Expert-By-Association Syndrome

The airline industry is powered by high-octane jet fuel. Nothing else combines the power and lightness required for air travel. The problem is, as it becomes scarce it becomes more costly. Airline industry experts believe that within a decade or two, airfare is going to be astronomically expensive.

My brother was chatting about this problem in a coffee shop yesterday when someone made a classic comment:

"That's not going to happen," a guy sitting nearby says. "My girlfriend's uncle works for JPL and I know what goes on there."

Call it expert-by-association syndrome. Actual experts make their own judgments. They've earned the right. Experts-by-association make their own judgments too. But they really shouldn't. Expert-by-association syndrome is very natural–I'm guilty of it too–it makes you feel like you know more than "the masses."

But a lack of knowledge combined with a lot of self-confidence is not enough to dismiss the opinions of actual experts. (A lack of knowledge can actually increase confidence.) If you believe in the value of expertise, this comment sounds crazy. (Here's more on what makes us listen to experts.)

Coffee shop guy continued with another nugget: "Anyway, look at my phone. It's got an 8 megapixel camera in it! They're going to figure the fuel problem out."

Cameras in phones do keep improving. But batteries are to phones what high-octane gas is to planes: fuel. And batteries are not improving much.

Fuel and batteries are established products. After initial improvements decades ago, innovation has more-or-less stabilized. Ironically, batteries can't be improved much because so many very smart engineers have been trying to improve them for so many years. The improvements have already arrived. The same is true of jet fuel. Innovation is not impossible in established products, but it is hard.

Technology is not monolithic. Solutions in one area (camera phones) do not necessarily mean anything about advances in another area (jet fuel).

The coffee shop guy brilliantly, if inadvertently, illustrated two biases we all share: He trusted himself because of his "insider" status rather than listening to actual experts, and he assumed that if one problem can be solved, a very different problem should be solvable too.

Follow me on Twitter.