2009-04-01

Experts Shmexperts: Is Punditry Overrated?

Nicholas Kristof wrote an intriguing piece in the New York Times titled, "Learning how to think."

While I've arrived at my own conclusions long ago about punditry, Mr. Kristof nonetheless reminds us sometimes the "know it alls" don't really know all that much.

It's not just political pundits guilty of this. Sports commentators who complicate simple sports have also become insufferable on this point.

The article recalled "The Hedgehog and the Fox" essay by Isaiah Berlin. Catch a good post about this subject here. I was introduced to this essay after I read Tolstoy's "War and Peace." I needed some "outside interventionism" to help me make sense of the masterpiece. I read the book while recuperating from ACL surgery. I remember the routine watch "Miami Vice" and "Magnum P.I." reruns and read Tolstoy until it was nap time.

That being proclaimed, while I wasn't sure of what I just read, I wasn't convinced of Tolstoy's take on history. If it wasn't so late right now, I'd explore this a little further.

Kristof writers:

"...Mr. Tetlock called experts such as these the “hedgehogs,” after a famous distinction by the late Sir Isaiah Berlin (my favorite philosopher) between hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs tend to have a focused worldview, an ideological leaning, strong convictions; foxes are more cautious, more centrist, more likely to adjust their views, more pragmatic, more prone to self-doubt, more inclined to see complexity and nuance. And it turns out that while foxes don’t give great sound-bites, they are far more likely to get things right."

Watching pop-talk and news shows with a critical eye, one surmises this is indeed the case.

I'm going to assert here that foxes don't, on average, do so well in the corporate world. Personally, I could and would never do well in a short interview looking for quick, "witty" sound bites. Some people are brilliant at it. Me? I'm way to "drawn out" for that.

That and my voice is too nasally.

2 comments:

  1. Dear TC.

    Greetings!

    Interesting piece by Kristof. But I wonder how influenced he might have been by Peggy Noonan's essay printed in the Times' rival, the WS Journal, more than ten days earlier. Did you read her piece, "Neither A Hedgehog Nor A Fox"?

    There is always a trap with such things as Kristof discusses here. Clearly he believes, or I would guess, that he knows how to think -- or at least he knows how to LEARN how to think. Apparently he is not entirely blinded by pundits' blinding lights: he's on his way, at least, to being too smart to be taken in. How do we know this? He's written an essay about "learning how to think."

    You've surely witnessed something like this: Tell students that geniuses tend to wear purple, and many students will suddenly start wearing purple. You know what I mean: we all want to be the brightest person in the room. We all want to identify with something we believe makes us better, smarter, more important; morally superior.

    Just think of all the Kristof followers who are right now scrambling to be like foxes or like hedgehogs simply to define themselves against those who are turtles, rabbits; the loyal dogs.

    Be well,

    Gnade

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  2. No, I hadn't read Noonan. Although I suspect many journalists/writers tackled it over the years.

    Are you suggesting "group think" can settle in an effort to be "smarter?" Therefore negating the ability to be "smart?"

    I'm too racked with self-doubt to ever consider myself the smartest person in the room.

    I know there's always someone better, bigger, brighter.

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