Expert quotes

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C_West_Churchman

No Systems Experts

"There are no experts in the systems approach."
  • Source: C. West Churchman in the book The Systems Approach (1968), p. 232.

Keywords: System_quotes Expert_quotes Approach_quotes

Nigel_Cross

Conventional Problem Solving

"Conventional wisdom about problem-solving seems often to be contradicted by the behavior of expert designers. But designing has many differences from conventional problem-solving. ... we must be very wary about importing models of design behavior from other fields. Empirical studies of design activity have frequently found 'intuitive' features of design ability to be the most effective and relevant to the intrinsic nature of design. Some aspects of design theory, however, have tried to develop counter-intuitive models and prescriptions for design behavior."

Freeman_Dyson

Experts and Amateurs

“There is good reason to pay more attention to scientific experts than to amateurs, so long as science is based on experiments. Only trained experts can do experiments with the care and precision that experiments demand. Expert experimenters are not infallible, but they are less fallible than amateurs.”
  • Source: Freeman Dyson [book/author]; “Dreams of Earth and Sky” [title]; 191 [page]; New York Review Books [publisher]; First [edition]; 2015 [pubdate]; New York, NY [publoc]; 978-1590178546 [isbn].


Science and Society

“In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, 'Sorry, but we don’t know.' The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed.”
  • Source: Freeman Dyson, Frederick S. Pardee Distinguished Lecture (Oct 2005), Boston University. Collected in 'Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society', A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (2007), 43-44.

English_Proverbs

Experts Know Why

“Experts know why they do what they do.”

  • Source: Original source is unknown.

Richard_Feynman

Unlike Ordinary Experience

“Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, both to the novice and to the experienced physicist. Even the experts do not understand it the way they would like to, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should not, because all of direct, human experience and of human intuition applies to large objects. We know how large objects will act, but things on a small scale just do not act that way. So we have to learn about them in a sort of abstract or imaginative fashion and not by connection with our direct experience.”

Patterson_Hume

University Software Experience

“What really worries me about software engineering is, do universities have to engage in large software projects in order to remain experts in the field of software engineering? Do they have to hire people who have had such experience with large projects, or do they have to have their professors go out and as consultants experience large software engineering projects? Then, when they come to exercise the students, do they have to have laboratories of some considerable consequence in software engineering exercises? Otherwise, who is to formulate principles of software engineering that can be used to train software engineers?”

Daniel_Kahneman

Who Can We Trust

“We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? We can believe an expert who admits uncertainty but cannot take expressions of high confidence at face value. As I first learned on the obstacle field, people come up with coherent stories and confident predictions even when they know little or nothing. Overconfidence arises because people are often blind to their own blindness.”
  • Source: "Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence". New York Times. October 19, 2011.

Steven_Pinker

Modular Mind

“The mind is organized into modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 1 Section Reverse-Engineering the Psyche.

Experts

“Experts are invaluable and are usually rewarded in esteem and wealth. But our reliance on experts puts temptation in their path. The experts can allude to a world of wonders — occult forces, angry gods, magical potions — that is inscrutable to mere mortals but reachable through their services. Tribal shamans are flimflam artists who supplement their considerable practical knowledge with stage magic, drug-induced trances, and other cheap tricks. Like the Wizard of Oz, they have to keep their beseechers from looking at the man behind the curtain, and that conflicts with the disinterested search for the truth.”
  • Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 5 Section: Ecological Intelligence.

Herbert_Simon

Artificial Intelligence Judgment

“So-called judgment" turns out to be mainly a non-numerical heuristic search that draws upon information stored in large expert memories.”

Shoshana_Zuboff

Time Study Expert

“The time-study expert became the new focus of workers' antagonisms. Informal production quotas persisted and, in many cases, took on an overtly anti-management spirit. The union contract became the most important means for institutionalizing workers' instincts for self-preservation, as rationalization routed out the ordinary graces with which the workday had been laced. Concern over wages and hours, work rules, and working conditions began to replace the craftworker's culturally embedded practices of effort regulation. Overall, the purification of effort meant a heightened standard of labor discipline, and as such it widened the gulf between those who gave of their bodies in the service of production and those who did not.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 46. ISBN:0465032125.