The Proper Place of Experts

              A dictionary defines an expert as one who is “proficient through practice or special training.”  An expert in metallurgy, for example, has spent years studying and experimenting with the properties of metals, and can determine the best way in which metal may be produced, heat treated, tempered, and put to use.  If a self-proclaimed expert of metallurgy predicts a given property of a given metal after a given treatment, and it misses the mark the would-be expert is dismissed as being incompetent.  Metallurgy is a branch of science that is built upon the verifiable and repeatable experimentation of hundreds of practitioners.  One may, it is reasonable to say, be an expert in metallurgy.

              Experts are useful and essential in a time of rapidly changing technology.  Experts have status; they are apart from other people.  In their respective fields their proclamations are taken seriously.  Indeed, a non-expert’s opinion or statement on a given subject would be ignored given the availability of an expert to issue a proclamation on the same subject.  If a manufacturer of airplanes, for example, wants to know what alloy to use for the fuselage of a new plane a metallurgist is consulted.  No one in their right mind would leave the decision to one who has no particular knowledge of metal.   If one is an expert their statements and opinions over ride those of the common man.  In short, there is a sort of rule-by-experts in their respective fields.

              If one wants to be taken seriously in a given field they become an expert.   To be an expert one must have knowledge, experience, and skill in that field that separates them from the common man.  For some subjects, such as metallurgy, obviously one may be an expert as it is based on bona fide science (i.e., verify or fail to verify a hypothesis based on statistically significant controlled experiments with control groups).  Other subjects, such as history, may have experts as well, with their knowledge based on the recorded histories of the centuries which are honestly believed to be based on actual facts as they can best be verified and corroborated given the sources available.  

              But what of experts who have neither skill nor experience and whose knowledge is not based on historical fact and is not based on bona fide science?  Could an astronomer be expert on planets which are still unknown?  Could one be an expert on animals that have not yet been discovered?   Could one be an expert on how to plant a tree that grows dollar bills for leaves?  Could one be an expert on a subject that there is no conceivable method of obtaining exact knowledge?  Could our metallurgist be an expert on a metal that has yet to be invented? 

              Some become experts by gaining knowledge by studying the research of others.  Research does not, any more, necessarily mean to study history, or to engage in bona fide scientific studies; it may simply mean to read the opinion of someone else, who based their opinion on someone else’s opinion, who based their opinion on someone else’s opinion, ad infinium.  To be an expert in unsubstantiated opinions is a worthless oxymoron at best, and a danger at worst, as eventually unsubstantiated opinions become “well known fact” by the force of repetition by self-proclaimed experts.  It is often said “that studies show,” but it would be more accurate to say that several opinions have been published.  A body of research which was ultimately created from nothing means nothing, no matter if the researcher wears a tweed jacket and smokes a pipe and holds a doctorial degree or not.

              But why would one try to become an expert on a subject that one can not really be expert on?  Power.  Experts have power over the layman.  A metallurgy expert has power over metal related decisions.  An expert on the Civil War is consulted when one wants to know about the war; they have power over the current understanding of the war.  Fair enough; in fact, good for them.  But what if one wants power and has an axe to grind so to speak, and has no qualifications to be an expert in a field in which no one will ever have particularly unique qualifications over anyone else?  Given some doctorial degrees and some large words entirely new categories of expertise can arise out of nothing so people can be experts on anything.  Perhaps the best way to test the validity of expertise is to use some simple words to define the expert.  In fact, put every thing in simple words.  There is nothing sneakier than for bone-headed ideas to hide behind than large words.  For example, restate the following experts in simple words:

• Metallurgy Expert = One who can tell you how to process a given metal so that it has certain physical properties.  Will be correct all or most of the time. 

• Oldsmobile Expert = One who is well versed in the actual history of automobiles that wore the Oldsmobile badge. 

• Criminal Psychologist = One who wants power over who is put in jail and for how long, and who will be released into a neighborhood that they do not live in.

• Bioethicist = One says it is alright to kill others or ‘allow’ them to live, or clone them, or ‘harvest’ their organs while they are still living, after deciding what their life is worth based on materialistic philosophy. 

            If someone declared himself to be an expert on unknown planets, or to be an expert on how wrapping one’s head in tin foil can protect oneself from Martians, or to be an expert on what you want for lunch (even though you really don’t like what they claim you want for lunch), he would dismissed as a harmless crank.  But stuff a degree down his pants and give him an obscure vocabulary and a journal of opinions from other such cranks and all of a sudden they have traction.  The existence of a college degree merely means that students will plunk down their, or probably someone else’s, money because it is fun to study or might make a good career.  A degree in fill-in-the-blank-ethics was given by the same university that just granted someone else a degree in golf course management and has classes that study the literature of rock and roll songs.  A hundred years ago they had classes in Psychological Introspection and ten years ago they had programs in Autistic Facilitated Communication, both of which were abandoned after demonstrating themselves to be utter non-sense (but only after Autistic Facilitated Communication experts sent several innocent people to jail based on their self-proclaimed expertise).         

            In the face of rising technology people had to hand decisions to experts; the problem is that self-proclaimed experts without relevant and without unique knowledge not known by laymen started standing in line to take over decisions that anyone with common sense would be better qualified to make.  Of course, to make one’s own decisions is not always easy—how convenient to turn over hard choices to an anonymous expert.  The test for accepting or rejecting the opinion of an expert should be as follows:

1.       Does this person have knowledge of this topic that I do not?  Is it knowledge based on the scientific method, based on bona fide history, or it is simply a Chinese fire drill of unsubstantiated opinions—written in big words in journals that people do not read—by people who want power to feed an ego? 

2.       Is it even possible for anyone to have the knowledge that they claim to have?  Can it be verified in any meaningful way?  If someone claims to be able to predict whether or not a human predator will prey on society again, what is their past success rate?  “Not fair” will be the response.  “By their fruits you will know them”, and some of their fruit is rotten to the core every time.  Others simply say what is convenient, or what agrees with the spirit of the age.  Saying that, for example, death by starvation is “peaceful” is so ignorant and asinine as to qualify as meaningless babble.  How in the world would they know?    

3.       Would knowledge of that topic, if it exists, be relevant?  If the question is whether or not I like Shakespeare, the only one who can answer that is I; it would be meaningless to involve a Shakespeare expert as their knowledge of the back ground of sonnets and plays may be impressive but it would be irrelevant to the question at hand.  Beware of non-sequiturs.        

4.       Is it a question of technical details or of morals?  An expert may know all about how bombs are made, but that expertise has nothing to say whether or not it is justified to drop those bombs on another country.  Physicians take note: the knowledge and skill to heal or to kill does not imbue one with expertise over whether to do the former over the latter. 

5.       Anyone who claims that this time right and wrong are different is a fake.  One can not claim that there is no fixed right and wrong and then claim to be right on anything, for then there would be no right and no wrong at all.  Even something that is relative has to be relative to something that is fixed; otherwise it is not even relative, but aimlessly adrift like a dead fish.  If there is a moral law at all it is fixed and universal, otherwise it comes down to the convenience of the stronger party.  Why should they play by the rules if there are not any?  If there are rules then from where do they come from if not from a supreme law giver?  If the rules are simply those that help society function (let us assume that it should, and that is debatable), then who is to say that functioning in one manner is better than another?  And is that a good thing, to yield all to the common ‘good’?  What would ‘good’ be?  Can some enjoy the ‘good’ more than others?  If it is majority rule, then what of the minority?  Are they for dinner?  Why not?  A perfectly pragmatic and efficient society would be an unbearable nightmare; the lucky ones would the first of the many to die.  Individuals of varying abilities are only equal if they are equal in the sight of a supreme law giver, otherwise it would be perfectly reasonable to commit genocide, to enslave a race or an individual that can be enslaved, to kill the weak and the infirm as a mater of routine, and for philosopher kings to rule the land—for the greater good of everyone else who is capable of appreciating such ‘good’, of course.  Those who discard religion as the source of morality are sawing off a tree branch while sitting on the wrong side of the saw bade: they are not sawing off something antiquated and useless, they are sawing off their only means of support—whether they want to admit to it or not—and when it is gone they will fall into a bottomless pit.  They are ignorant parasites.