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fubarobfusco comments on Competence in experts: summary - Less Wrong
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Incentives explain a lot. Add to that incomplete information and intellectual and emotional biases. There are reasons that large organizations are often such hell holes.
Another help is evolutionary theory. If an organization actually solves a problem, it will cease to exist. But if it makes the problem worse, it will be eternal and grow without bounds.
Only if it makes the problem worse in a way that is not obvious to those who care about solving it. If the American Lung Association went around giving out cigarettes, people might eventually catch on.
Not necessarily if it simultaneously produced research saying that cigarettes are good for your lungs.
Nah. Eventually some folks would decide enter the lung-doctoring profession because their parents had died of lung cancer and they actually wanted to cure it. People are not predictably 100% short-sighted and mercenary; the Prisoner's Dilemma is not the "Prisoner's Stupid Question – Obviously Everyone Defects All The Time."
Well, medicine was dominated by crackpots and charlatans for millennia and no one seems to have noticed until recently. For example, Mercury was used as a cure for all sorts of things for quite a long time. Not to mention how long bloodletting was used in medicine. I could give more examples but you get the idea.