Experts get a bad rap when the world throws them the occasional curve and we forget how important they are to us the rest of the time. Consequently, we need to be able to tell the difference between the genuine article and a cheap knock off. Even the extraordinarily astute late Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger once remarked: “It’s very hard to tell the difference between a good money manager and someone who just has the patter down.”
But there are some “tells” you can use to distinguish whose got the stuff, and who’s just a bluff. This excellent (and short) article from the Farnam Street Blog offers half a dozen ways to distinguish the Experts vs Imitators.
Another great article on this topic, “Why the experts are full of it”, shares the reflection of the late physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman who despite his significant accomplishment in science referred to himself as a “confused ape’…and approached everything around him with the same level of curiosity. “
We can’t be experts in everything….and some of us aren’t experts in anything. This makes the ability to discern the experts versus the imitators a vital life skill.
