JANE JUDGES JILL (3J): Jill Judges Jane (3J Still)

Suppose you are not certain that the person giving an opinion is a trustworthy expert willing to share expertise. In that case, you also cannot be sure that her opinion is valuable and tells more about the judged thing than herself.

Reading reviews online left by people you have never met is one thing, but the 3J problem might happen more often than we think. For instance, it might happen when you submit any work to be judged. You can never be 100% certain that judges are trustworthy experts.

Unfortunately, you can never eliminate this uncertainty, and the rule of thumb is to do your best to be judged by the best in the field—join the best labs, submit your papers to the best journals, and abstracts to the best conferences.

The classic adage "Ne sutor ultra crepidam" (Let the shoemaker venture no further than the shoe) implies the 3J situation; it informs on the value of a non-expert's judgment and limits its value. 

There is a twist, however, as evaluating expertise is difficult for a non-expert in a particular field; thus, as proxies, we use a source’s confidence or position in some hierarchy. Based on such proxy, we ascribe value to a piece of information from a source. Consequently, we can heavily distort the actual value of information and be blind and deaf to information from sources we consider undeserving of our attention.

{EXPERT, EXPERT FUNNEL, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, INFORMATION, HETEROGENEITY, HIERARCHY, PRIORITIZATION, FINDING AN EXPERT}