The edge of competency

Watching some of Arsenal’s recent performances has been like seeing the debate about Syria – and not just in the sense that both are utterly dispiriting.

What I mean is that in both recall to me the wise words of Charlie Munger – that “knowing the edge of your own competency” is a great skill. And it’s a skill that has deserted Shkodran Mustafi lately. Against Palace, he attempted six tackles and missed all of them, often giving away free kicks in dangerous areas. And he and his team-mates have sometimes conceded goals by challenging for headers and missing them. In these respects, there’s a tragic contrast with Tony Adams. One of his many great abilities was knowing which balls he could win and which not: if he couldn’t win a header, he’d hang back and win the second ball rather than be caught out of position. Adams knew the edge of his competency: Mustafi does not*.

Which brings me to the Syria debate. This is a horribly complex problem: murdering children is of course a simple issue, but what we can effectively do about it is anything but. Any sensible discussion must have as its central tenet a recognition of the edge of our competency – the fact that we cannot predict the effect of interventions and that ground truth (which is what matters) is largely elusive. Unless you’ve devoted a lifetime to Syrian politics or military affairs, you’re very likely over-confident about your opinion of what to do.

Such recognition, though, is often lacking. Some debates tell me plenty about tribal divisions within the Labour party and zippety-diddly abut Syria.

What I’m complaining about here is a very common phenomenon.  To take another example, there was a piece in Monday’s Times by Libby Purves telling us why Cressida Dick was the right woman to run the Met**. Now, Ms Purves has many virtues, but an in-depth knowledge of the Met’s personnel has not hitherto been the most celebrated of them.

We might call it the columnists’ fallacy (or the PPEists’ error!) – a tendency to exaggerate one’s knowledge and to ignore the edge of your competency. Chris Shaw is right to complain that, very often, “gaps in knowledge and complexity are tacitly ignored.” I sometimes try to avoid this error and try to recognise ignorance in my day job – for example by claiming that we cannot know how great a problem is household debt or how worried we should be by the overvaluation of US equities. But nobody thanks me for it.

And herein, perhaps, lies the problem. Not only do pundits (and politicians) not recognise the edge of their competence, but there's little demand that they do. As Margarita Mayo says, humble people make the best leaders but it is arrogant narcissists who get hired or elected. 

Acknowledging complexity and ignorance is not something many of us want to do.

* I’m setting an impossibly high bar here. Expecting defenders to be like Adams is like expecting novelists to be Fyodor Dostoyevsky or singers to be Hank Williams.

** I’m picking this example simply because it’s the first that comes to mind. You can all no doubt think of other examples, by perhaps more serial offenders than Ms Purves.

Comments

[Phil]

The funny thing is, outside of Arsenal, neither Adams nor his successor Campbell are aware of the limits of their competency. Adams thought he should be considered for the role of Chairman of Arsenal, while Campbell seriously thought he could run for Mayor of London.

[Dave Timoney]

As a long-time Arsenal watcher, you will know that Koscielny is usually the "interventionist" in a centre-back pairing with a "second ball" player such as Mertesacker. Mustafi looks to have been bought as the long-term replacement for Koscielny, but he clearly has yet to master the role. Judgement is very much a matter of experience, hence Koscielny has gradually lowered his card/penalty rate over time.

The point is that Mustafi will (probably) learn and become a better player, but this requires him to push the edge of his competence and so court failure in the meantime. In contrast, the lack of consequentiality for pundits means that they never learn, hence the knee-jerk celebration of Trump's airstrike.

Politicians do face consequentiality at the ballot box, so I disagree that there is no demand for them to recognise the edge of their competence, but most calculate that only the most egregious personal incompetence will make a difference. This is in no small measure because of pundits' mediation - e.g. Labour right-wingers know they won't be called out for their sabotage.

[Blissex]

«Chris Shaw is right to complain that, very often, “gaps in knowledge and complexity are tacitly ignored.”»

Interesting argument: that there is not just "tacit knowledge", but also "tacit mis-knowledge" (perhaps that is what "groupthink" is, and what PR aims to create). Those organisations with strong tacit mis-knowledge probably reward yes-men very highly, and possessing or acquiring strong "tacit mis-knowledge" can be a career advantage in them.

[Guano]

If pundits recognised the edge of the competencies, they wouldn't say anything.

I have made some effort over the last five years to make some sense of the Syrian civil war, but I've never seen any of the well-known pundits at the meetings I've been to or seen these pundits refer to some of the interesting academic literature that is available.

You don't get a job as a pundit by being able to understand the topics that you're writing about. You get a job as a pundit by showing how certain subjects or events confirm a particular world-view.

[Blissex]

«Judgement is very much a matter of experience, hence Koscielny has gradually lowered his card/penalty rate over time. The point is that Mustafi will (probably) learn and become a better player, but this requires him to push the edge of his competence and so court failure in the meantime.»

That seems a very good argument to me, but with a correction: we are talking about top players in top teams, so they should be expected to already have that judgement.
For much less paid jobs than that employers demand that hires to "hit the ground running" and give 100% straight away without any wasteful learning on the job. Even so many employers for low-paid jobs have a very generous :-) "3 strikes and you are out" policy.
If there is a case for an employer to tolerate less than perfect performance all the time is that new players in a team need to learn to fit in the specific dynamics of that team, and that may be part of what Mustafi is doing.