91. Problems with selection of experts
On each separate question related to
global risk—biotechnology, nanotechnology, AI, nuclear war, and so
on—we are compelled to rely on the opinions of the most competent experts
in those areas, so it is necessary for us to have effective methods of
selecting which experts are most trustworthy. The first criteria
is usually the quality and quantity of their publications—citation
index, publication ranking, recommendations from other scientists, web traffic
from reputable sources, and so on.
Secondly, we can evaluate experts by
their track record of predicting the future. An expert on technology who does
not make future predictions, even if qualified predictions made only a year or
so in advance is probably not a real expert. If their predictions fail, they
may have a poor understanding of the subject area. For instance, nanotechnologists
who predicted in the 1990s that a molecular assembler would be built Òaround
2016Ó have been proven to be mistaken, and have to own up to that before they
can be taken seriously.
A third strategy is to simply not trust
any expert, and to always recheck everyone's calculations, either from first
principles or based on comparisons to other expert claims. Lastly, it is
possible to select people based their views pertaining to theories relevant to
predicting the future of technology—whether they have an interest or
belief in the technological Singularity, or Hubbert's peak oil theory, a
neoliberal model of the economy, or whatever. It is possible to say Òan expert
should not have any concrete beliefs,Ó but this is false. Anyone who has been
thinking about the future of technology must eventually make ideological
commitments to certain patterns or systems, even if they are just their own, or
it shows that they have not thought about the future in detail. An ÒexpertÓ who
never goes out on a limb in prediction is indistinguishable from a non-expert
or random guesser.