How to Be an Expert in a Changing World
19 hours ago
- Confidence in beliefs can grow monotonically only in a static world; change undermines that certainty.
- Experts often fail because they rely on outdated knowledge about a changed world.
- Successful startup investors recognize that good ideas often seem bad initially due to recent changes.
- To avoid obsolete beliefs, explicitly acknowledge change and focus on being open-minded rather than predicting the future.
- New ideas arise from solving problems while valuing weird hunches, and betting on people (earnest, energetic, independent) over ideas is more reliable.
- Publicly betting on ideas, as investors do, creates strong incentives to correct outdated views.
- Accelerating change increases the challenge of not becoming a prisoner of one's own expertise.