My typical heuristic for reliable experts (taken from Thinking Fast and Slow I think) is that if experts have tight, reliable feedback loops, they tend to be more trustworthy. Futurism obviously fails this test.
Then it might be that futurism is irrelevant, rather than being expertise-like or bias-like. (Unless we think 'studying X while lacking tight, reliable feedback loops' in this context is worse than 'neither studying X nor having tight, reliable feedback loops.')
Contrarianism isn't really a "field" in itself, and I tend to think of it more as a bias...
Thiel, Yudkowsky, Hanson, etc. use "contrarian" to mean someone who disagrees with mainstream views. Most contrarians are wrong, though correct contrarians are more impressive than correct conformists (because it's harder to be right about topics where the mainstream is wrong).
Then it might be that futurism is irrelevant, rather than being expertise-like or bias-like. (Unless we think 'studying X while lacking tight, reliable feedback loops' in this context is worse than 'neither studying X nor having tight, reliable feedback loops.')
In this case futurism is two things in these people:
...Thiel, Yudkows
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