Quote from: skivrmt on February 27, 2014, 12:30:31 AM

Quote from: ning on February 26, 2014, 05:10:30 AM

I came across the following words and I found it amusing and relevant. I'm quoting it here:

"We have a natural tendency to listen to the expert, even in fields where there may be no experts." -- from The Black Swan

Are you implying there are no experts in the field of Bitcoin? Wink

I certainly think there are, but 99% of the people on this board are not them. Who are the experts then? And what does it mean to be an expert? Good luck in both of those questions!

Sorry for the confusion, I should have been more explicit Wink

Here is a personal perspective on expertise: I tend to believe that real and observable expertise often involves physical skills, like carrying out a brain surgery, playing a violin, hitting the target from a thousand yards, fixing cars or even being the man in the Man Vs Wild Wink

To put it another way, I should be feeling safe when delegating activities or decisions to the experts in their fields of expertise. However, in the field of predicting market behaviors or trends, the long-term price of certain items to be specific, one can hardly feel safe delegating the decision makings to alleged experts. This is because the market can be so vulnerable to unpredictable inputs. For example, the crash of an exchange might crash the market itself as well, or a programming error in the trading bots can potentially push the price of a stock up through the roof, etc. The future of a market might be given, but it's not predictable, we have to wait until the day comes. Also, having a Harvard degree or being a Nobel prize winner in economics doesn't (or at least shouldn't) justify a person's ability to precisely predict the future of market behaviors.