Hamming, "Experts" (May 25, 1995)
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Intro: As remarked in an earlier chapter, as our knowledge grows exponentially we cope with the growth mainly by specialization. It is increasingly true: An expert is one who knows everything about nothing; a generalist knows nothing about everything.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn" was the capstone course by Dr. Richard W. Hamming (1915-1998) for graduate students at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey California.
This course is intended to instill a "style of thinking" that will enhance one's ability to function as a problem solver of complex technical issues. With respect, students sometimes called the course "Hamming on Hamming" because he relates many research collaborations, discoveries, inventions and achievements of his own. This collection of stories and carefully distilled insights relates how those discoveries came about. Most importantly, these presentations provide objective analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as Dr. Hamming, his associates and other major thinkers, in computer science and electronics, progressed through the grand challenges of science and engineering in the twentieth century.
'Our boy hamming' was an inspiring character. Thanks for made these available to all engineers and scientists. One more reason to read his books.
These videos are doing a great public service... I am astonished by the intelligence and foresight of Mr Hamming...
10:34 Now t here is a well-known saying: If an expert tells you something can be done, it is probable it can be done. If he tells you it can't be done, you may pay to get another expert who may tell you you can.
25:54 This is one thing wrong with experts also. They don't come out and say why you are wrong. It's in the atmosphere that you are wrong, you are doing things wrong.
2:23 Difficulty with cosmology is you have one sample only and you are supposed to account for how it happened. You haven't got a bunch of different samples and you haven't any power to experiment.
- Specialists usually win arguments against generalists. Use this as a baseline expectation if I ever need to evaluate such arguments (but it's still hazardous!) Is the specialist more / less convincing than my baseline expectation?
- Specialists use jargon to exclude outsiders. This is a caveman instinct.
- Style (paradigm / framing) is nearly invisible but very important
- Progress usually comes from ideas from outside the field. But it's very hard to distinguish creative ideas from crackpot ideas!
- Either: ignore outsiders and don't participate in the next big advancement.
- Or: listen to some outsiders and waste a lot of time.
- 4 reasons to learn about experts:
1. as you go on you will have to deal with experts many times, and you should understand their characteristics.
2. in time many of you will be experts, and I am hoping to at least modify the behavior of some of you so that you will, in your turn, not be such a block on progress as many experts have been in the past.
3. it appears to me the rate of progress, the rate of innovation and change of the dominant paradigm, is increasing, and hence you will have to endure more changes than I did.
4. if only I knew the right things to say to you then when a paradigm change occurs fewer of you would be left behind in your careers than usually happens to the experts.
- Scientific progress is slower than we think:
- When experts became experts, they often froze / crystallise their knowledge into the contemporary paradigm, and lose their flexibility.
- "All impossibility proofs must rest on a number of assumptions which may or may not apply in the particular situation."
- "If the expert says something is impossible, get a second opinion."
- Science is slower than we think.
- "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- "Science advances one funeral at a time."
- Probably, many correct revolutionary ideas were lost because the experts didn't notice it, and because the discoverer didn't communicate it well enough for existing fields of study to use this idea (echoing Hamming on Fiber Optics (lecture 21) on the importance of clear communication.)
- Express beliefs in probabilities (eg. 10%, 50%, 90%). Don't just say something is possible.
- Stop and think; cooperate. Actively counteract caveman tribe / ingroup instincts when in a large organisation / military.
- Top jobs are dominated by budgets and personnel squabbles.
Lot of the advice is similar like in Robert Greene’s Mastery
0:04 There is one definition. An expert is a person with a briefcase at least 50 miles away from home. The one I gave is, an expert is one who knows everything about nothing, whereas a generalist knows nothing about everything.