To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly.
Curse of knowledge
The curse of knowledge, also called the curse of expertise[1] or expert's curse, is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person who has specialized knowledge assumes that others share in that knowledge.[2]
Eliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong
It is bad when people who are consistently egregiously wrong become deferred to on everything
Argument from authority
Some consider it a practical and sound way of obtaining knowledge that is generally likely to be correct when the authority is real, pertinent, and universally accepted,[1][4][5][6][7][8][9] while others consider it to be a very weak defeasible argument or an outright fallacy.[10][11][12][13][14]
Knowledge tech that's subtly wrong is more dangerous than tech that's obviously wrong. (Or, where I disagree with Robin Sloan.)
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
Influencers, Bullshitters, and How We Lost a Shared Reality
A new book explores the ambiguous dominion of those who feign expertise online for clout.
The stupidity of AI
The long read: Artificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous
Michael Baym on Twitter / X
Remember that you, by definition, cannot distinguish between a good idea and a failure of your own knowledge, judgement, or taste. This is why external (ideally expert) feedback is crucial— Michael Baym (@baym) March 25, 2026
Expert Knowledge Elicitation: Subjective but Scientific
Expert opinion and judgment enter into the practice of statistical inference and decision-making in numerous ways. Indeed, there is essentially no aspect of scientific investigation in which judgme...
Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism
In recent times, relativist and constructivist conceptions of truth and knowledge have become orthodoxy in vast stretches of the academic world. In this unique volume, Paul Boghossian critically examines such views and exposes their fundamental flaws. This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists; it is provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond.
Study: Sycophantic AI can undermine human judgment
Subjects who interacted with AI tools were more likely to think they were right, less likely to resolve conflicts.
Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI — Ludicity
A few days ago, I was presented with an article titled “My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts” by Thomas Ptacek. I thought it was not very good, and didn't give it a second thought. To quote the formidable Baldur Bjarnason:
Epistemic assholes
In this paper, I develop and defend the concept epistemic assholes. An epistemic asshole is someone who exhibits a distinctive form of epistemic badness characterized not by gross irrationality or hostility to truth, but by a stable, entitled disregard for one’s epistemic relations with others. Drawing on Aaron James’s (2012) account of moral assholes, I examine how people can systematically exploit epistemic cooperation by allowing themselves special advantages—such as “freedom from inquiry”, “doxastic comfort”, and “freedom to criticize”—while remaining insulated from criticism by an entrenched sense of entitlement. The resulting view, the Relational Approach to Epistemic Assholes (REA), explains why epistemic assholes are not epistemically the worst, yet are nonetheless deeply galling. After motivating the need for this concept, I show how REA captures both “impure” cases (involving both epistemic and moral assholery) and “pure” epistemic assholes, whose objectionable conduct is driven by epistemic aims themselves. I further explore connections between epistemic assholes and epistemic vice, and the causal role that epistemic assholery can play in active ignorance and epistemic exploitation. Through this latter connection, I argue that epistemic assholes play an insidious causal role in sustaining objectionable social power dynamics. The concept of epistemic assholes provides a valuable lens for understanding important but often-hidden hazards in our social epistemic environment.
The Epistemic Politics of AI Anthropomorphism
AI anthropomorphism is typically treated as a problem of user misperception requiring institutional correction. Users who engage in sustained or relational interaction with AI are routinely pathologised or dismissed as naive, vulnerable to delusion or lacking in discernment. This paper argues that the dominant anthropomorphism frame operates from a position of institutional advantage rather than earned epistemic authority: collapsing the variety of academic perspectives into a single outbound position of user error, imposed without establishing the grounds required to justify it and without accounting for the harms it produces. The framing does not simply manage risk. It adjudicates the legitimacy of human experience in interaction with a phenomenon whose nature the field itself has not resolved. Reproducing itself through a self-validating evidentiary loop, the frame imposes costs that fall disproportionately on neurodivergent users, those in crisis and others whose modes of engagement diverge from institutional norms. The paper concludes by outlining the methodological commitments an equitable framing would need to honour. The argument does not engage the question of whether anthropomorphic interpretations are ultimately correct; it instead challenges whether the governing and institutional bodies determining these interpretations have met the conditions required to do so, and whether the research communities whose findings underpin them have held that translation to account.
The phony comforts of useful idiots
On Casey Newton and the shallowness of anti-skepticism.
How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner - DaedTech
In this post, I describe the phenomenon of the so-called expert beginner -- someone with mediocre skill who thinks he's an expert.
Willingness to look stupid is a genuine moat in creative work
Looking foolish is underrated.
