
Michael Lewis Promo Clip
Clip: Season 5 Episode 1 | 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Michael Lewis explains why the idea of expertise is inherently flawed.
Michael Lewis offers an explanation as to why people are so quick to label an expert “sloppy.” Saying that people crave certainty, he elaborates that the very nature of expertise is flawed because analyses and predictions are based on malleable statistics. In this way, he points out that even expert opinions are based on probability.
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Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

Michael Lewis Promo Clip
Clip: Season 5 Episode 1 | 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Michael Lewis offers an explanation as to why people are so quick to label an expert “sloppy.” Saying that people crave certainty, he elaborates that the very nature of expertise is flawed because analyses and predictions are based on malleable statistics. In this way, he points out that even expert opinions are based on probability.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- Why do you think people are so eager to identify an expert, that they're sloppy in the pursuit?
- People feel very uncomfortable with uncertainty.
What they want from experts is certainty.
Almost always, the person who's pretending to be certain, is exactly the person you don't wanna listen to.
Part of the problem, I think, with experts is that the nature of expertise has changed.
I wrote a book called Moneyball about a new kind of baseball expertise that was statistically-based.
Your expertise was not rooted in any kind of obvious experience.
Your expertise is are rooted in an analysis of sometimes arcane statistics that come out of a baseball player's performance.
The statistics suggest there's a 75% chance he's gonna make it in the big leagues, or the statistics are in to move to another sphere suggest that there's a 80% chance that Hillary Clinton is gonna beat Donald Trump.
But there's an awful lot of expertise that is essentially probabilistic in nature, and people don't understand probability.
Be very wary of people who express certainty because we live in an uncertain world.
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