Nobody has to learn everything, and 99.9% of information being sold is not actionable for the average person. There's a world of difference between treating experts as priests and considering what experts have to say while not blindingly believing them.
I'm saying that they neither need to know very much nor offload all their reasoning to someone else.
Plenty of experts speak inappropriately on topics outside their realm of expertise. The culture should encourage people to recognize when this happens and choose whether to dismiss the expert. A perfect example is many doctors, in particular M.D.s, who profess often foolish or obsolete views on things like nutrition, something which is not within the expertise of an M.D. The same goes for scientists commenting on politics, or science outside their domain of research. Or 20-something journalists making predictions about fields in which they've never actually practiced in. A significant amount of misinformation would be inoculated against with the recognition of misplaced authority and abuse of power.
It's called not being so gullible, and it doesn't take that much general knowledge that the average human brain can't grasp it. I'm sorry if it comes off as the expectation that individuals be the experts in many fields themselves, because if that's where our imagination keeps taking us, then maybe there really is no hope.
Nobody has to learn everything, and 99.9% of information being sold is not actionable for the average person. There's a world of difference between treating experts as priests and considering what experts have to say while not blindingly believing them.
I'm saying that they neither need to know very much nor offload all their reasoning to someone else.
Plenty of experts speak inappropriately on topics outside their realm of expertise. The culture should encourage people to recognize when this happens and choose whether to dismiss the expert. A perfect example is many doctors, in particular M.D.s, who profess often foolish or obsolete views on things like nutrition, something which is not within the expertise of an M.D. The same goes for scientists commenting on politics, or science outside their domain of research. Or 20-something journalists making predictions about fields in which they've never actually practiced in. A significant amount of misinformation would be inoculated against with the recognition of misplaced authority and abuse of power.
It's called not being so gullible, and it doesn't take that much general knowledge that the average human brain can't grasp it. I'm sorry if it comes off as the expectation that individuals be the experts in many fields themselves, because if that's where our imagination keeps taking us, then maybe there really is no hope.