“One of the markers of expertise is being able to see what novices cannot.”
Interesting implication: as a novice you can’t evaluate advice based on what you think is right / what you think makes sense / what you think SHOULD be true.
Conversation
Corollary: as a novice, it’s easier to improve at evaluating a person’s track record than it is to improve at evaluating the internal logic and applicability of ideas or advice.
Replying to
How do you get better at evaluating track records?
The advice is mostly similar to hiring:
- Ask for concrete detail about past successes. (Discount if they stick to abstractions / principles)
- Get better at checking references.
- Look for hard-to-fake proof of work.
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One trick I’ve found useful: during the initial meetings, be curious and ask for stories.
This kills two birds with one stone: people like telling stories, and you get to evaluate their believability when asking for future advice.
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I’ve written more about this here: commoncog.com/blog/believabi
But the core idea is really that you can’t evaluate the quality of actionable advice when you are yourself a novice, so you need alternative means of evaluating truth.
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