The Philosophy of Expertise

The Philosophy of Expertise

Jun 08, 2011 by in Data Management

I was recently reading my first post on this blog, published back in November 2009, when it was called the Community of Experts.  In that post, I revealed a secret: experts are people just like you.  Experts have lots of questions, more questions than answers in fact.

Experts are not smarter than you.  Experts have simply made more mistakes.

Making mistakes is one of my greatest strengths, which is why I am such an expert.

An “expert” is someone who openly shares their mistakes (and the lessons learned from them) with you, hoping to help you learn the lessons and avoid making the same mistakes yourself.

Oscar Wilde once wrote that “experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

I have found that the sooner I can recognize my mistakes, the sooner I can learn from the lessons they provide, and hopefully prevent myself from making the same mistakes again.  The key is early detection.  As I gain experience, I gain an improved ability to more quickly recognize my mistakes and thereby expedite the learning process.

Experience is popularly believed to be the path that separates knowledge from wisdom, which is usually accepted as another way of defining expertise.

However, expertise is not a static state, which once achieved, signifies an end to making mistakes.

Expertise is not static.  Wisdom is not timeless.  The only constant is change.

As the German poet and philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel once explained:

“One can only become a philosopher, not be one.

As soon as one thinks one is a philosopher, one stops becoming one.”

If you substitute “expert” for “philosopher” you would get what I call the Philosophy of Expertise:

“One can only become an expert, not be one.

As soon as one thinks one is an expert, one stops becoming one.”

Therefore, I am still becoming a data management expert — and so are you.

Read the Jim Harris blog post:
Persistence.

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4 Responses to “The Philosophy of Expertise”

  1. Richard Ordowich

    Jun 08, 2011

    I suggest an expert is someone who conducts continuing research, validates the results and presents both a summary and references of the findings. Factual and substantiated information should be the goal of the expert.

    This is the value add of the expert although I bristle at the terms expert, guru, thought leader etc. There are no specific qualifications to be anointed an expert. Some are self anointed, others are appointed based on the volume of articles, blogs, books and other materials while others are announced based on the citations they receive. However there are limitations to this methodology. In a recent research paper examining the frequency and sources of citations, an “expert” cited themselves 13 times and only cited someone other than themselves once. Is this an expert?

    Today we are inundated with experts on every subject. We have little in the way of tools and techniques to determine the “expertise” of the expert. If an expert is experienced at making mistakes is that someone to be listened to? At the other end of the spectrum if someone professes only successes should we be wary?

    Perhaps we need a system to classify the information being published along with the criteria for each classification. The classification criteria should be based on measurable metrics rather than age, academic achievement, position or title. Classifications such as; Opinion, News, Story (fiction and non-fiction), white paper (commercial) and research. Each publication would be required to meet a minimal set of qualifications in order to warrant that specific level of classification. This would help when conducting searches such as specifying that you only want to see documents classified as research. In this way there will be no need to classify experts since the classification will be based on specific criteria. Anyone misclassifying their documents will be subject to having to submit their publications for external review and classification as a means to prevent fraud. Let me add one more criteria. If the article or publication is paid for it should state that as well.

    Such a scheme or something similar would result in information quality measures. Something that is sorely lacking in all forms of data and information.

    Reply to this comment

  2. Jim Harris

    Jun 09, 2011

    Thanks for your fantastic comment, Richard.

    I agree with both your excellent definition of what an expert is, and your lament about the overuse of the term.

    Your recommended classification would bring some much needed information quality metrics to the vast volumes of unstructured information (blog posts, articles, white papers, research, opinion pieces, news stories, etc.) that we, not only the data management industry but society at large as well, depend on as vital inputs into our decision-making processes for both our business and personal decisions.

    I have always preferred the term analyst or thought leader, since everyone is capable of analysis, and hopefully, at the very least, everyone is the leader of their own thoughts :-)

    Best Regards,

    Jim

    Reply to this comment

  3. Foo Barton

    Jul 21, 2011

    How is this as a proposed definition of expert: “a person who can conduct a google search faster than everyone else.”

    Reply to this comment

    • Jim Harris

      Jul 22, 2011

      Although I appreciate and agree with the underlying point of your comment, I can’t help but be reminded of the way Albert Einstein responded to the common criticism that he wasn’t good at remembering some basic mathematical formulas and physics theories.

      Einstein responded by asking: “Why would I waste time and effort memorizing something that I can just look up in a textbook when, and if, I needed it.”

      A modern-day corollary might be “Why would I waste time and effort memorizing something that I can just Google when, and if, I needed it.”

      :-)

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