write:But ease and coherence do not guarantee that abelief held with confidence is true. The associative machine is set tosuppress doubt and to evoke ideas and information that are compa

and other professionals who havereal expertise. I had spent more time thinking about clinicians
stockpickers
and political scientists trying to make unsupportable long-termforecasts. Not surprisingly
his default attitude was trust and respect; minewas skepticism. He was more willing to trust experts who claim an intuitionbecause
as he told me
true experts know the limits of their knowledge. Iargued that there are many pseudo-experts who have no idea that they donot know what they are doing (the illusion of validity)
and that as a generalproposition subjective confidence is commonly too high and oftenuninformative.Earlier I traced people’s confidence in a belief to two relatedimpressions: cognitive ease and coherence. We are confident when thestory we tell ourselves comes easily to mind
with no contradiction and nocompeting scenario. But ease and coherence do not guarantee that abelief held with confidence is true. The associative machine is set tosuppress doubt and to evoke ideas and information that are compatiblewith the currently dominant story. A mind that follows WY SIATI will achievehigh confidence much too easily by ignoring what it does not know. It istherefore not surprising that many of us are prone to have high confidencein unfounded intuitions. Klein and I eventually agreed on an importantprinciple: the confidence that people have in their intuitions is not a reliableguide to their validity. In other words
do not trust anyone—includingyourself—to tell you how much you should trust their judgment.If subjective confidence is not to be trusted
how can we evaluate theprobable validity of an intuitive judgment? When do judgments reflect trueexpertise? When do they display an illusion of validity? The answer comesfrom the two basic conditions for acquiring a skill: an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictablean opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practiceWhen both these conditions are satisfied
intuitions are likely to be skilled.Chess is an extreme example of a regular environment
but bridge and