1. There are two main types of experts, one of which is more useful. There is naturally a degree of crossover, but the procedural experts are all experts at doing something, not simply knowing it.
2. The Procedural Expert. This is the good type of expert. Someone who has in depth knowledge of how to do something, why it's done and can do it to a high degree of accuracy and competence on a consistent basis. This is good because developing similar skills is too complex and time consuming for everyone. Examples; mechanics, surgeons, accountants, architects, engineers etc.
3. The Historical Expert. This is someone who has expert, in depth knowledge of a certain data set. Due to the nature of time, all data sets in existence are about the past, so all of these experts can only know anything about the past and not the present or future. Some of these people may be useful for various reasons, but in a world where you can access untold bytes of data they are increasingly redundant. They are also obsessed with credentials, largely because they did not heed my maxim of university "never study something normal people have an opinion on"
4. The problem of experts comes when historical experts start talking about adjacent subjects (i.e. the person who studied West Nile virus making COVID models) or making predictions of the present and future based on their knowledge of the past. A great many of these people do not have expertise in producing accurate models, predictions or anything else. Their status is based on their work with past data. This means that their status is largely unconnected with their prescriptions and predictions - getting it wrong does not affect this past based status. Procedural experts are constantly judged by their ability to carry out a procedure. An engineer who kept making bridges that collapse would be found out and lose status very quickly - providing their job and status were based upon being an engineer.
5. The media/political world increasingly loves these historical experts. Part of the reason is they can easily be induced to make any sort of prediction, which has the gloss of being probable based on their credentials based on a completely different activity. When it comes to future predictions and policy, a monkey smearing chocolate on a canvas is as useful as the average historical expert.
6. It occurred to me that a lot of experts, especially in the social sciences are actually pretending to be the opposite sort. Take economists - they act as if they are procedural experts who know how the machinery of the economy works. In reality though they are experts in applying theory to historical economic data (no other kind exists) and then basing their prescriptions on the interactions between their pet theory and their interpretation of that data.
The same can be seen with sociologists, political scientists and all other sorts of social science.
7. There's also the class issue. Procedural experts are important and useful. They are usually men and some of them get dirty (mechanics, welders) but not all (accountants, legal advisors for non-trial things). The historical experts not only pretend to be the other sort, but use a mix of obfuscation and slander to knock down the important procedural experts
8. My argument is that in lots of fields, especially the complex and social ones, knowing facts is totally divorced from being able to extrapolate future events or outcomes. They are experts in the the past or increasingly in the goodthink theory applied to past facts.
9. It's why I think separating the two types of experts is important - ones who learn how something works (be it a machine, an item of law, an organism or any technique) are valuable. Ones who look as data and say "so if we do X then we will have a lovely beautiful outcome and rainbows" should be ignored or tarred and feathered. COVID has shown the difference between doctors who understand how the body works and medical experts understand how funding works.
10. Listen to the procedural experts, employ them, do what they say.
Ignore historical experts. They are nerds being lead into saying whatever their masters want, and even their best projections and plans are no better than an ape’s.
I contend that "historical experts" have their uses. That being said, I generally dismiss mainstream "historical science" as crappy fables and myths.