Whose advice should you take?

My wife finds it irritating that I often take a long time to get round to following her recommendations, even though the ones I follow almost always turn out to be successful. This post is about what sort of advice is worth taking – my view of the evidence is, not much – and why a (very basic) bayesian attitude is worthwhile.

Everyone wants their advice to be taken, but almost no one actually wants or ever follows unsolicited advice. That paradox is worth thinking about.

The quality of people’s advice varies considerably depending on how specialist it is.

Even those people who are experts offering expert advice may not be that useful to you. A 2014 meta-study found, ‘deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions.’

All that practice will give…