The ability to judge others’ competence is incredibly important for organisation effectiveness, and seems to have been quite neglected, e.g. in the rationalism community. I think one important heuristic is to:
b) Systematically try to notice whether you might have fallen prey for these biases, e.g. when recruiting. (This is obviously non-trivial, but one might try to come up with techniques which facilitate it. Getting input from others on one’s biases could be one effective if somewhat sensitive technique.)
c) If so, adjust your judgment of the competence of that person downards or upwards (depending on whether you’re positively or negatively biased).
The ability to judge others’ competence is incredibly important for organisation effectiveness, and seems to have been quite neglected, e.g. in the rationalism community. I think one important heuristic is to:
a) Identify well-known biases (e.g. people seem to be biased in favour of attractive people).
b) Systematically try to notice whether you might have fallen prey for these biases, e.g. when recruiting. (This is obviously non-trivial, but one might try to come up with techniques which facilitate it. Getting input from others on one’s biases could be one effective if somewhat sensitive technique.)
c) If so, adjust your judgment of the competence of that person downards or upwards (depending on whether you’re positively or negatively biased).
Yup, this is an important thing to keep in the background of expert assessment.