can say everything. Actually, you have become a mirage.


Nobel laureates also go bankrupt


The "ordinary expert" is simply praised. On TV, it is mainly the private people, who use the term quite inflationarily. An expert on television stands for the correctness of the statements - a proof of "quality journalism". Otherwise the expert is a successful marketing creation: no more and no less. This does not mean that experts have no idea at all. However, the current financial crisis clearly shows that we are completely wrong with the experts. We should be more skeptical - instead of believing unconditionally. Hardly any problem is so simple that it can be comprehensively described or even solved by a single expert.


The wolf in sheepskin


If you are less involved with Nobel Prize winners in your daily life - how about the many problems with the installation of your new kitchen?


You need an installer. But he has no idea of ​​electrics. Then a professional must install the beautiful new tiles. Finally, there is the painter who plastered and painted everything.


Then you need an e-passer because the kitchen does not look as your wife had imagined. Do you want to transfer these tasks to a professor of interior design? This is, of course, a rhetorical question. A classic example of how experts can manipulate many thousands of professionals - precisely because of their Nobel Prize - is the collapse of the 1998 largest hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). He was founded in 1994 by John Meriwether, the former vice-chief and head of the retirement trade at Salomon Brothers. Among the presidents were Myron Samuel Scholes and Robert C. Merton, to whom the Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded in 1997.


During the currency crisis in Russia in 1998, LTCM no longer had sufficient equity available to compensate and its complete insolvency was imminent. In this situation, a collapse of US and international financial systems was more than likely. And that was in 1998. The whole stock market depends only on whether there are more shares than idiots - or vice versa.


We are not really going further, if we move to other explanatory patterns. Daniel Kahneman (a famous American psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2002) has said, for example, a nice sentence: "money is not counted, money is felt." And a hedge fund, run by two Nobel laureates in economics, felt very good.


And then there are experts who are in the name of science but are actually lobbyists. Rare expert professors from a university of applied sciences, who praised the advantages of the Riester pension in the media, came to the court of the media. However, if you look closely at your activity spectrum, you will find that the insurance industry is a donor of bread: it generously funds its chair, asks for advice and makes it a speaker. But all this no one knows.


Experts are not the only ones to be aware of the major questions of life risks. Buy a latte grate, a mattress or ineffective medication. Experts with academic titles are used in conjunction with well-known institute names to create the perfect expert illusion and to generate credibility. Because Otto Normalverbraucher knows the institute just from the pre-eminence at the university - that the above mentioned institute has nothing to do with science, hardly anyone suspects.


Experts are also experts when they do not have an academic title. After all, the investment bankers did not hesitate to accumulate academic titles. We still run after them and still do it. Please note how much the experts of the financial industry have manipulated us to transcode certain terms. The term "debt". My parents still knew that "debt" was a very negative term. How do we think about it today? For about ten to twenty years we have been observing this conceptual transcoding. Debt is suddenly nothing at all, for which one should be ashamed. On the contrary, whoever is not guilty is naive.


The US major investor, Warren Buffett, once put it very elegantly: "Debt now become something to be refinanced rather than repaid". And that's what "experts" have called us. We followed them like the lemmings. "Making of Gold" - these are the alchemical wisdom of the financial acrobats. We have rarely thought of it.


Experts with no title


Hardly any service that is sold today comes without experts. The title is unimportant, the qualification secondary. If "expert" draufsteht, it will already be correct. We learned that. We would like to pay more for the expert.


An unprotected term that conveys security. It is simply soothing if "the expert for investment strategy" taps your money - or on New German: "manages" - as it is merely managed by the bank buyer Müller, right? Unconsciously, my doctor understands much of bronchitis. And my lawyer of inheritance law. My tax consultant knows about depreciation. But factual knowledge is just a side of the medal, wisdom, and life wisdom is quite another. We are only too happy to turn our minds on when someone as an expert approaches us.


Neon word in the head


This will make us the welcome victim of experts. For example, from the doctor, who gave me an expensive, but ineffective special therapy as a paying private patient. From the lawyer, who gives me an optimistic forecast about the process that might be leading. From the tax consultant, who advises me to invest in pigskins, because he "casually" has a "financial product" on offer. So if you have an expert in the future, trust him calmly. But at the same time, let a red neon sign light up in front of your inner eye: Caution, manipulation!

No comments:

Post a Comment