What is Authority Bias?

What is authority and when should we trust it? Every walk of life has its so-called “experts.” Some of these experts are not very trustworthy because their fields are inherently risky or immature. It is much more logical to trust a medical expert than it is to trust an expert on gambling or a stock market guru. It is more logical to trust an engineer than trust a cryptocurrency expert.

More than enough people make the mistake of trusting experts that don’t know what they’re talking about, but that isn’t the only problem. While doctors and engineers are more trustworthy than gamblers and cryptocurrency experts, they are not infallible.

Doctors may disagree with each other. If not publicly, then privately. Every few years, a new paradigm shift occurs which compromises an entire field of knowledge. At one point in time, doctors thought smoking was healthy. More recently, they thought that excessive hygiene was desirable.

Eventually, all our scientific paradigms will be disproved. That doesn’t mean that knowledge doesn’t progress, or that there is no such thing as an expert. The subtle point here is that even experts are liable to error. And that we are highly susceptible to trusting people in positions of authority.

So what?

While it is tempting to close our eyes and simply listen to the experts, whether they are sports commentators, stock market analysts, political pundits, or psychiatrists, or doctors – it is a lot more intelligent to seek out multiple opinions and investigate the first-hand evidence. Most people don’t have enough time to look for primary sources, so they settle for secondary sources. And most people would prefer to not have multiple conflicting opinions to contend with.

Herein lies the expert problem. It is obviously much more efficient to simply trust experts, but there is no way of knowing whether you are being misled. Even if you listen to the opinions of multiple experts, you are not much closer to the truth. That is because it takes time to penetrate the idiosyncratic language, rules, and insider information of any topic. There is pre-requisite knowledge that you need to have.

You can’t understand a debate between two financial experts unless you understand the language that they are talking in. In short, there is no substitute for primary research.

So, what should you research? Because it is unreasonable for you to become an expert in everything, you must be very careful about the areas you choose to develop an expertise in. Choose no more than a handful of areas that you will carefully evolve over the years, until one day, you might be able to understand what those experts are talking about. And therefore, you are far more immune to baloney.

As for things you do not have an expertise in, you may leave that to the experts. Maybe here, the right choice would be to select an expert who seems to be the most qualified and to trust them, but only tentatively.

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