We have a far bigger problem at this point of the "everyone's opinion in equally valid" concept that somehow has permeated at least the U.S. and is representative of this line of thought. Read something on Facebook that vaccines cause autism? You're opinion is equally as valid as the entire medical research community that has determined otherwise. See something on Fox that said a climate change study was flawed? Your opinion is now equally as valid as the majority of climate scientists. Or let's go even further, the doctors and scientists who have been studying these things for decades should actually not be trusted because they KNOW TOO MUCH about the area of their expertise and are therefore suffering a conflict of interest. But that the rube who had a hard time in HS algebra somehow is qualified on opine on the topic.
Does an education and years of experience guarantee that person knows more about something than a random dude? No, I'm sure that out there somewhere there is a truck driver who could perform brain surgery better than at least one brain surgeon. When getting brain surgery, do you go to a truck driver or a brain surgeon? And continuing on your logic, should we prevent that brain surgeon from doing your brain surgery because he doesn't have "skin in the game"? After all, you're the one who can die if he makes a mistake and the only impact to him is that he'll feel bad about it and maybe his malpractice rates will go up? What an "IYI" that dude is, right? As opposed to Taleb, who as I pointed out wrote this very book (and several others) for which he received an advance up front, before he'd even written it and that he got regardless of if the book failed to sell a single copy! Talk about an "IYI", right?
As far as AIDS researchers go, their record is failure after failure. As far as Alzheimer's researchers go, their record is failure after failure. As far as economists go, well we do live in the most prosperous and productive eras in history, much of it built on modern economics. Like curing AIDS or Alzheimer's, it's structurally a damn hard field to study, and we don't often have the chance for a Kansas Experiment style use of the scientific method where an experiment can be done with a control. (And when we do, as in Kansas, the people who could learn from it pointedly ignore it). To say, as you apparently seem to be, that it's a worthless field made up entirely of morons that your uneducated in economics self is far superior to because you've got "skin in the game" is as asinine as saying that we should only let people with Alzheimer's study the disease.
