This one article here explains the expert argument really well:
Quotes from the article above
So, why is expertise controversial?
If all this is right, then why isn’t trusting experts always the obvious choice?
It turns out that – surprise – experts are also humans. And humans don’t always use their competencies as well as they could. An expert carpenter might still do slipshod work. Expert researchers might fudge data to get a big grant. Expert physicians might try to speak authoritatively outside their field of expertise (politics, climate science, etc.).
The real trouble with experts is not with expertise itself, but how experts behave. Experts don’t always use their expertise in ways that are helpful to non-experts.
· Sometimes they have a conflict of interest or a political motivation.
· Experts sometimes speak outside their field – a phenomenon called “epistemic trespassing.”
· They may try to tell you things that are not “tell-able,” as when a very successful person tries to give step-by-step advice on how to navigate all the obstacles they handled intuitively.
· Experts may offer advice that doesn’t meet your needs.
In addition to these concerns, some issues get tangled up with political or religious perspectives that make it difficult to know when an expert is really acting like an expert (and trying to help you) or when experts are speaking from their personal political allegiances. This is especially concerning when the issue is time-sensitive, as in the case of pandemic diseases like COVID-19.
Further still, sometimes whole fields of expertise give the wrong answer in a terrible way. Consider the field of medicine. Medical researchers have exploited people of colour, obstetricians have ignored medical decisions from women in labour, pharmaceutical corporations have conspired to increase addiction, and trans patients are routinely stigmatised or refused care. There are lots of reasons to be sceptical about experts. But it’s important to note that those reasons have nothing to do with expertise. The trouble comes because of the power experts have to put people in compromising positions and to use their positions in ways that harm others.
So in short while the MIT article does present factual points but also opinionated accounts of the marketing strategy used by Unplugged.
The hypothetical claims they make about the phones hardware/software gives me pause. As they didn’t test the phone themselves as the experts. Also why didn’t they update the article once the phone came out to then do a whole in-depth review of the device? They updated the article to provide quotes from the Unplugged spokesman but didn’t update it to also do an in-depth review of the phone hardware and software. Seems weird.
On the unplugged website they state here:
How can I trust Unplugged?
Unplugged has hired independent auditors to conduct periodic penetration tests on our platform’s security.
If you’re a cyber expert and still have doubts, we invite you to write to us or apply to participate in our White Hat Program, where you’ll get a chance to win prizes if you are able to detect any vulnerabilities in our hardware or software.
We also give qualified professionals the option to visit us at our R&D offices and perform a white room code review, so that you can see for yourself that we have no back doors.
Now Unplugged could be lying and saving face. But why has MIT not challenged that and then put in the article to show if Unplugged are truthful in their agreement for an audit etc.
These are just some things that gave me pause about the article as a whole.