I have published a series of 29 short videos on the topic of the errors of experts, which you can view by using the link here.
My best post on this topic is my post "Disastrous Blunders of the Experts," which you can read here. The post discusses the following examples in which experts produced the most disastrous blunders:
Expert Fiasco #1: The Bay of Pigs Invasion
Expert Fiasco #2: The Vietnam War
Expert Fiasco #3: Eugenics
Expert Fiasco #4: The Housing Bubble of 2005, and Financial Meltdown of 2008
Expert Fiasco #5: Blunders of the Psychiatrists
Expert Fiasco #6: The Iraq War
Expert Fiasco #7: Vioxx
Expert Fiasco #8: The Opioid Overdose Epidemic
Expert Fiasco #9: Nuclear Weapons
The post also discusses quite a few other cases of the most disastrous blunders by experts, including the atomic testing fiasco (in which we were assured by experts that atomic testing was safe, with as many as 500,000 people dying from cancer caused by radiation from such testing), and also the COVID-19 blunders that probably resulted in more than 300,000 unnecessary deaths because of incompetent responses. It is an open question whether the entire COVID-19 pandemic that killed millions was the result of overconfidence by gene-fiddling biology experts recklessly monkeying with viruses.
It is not hard to find recent examples of blunders by experts. One example is all the US military and US foreign policy experts who have unwisely supported providing super-destructive bombs to the State of Israel as it has engaged in an appalling bombing campaign in Gaza, resulting in more than 70,000 civilian deaths, mostly deaths of women and children, with innumerable other women and children being maimed or crippled, and as many as 500,000 put at risk of starvation, homelessness, severe malnutrition or severe lung damage from breathing dust from all the destroyed buildings. With the help of such a blunder the appalling horrors of the October, 2023 Hamas attack have been dwarfed by a savage slaughter fifty times bloodier. Another example can be found in the recent World Economic Forum meeting.
The World Economic Forum provides an annual report on global risks. After a meeting in Switzerland two years ago, this expert group released its 2024 report on global risks. Early 2024 was a time when the situation in the Middle East seemed like some time bomb that might explode, leading to a new world war, with the situation in Ukraine posing a similar danger. So what did the World Economic Forum list as the biggest current economic risk in early 2024? The group of experts decided that the biggest global risk over the next two years was: misinformation and disinformation.
Below is a visual from the 2024 report. We see "misinformation and disinformation" at the top of the list of 2-year global risks.
Here is the report's description of this "misinformation and disinformation" risk, which fails to make it sound like anything to lose much sleep over:
"Misinformation and disinformation (#1) is a new leader of the top 10 rankings this year. No longer requiring a niche skill set, easy-to-use interfaces to large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) models have already enabled an explosion in falsified information and so-called ‘synthetic’ content, from sophisticated voice cloning to counterfeit websites. To combat growing risks, governments are beginning to roll out new and evolving regulations to target both hosts and creators of online disinformation and illegal content. Nascent regulation of generative AI will likely complement these efforts. For example, requirements in China to watermark AI-generated content may help identify false information, including unintentional misinformation through AI hallucinated content. Generally however, the speed and effectiveness of regulation is unlikely to match the pace of development."
This sounds like nothing much to worry about, compared to threats such as nuclear war, pandemics arising from labs engaging in reckless gene-splicing, and global warming. So what on Earth were these experts thinking when they decided to proclaim "misinformation and disinformation" as the #1 global risk? In early 2024 Eve Ottenberg speculated about a possibility:
"The assorted billionaire geniuses and official intellectual luminaries who gathered in Davos Switzerland January 15-19 proved, for those who doubted, that neither singly nor as a group could these...find their way out of a paper bag. Weighing the world’s fate in their well-manicured fingers, did they seem concerned about the Ukraine War morphing into nuclear catastrophe, or ditto for a wider Middle East war? They did not. Did they tear their beautifully coiffed hair and rend their designer ensembles over the prospect of the earth heating up like a pancake on a griddle due to uncontrolled climate change? A disaster caused by rich countries gobbling up and belching out burnt fossil fuels? Or did they mouth vague platitudes about extreme weather? Yes, bromides were their plat du jour.
The most immediate threat to humanity, according to this assemblage of well-groomed ... (who paid $52,000 apiece to join the World Economic Forum and then $19,000 each for a ticket to the Davos shindig), is misinformation or disinformation – you pick. After all, these bigwigs can take to their pate de foie gras-stocked bunkers if the planet succumbs either to nuclear winter or high temperatures inhospitable to human life. So of course, they regard speech, that is, free speech, as the main threat to their luxurious creature comforts. After all, someone might say something bad about these oligarchs! "
After a meeting in Switzerland in January of this year, this same expert group recently released its 2026 report on global risks. A long-standing nuclear arms treaty between Russia and the United States has recently expired, raising the threat of a nuclear arms race. Very many are worried about the health, stability and judgment of the frequently-ranting man whose finger is on the nuclear button of the United States, who has made a long series of outrageous-sounding statements, threats and decisions that have caused many to wonder if he is fit for the grave responsibilities of being US president.
So what has the World Economic Forum listed as the biggest current global risk? The group of experts has decided that the biggest global risk over the next two years is: geoeconomic confrontration.
What are they talking about by using such a term? We get an inkling in one part of the report:
"In highlighting Geoeconomic confrontation, respondents are indicating a deepening and broadening of their concerns: after a year of heightened uncertainty over trade policy there is now a growing recognition of the escalating use of other economic and political instruments, from sanctions and regulations to capital restrictions and weaponization of supply chains, as tools of geoeconomic strategy."
Figure 24 of the report has a big font boldface caption of this: Executive perceptions of Geoeconomic confrontation (sanctions, tariffs, investment screening etc.), Later in the report we have this definition of "geoeconomic confrontation."
"Deployment of economic levers by global or regional powers to reshape economic interactions between nations, restricting goods, knowledge, services or technology with the intent of building self-sufficiency, constraining geopolitical rivals and/or consolidating spheres of influence. Includes, but is not limited to: currency measures; investment controls; sanctions; state aid and subsidies; and trade controls."
What did the group of experts list as the second most worrying global risk over the next two years? It was "misinformation and disinformation." Unbelievably (as shown in Figure 2 on page 8 of the report), the percentage of experts who listed "geoeconomic confrontation" as an economic risk was 18 times greater than the number who cited "biological, chemical or nuclear weapons or hazards" as an economic risk, and 18 times greater than the number who listed "infectious diseases" as a risk, and 9 times greater than the number who listed "critical changes to Earth systems" as a risk. And the number of experts who listed "misinformation and disinformation" as a risk was 7 times greater than the number who listed "biological, chemical or nuclear weapons or hazards" as an economic risk, and 7 times greater than the number who listed "infectious diseases" as a risk,
Once again, a prestigious group of elite experts have acted in a way that makes us wonder whether they could find their way out of a small closet.
Asked to name the biggest global risk in the next two years, experts have stated a worry that only some fat-cat investor or some hopelessly out-of-touch clique member might list as his biggest worry. Our World Economic Forum experts have spoken as if they were vastly more worried about some red tape than about oceans of red blood being spilled. Our group of experts has utterly failed to perceive the severity of the biggest risk facing the world: a risk of nuclear war that helped cause the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to recently set its famous doomsday clock to be only 85 seconds before midnight.
Experts tend to exist in "echo chambers" where groupthink and herd effects may predominate. Often involving way-too-narrow and way-too-specialized fields of study (sometimes called silos), such echo chambers can be found in the ivory towers of academia or the ideological enclaves that are the Pentagon and the White House. Within such an echo chamber people will tend to hear only people who belong to the same belief community, people who share the same ideology. Existing in such an ideological enclave, absurd or immoral or unwarranted opinions may be voiced, and may be regarded as great wisdom by anyone who looks around and sees other members of the belief community nodding in agreement.
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