The experts are wrong a lot. If there is not a clear truth, the experts are usually wrong more than 50% of the time.

Experts (those who predict the future for a living) are, more often than not, dart-throwers. They usually perform no better than chance. And recently they have performed even worse than chance.

“Economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions.”

Most experts are biased by their experiences. In fact, the most dangerous person is one who says they are unbiased. “I am just using facts, not opinions, for this prediction” is almost always wrong.

We are ALL biased. We see the world through a very hazy prism of our experiences.

There is no unbiased news outlet. Even “real news” has lots of untruth to it. Almost every news story I had intimate knowledge of made a significant reporting mistake or factual error in the story.

We’re human and we make mistakes. We’re human and we see the world with our strong bias. We overweight certain sources and underweight others. We discount data that is very good and we rely on data that is wrong. We see patterns when there are none and see coincidences when there are conspiracies.

The “expert” can be dangerous.

We live in a world where people spend a lot of time building their bona fides so they can make their living off their “expertise.” Most of the top 1% of earners make their living predicting the future. But because people come with huge biases, their predictions can often be very, very wrong.

In even the most noble professions (like medicine), people have huge biases. Study after study finds top surgeons recommending treatments that they specialize in … even when the problem may be better served from another procedure. That’s because for most of us, every hammer is a nail.

Sacred cows tend to not be that sacred.

Experts tend to talk to other experts and can get sucked into a dangerous groupthink. Once all experts agree on something, even when it is highly speculative, it can become calcified.

Experts often say “that cannot be done” like it is a rule of the universe. But instead of a low of gravity, it is more akin to a custom (like setting fork on a left side of the plate).

We see groupthink happen most often is the softer sciences like political science, sociology, foreign policy, and economics. The more specialized the field, the more people find themselves talking to each other … and the more they will be prone to repeat one another.

While it is harder to happen in hard science, we see it happen there too. Wrong ideas are clung on to too long because it is hard to change one’s mind about the world. Max Planck famously said “Science advances one funeral at a time.”

None of this means experts are trying to be sinister. Yes, sometimes people are on the payroll of an interest (for instance, many people who campaign against oil pipelines are indirectly funded by the railroad companies or the Russian government), but that is not usually the case. Biases control people’s thoughts much more than money.

Protect yourself from experts through contrarian thinking

“Conventional Wisdom” is often very conventional thinking.

Before accepting opinions as truth, think through the issues yourself. Don’t just look for agendas but look for biases. If a surgeon recommends a specific procedure that only her hospital does, seek out other opinions.

Seek out outcasts. Seek out non-expert experts who often challenge the status quo. Some that I would recommend are: Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Nassim Taleb, Paul Graham, Judith Rich Harris, John Hempton, Charlie Songhurst, Tyler Cowen, Sam Altman, Jonathan Haidt, and Slate Star Codex. I’d even throw in some more mainstream thinkers like Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Athey, Daniel Kahneman, Richard Feynman, Tim Ferriss, Daniel Yergin, Robert Cialdini, Oliver Sacks, Elie Wiesel, Robert Caro, and Charlie Munger because people like them will always make you think.

Of course, experts can be right. They often are.

You don’t have time to question everything in this world — you might turn into the Unabomber if you did.

For instance, even if you cannot prove the earth is round, it is not a good idea to think the world is flat. It is likely that the government did not fake the moon landing. And when you were born, you probably were not delivered by stork.

The 40-year life lesson: experts are (very often) wrong

Just because someone knows much more about you about a particular subject, do not assume there are correct. Do not bestow authority on them just because they are wearing a lab coat or possess a PhD.

Summation: just because someone has spent more time learning about something, it does not mean that they are a closer to the truth than you.

This is expanded from my 2017 post on Quora.

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Spending time alone is really, really important

If you are a big biography reader, you’ll find that most of the super successful entrepreneurs spent a massive amount of time alone when they were kids and young adults. And most of these people still spend a much larger percentage of their time alone today than most outsiders would think.

Especially when people are growing up, spending time alone gives one the space to explore, to be weird, to learn, to imagine, and to dream.

Reading is really (REALLY) important. 
Read a wide variety of books and articles that stretch your imagination. Don’t just read easy books (like Harry Potter). Read difficult texts that really stretch your mind.

Read fiction and non-fiction. Read wonderful novels written by authors from far-away lands. Read things that challenge your political thought. Read the Bible (New and Old Testament) and ancient mythology. And don’t just read conventional things assigned to you in school (like Hemingway, Shakespeare, Twain, and more) but try to seek out authors on your own.

Most people that are successful today (that grew up pre-Internet) spent a huge portion of their time just reading the encyclopedia. Ask almost any super successful person over 40 and they will tell you they spent gobs of time in the Library pouring through the encyclopedia. Many of them would eventually read every encyclopedia volume letter. These people had an insatiable need to learn new things. Today one can can do the same thing going down a Wikipedia wormhole.

When today’s successful people walked to class (in high school), they were probably reading a book or a magazine (in those days, it was a paper book). Some of these people even got injured walking into things because they were reading.

Most of these people had parents that asked them to READ LESS.

Today the encyclopedia is free and on the internet. But today the encyclopedia is so big that it would be impossible to read in a lifetime — so today choices about what you read could be a bit harder. But reading is still really important.

Play acting
At an early age, most of the super successful people spent more time play-acting than others. If you go through the top 100 tech entrepreneurs, very few of these people spent their time playing organized sports … they instead were in their bedroom, backyard, or nearby park playing by themselves (or with their siblings in the case of the Collisons). They were letting their imagination run wild.

They were imagining themselves as secret agents, slaying dragons, marshaling their toy soldiers to do battle, starting businesses, dealing with family situations, and more.

Experimenting
It is amazing how many successful people lit things on fire, blew things up, captured and studied bugs, built bird nests, and more. My guess is that every single one of the most successful people subjected themselves to multiple electric shocks (some on accident, some on purpose).

They were building, creating, viewing, and observing. And they were the ones in charge of the experiment — they were the prodders.

Lots of creative activities
While most of the super successful entrepreneurs are known for their right-brained prowess, most spent a very large percentage of their childhood and adolescence doing very creative things. They were writing short stories and plays, painting, sculpting, writing poems and lyrics, writing computer programs, and more.

Creating versus Consuming
Reading, watching wonderful movies, listening to music, etc. are all great ways to spend time. But they are passive — these are consuming functions.

Most of the super successful people spent a large percentage of their time creating vs. consuming. They were building things, starting things, etc. This is really important.

Today it is harder to spend time creating because there are so many more options to consume. In the pre-Internet days, one would get bored pretty quickly of the consuming options (usually the best option was to read a book or watch bad television) where today there are just so many more options. In fact, the tablet is essentially designed to maximize consumption (unlike the PC which is a better tool for creation).

Get away from the social pressures of school
School, especially middle school and high school, is socially incredibly high pressure for everyone. People are jockeying for position and cliques are forming and unwinding constantly. There is a “Game of Thrones” aspect to the social standing within high school that is ultra competitive and hard to escape.

By spending time alone, people get needed breaks from the high school Game of Thrones. Alone-time allows you to spend time actually exploring yourself (rather than spending time conforming to some sort of norm).

Today, alone-time is frowned upon
Something happened in the last 30 years to encourage parents to spend more time with their kids. Another huge trend has been for parents to give their kids opportunities by enrolling them in lots of sports, weekend classes, summer learning retreats, and more.

While there are so many good things about the trend of more involved parenting, one of the very important unintended consequences is that kids have significantly less alone-time than they once did. And even when they are alone, they have the means to be a part of of the larger group through social networks, SMS, and more. So it is harder for them to escape the social pressures of school.

So we should expect the best strategy for kids today to not be the same as the best strategy for past generations.

Summation: most everyone (young and old) — especially those that have good social lives and have been reasonably successful — could use more time alone and more time to themselves.

Note: this article is updated from the original: a 2016 post on Quora.

Most smart people out of college grow an average of 10% per year. Which means they are roughly twice as effective 7 years after graduating college. That makes sense as most 29 year olds make double what they did their first job out of college. But growing at 10% per year is way too slow if you want to accomplish great things. You should be aiming to grow at a rate of at least 25% per year for your first few years out of school (like all things, your rate of growth (the second derivative of skill) will slow over time). 
 
To grow quickly, you need a job with the following criteria:

1. You’re surrounded by people who are super smart
2. You have many opportunities to fail
3. The company has a history of giving massive responsibility to people that look like you

To grow quickly, you need a job with the following criteria:

1. You’re surrounded by people who are super smart
2. You have many opportunities to fail
3. Company has a history of giving massive responsibility to people that look like you

— Auren Hoffman (@auren) February 11, 2019

Find a company where at least 30% of the people are smarter than you.
You will grow the most through the people who surround you, so make sure those people are really impressive. Because people tend to hire those they know, many of these people will likely be your colleagues for the next 30 years. So pick your colleagues wisely.

One simple heuristic to determine how smart the people at the company are is how selective they are in hiring. You want to pick a company that has a really hard (and often long) recruiting process where you need to meet a lot of people, complete a project, and have some grueling interviews. Because you know that everyone else the company hired went through the same process.  So never take a job at a company that doesn’t put you through the ringer and make it really hard to get an offer. If the offer comes easy, best to decline the offer.
 
Opportunities to fail.
You grow the most when you have a 33-66% chance of failure. To improve, you want to be in a position where success is not guaranteed. I will not improve my tennis game playing against my six-year-old. (Of course, I will also not improve playing against Roger Federer). Too often, undergrads are put into jobs that they will definitely succeed at (this is too often true at some of the “best” places to work like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and Google). And while definite success initially feels good, it doesn’t help you grow very fast. You should find an organization that will give you projects where there is a high chance of failure. 
 
Opportunities for massive responsibility.
Assuming you are an ambitious person who wants to have continued growth, you want the opportunity to be promoted and to be given continuously greater responsibility. The companies that are most likely to promote you quickly have a history of doing so and are experiencing high growth. If your abilities warrant it, you can also be given the chance. Also ask people during the interview process where you could be in three years if you turn out to be a superstar. If the company says “executive” — then that’s a good sign. (too often though it is “associate level 3”).
 
These three criteria are heavily weighted towards the selection of start-ups (fast growth companies with under 200 people). And it is not an accident that the very best grads over the last few years have been choosing start-ups over traditional choices like Google, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey. In fact, so many great people are joining start-ups that traditional employers have been forced to massively increase salaries to attract students with the promise of short-term compensation.  So you should expect to make almost 2x more at a company that will offer you lower growth company than at a company that will give you the option to get high growth. You have to decide for yourself if that trade-off is worth it.
 
Summation: But not all start-ups are created equal. Look for the ones that have a really hard interview process, where they give you an opportunity to fail, and have examples of people just a few years older than you that have been given outsized responsibility.

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Note: this is based on a 2016 post I did in Quora.