HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you find experts?

3 points by Fiely ↗ HN
I'm interested in people's experience with finding experts in any field or subject. Often when there is an event or subject that dominates the "feeds" I read things like "You should find the experts on both sides" or "go read from the subject matter experts" but I struggle with this given the vast amount of information available. I find myself in a bit of paralysis when learning about new fields in which I focus a lot on finding the "right" source.

How do you find experts and how do you verify their expertise?

13 comments

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altdataseller
Definitely not by subscribing to an expert network. Those things are way too expensive and overrated
hardkorebob
You can tell them apart, the fool and expert, when they open their mouth.
yura
Definitely not. Especially if you're not yourself an expert in the subject.

This was clear before, but it's now even more evident with the advent of ChatGPT, which can generate very elaborate prose on any subject that will sound extremely convincing to most people, but turns out to be nonsensical or pure bullshit upon close inspection by actual experts in that subject.

hardkorebob
Exactly my point. You can call BS on anyone when you are IRL talking to them. People can't hide the vibe of being an idiot.
yura
> Exactly my point. You can call BS on anyone when you are IRL talking to them. People can't hide the vibe of being an idiot.

Unlikely, otherwise people like Elizabeth Holmes or Bernie Madoff wouldn't be able to scam so many investors. Even if you were to talk to them face to face, it's not so easy to differentiate an expert from an eloquent/charismatic bullshitter.

hardkorebob
Well the fools can't differentiate. People will constantly cheat each other. Nothing new. Charisma is nothing when you have full consciousness. Many people have one-track minds and are very uneducated. We all know here in USA how silly the education of our kids is. That is public free education. I'm not talking about the 1% who has access to true education. When the world doesn't have a separation of people by their income then maybe then we can see a different world. George Carlin spoke on the idiotification of usofA.

small assumption: Most of you haven't been in the presence of true power. Y'all even know what is truly going on in Texas/Mexico? How many of you have seen ... nevermind. Doesn't matter. All these comments mean nothing in the long run. Nothing will come of any of this. Just forgotten text into a database for later bring it out and slap me in the face with it.

jpmoral
A former coworker of mine is a chess IM (International Master, one step below Grand Master). We used to talk chess but never played. He was convinced I was a lot stronger than I really was, despite my saying that I was all talk and no game.
austin-cheney
Experts seem to occur at an intersection between personal interests and professional experience. Would they continue to do this work for free if they didn’t need the paycheck? So, go where the hobbyists are and talk to people. Then evaluate those people against published work whether products or writing and whether professional or personal then evaluate that published work against industry norms on the basis of expenses and utility.

I understand that is a lot of effort, but it’s what separates the actual experts apart from people who are just good at merchandising themselves.

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Quinzel
You can often find experts on any topic in universities. You can find these people by looking at the institutes “staff” pages. Alternatively, you can also search these people up by subject area, and whatever department their expertise is likely to fall under. Once you have found an expert in the subject you’re interested in you can often see a list of their degrees and any other credentials, their areas of interest and expertise, and also often you’ll be able to find a pdf of their CV or a list of their professional and academic memberships, awards they have won, papers they have published and conferences that they have presented at. Sometimes they also include links to their GitHub pages if they have one. Additionally, some of these experts are not super good with their personal privacy/security, often because there is so much information about them online, you can end up finding their personal email addresses, or phone numbers - if you want to contact them that directly, but you shouldn’t need to as most of them also have email addresses through their institute where you can reach out (which you should only do if you have a serious inquiry, don’t waste people’s time). You can often find that these people also hold positions in other organisations, and find their LinkedIn pages and other social media, if you’re feeling extra stalker-ish. You can sometimes see journals they have peer reviewed, or been editors of etc… From there, if you so wish to, you can decide if they’re truely influential and “expert” enough by looking at the peer reviewed journals they have been published in, and have a look at things such as the impact factor for the journal. Additionally, you can often find that these experts have google scholar profiles (or similar) that list how many times an expert has been cited. These are some of the ways to decide if someone is credible.

That’s how you find an expert, IMO.