Pseudo cognitive authority - Occurs because it is easier and more lucrative to sound like an expert than to actually be an expert

From What Good Is an Economist? by Philip Delves Broughton.

It is much easier, and often more lucrative, to sound like an economist than to be a good one...Thus the world is full of bad economists making finger-in-the-air claims about the likely direction of the markets and the efficiency, or not, of free markets.

For example, take Paul Krugman, please. Formerly a Nobel Laureate in Economics but now a partisan columnist. From the night of the 2016 election.

The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

And here we are a year later with financial markets at all time highs, economic growth at rates we have not seen in years, unemployment rates at rock bottom, labor force participation rising, etc.

Krugman's prestige as an academic economist earned him his seat at the pontificating table but his opinions and forecasts are entirely partisan and not based on his expertise.

In a complex society where no one can know, much less have mastery of, even a small portion of relevant knowledge, we are accustomed to deferring to cognitive authority. This is a logical fallacy of ancient roots, argumentum ad verecundiam, appeal to authority.

Plato recorded an early instance: from Plato, Meno, 71c, W. Guthrie, trans., Collected Dialogs (1961), p. 354.

Meno: Is this true about yourself, Socrates, that you don’t even know what virtue is? Is this the report that we are to take home about you?

Socrates: Not only that, you may also say that, to the best of my belief, I have never met anyone else who did know.

Meno: What! Didn’t you meet Gorgias when he was here?

Socrates: Yes.

Meno: And you still didn’t think he knew?

Socrates: I’m a forgetful sort of person, and I can’t say just now what I thought at the time. Probably he did know, and I expect you know what he used to say about it. So remind me what it was, or tell me yourself if you will. No doubt you agree with him.

Meno: Yes, I do.

Socrates: Then let’s leave him out of it, since after all he isn’t here. What do you yourself say virtue is?

Don't appeal to the authority in order to close the discussion; argue it out.

I would recast Broughton a little bit. It is a matter of supply-and-demand. Complexity has driven up the media demand for experts (authority). But the supply has not risen nearly as fast. Indeed, the supply is quite limited in the first place given that knowledgeable experts are few and articulate knowledgeable experts are even fewer. Articulate knowledgeable experts across multiple domains of knowledge are fewer yet. And articulate knowledgeable experts across multiple domains of knowledge willing to make bald, explicit and unconditional claims are fewest of all. In fact, they barely exist. All knowledge is conditional and anyone willing to make unconditional declarations is almost certainly not an expert.

In fact, there are simply too few knowledgeable experts for all the TV stations and newspapers needing talking heads. Quality control fails and we fall into the habit of deferring to pseudo cognitive authorities. People who look like they are knowledgeable but are in fact either not knowledgeable or, perhaps more often, are advocates dressed up as authorities.

My version of Broughton would be:

It is much easier, and often more lucrative, to sound like an expert than to be a good one...Thus the world is full of bad experts making finger-in-the-air claims about the likely direction of the future.