Frequently Asked Questions on Expertise

Summary

Professionally, I research and train expertise. Somewhat less professionally I write about it on Substack. I typically work in domains like medicine, military tactics, law enforcement, and petrochemical safety, but I also explore implications for sports, music, video games, and recently mathematics. Because of this, I receive a lot of questions about the nature of expertise which I thought could be cleared up with a FAQ.It is important to note my background. I come from a tradition called Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) which puts more emphasis on decision-making, cognition and the ability to adapt to novel circumstances, and less focus on memorization, repetition, and motor skills. It also means that I approach cognition in a certain way that other schools of thought may disagree with. I will do my best to explain my answers, but other researchers may disagree with me, and that is OK. The science is not completely settled.With that caveats out of the way, here are some frequently asked questions.What is expertise?How do experts do it? What makes them special?What is meant by pattern recognition?Is expertise gut instinct?Should I trust my gut instinct?How do you study expertise?How do you train expertise?What about Deliberate Practice?What about the Constraints Led Approach?Why study expertise instead of rationality?Is expertise about generalizing rules? How are experts so adaptive?What are some resources for learning about expertise?Expertise can be defined in terms of (1) absolute performance on a task, (2) performance relative to others, or (3) the underlying psychology. Which definition you use depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Because I am interested in the psychology of expertise, I tend to focus on that third definition, and think of expertise as the natural development of human capacity.One way to think of the psychology of expertise is that is an ability to see and act on a problem and its solution quickly and effectively by relying on experi...