[$] The dark side of expertise
Everyone has expertise in some things, which is normally seen as a good
thing to have. But Dr. Sean Brady gave some examples of ways that our
expertise can lead us astray, and actually cause us to make worse decisions,
in a keynote at the 2020 linux.conf.au. Brady is a forensic
engineer who specializes in analyzing engineering
failures to try to discover the root causes behind them. The talk gave
real-world examples of expertise gone wrong, as well as looking at some of the
psychological research that demonstrates the problem. It was an
interesting view into the ways that our brains work—and fail to work—in
situations where our expertise may be sending our thoughts down the wrong path.