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Last Updated on: 14th February 2025, 12:01 am
We are in a royal freakin’ mess. The world is more complicated than ever. We use and are surrounded by more things that we don’t understand than ever before. Information overload is so last decade — now we’re absolutely drowning in information and misinformation, probably more the latter than the former. One would think that in such times, we would be more inclined to turn to experts for help understanding the world. Instead, it seems the opposite is true for much of the population. People want simple solutions from loud leaders who say they will solve all of our problems because they are simply “the best at cutting through the crap.” But this distrust of experts is also something that has long been cultivated and nourished for clear and deceitful reasons. And, believe it or not, it’s stupid.
We’re supposed to “learn to think for ourselves” and “do our own research.” But what does that mean in practice? Does that mean putting hours and hours — or years and years — of research and discussion in before making a decision on a matter, or making a big, bold claim about a topic? Or does it mean spending 15 minutes (max) superficially learning about a new subject through filtered, biased sources that have risen to the top of a rage-algorithm and then assuming we know more than people who have spent 30 years in the field? How much time “learning” do you think it takes before a person believes they know better than an expert in the field who they’re not naturally inclined to agree with? I imagine the amount of time varies from about 30 seconds to about 10 hours, depending on the person. At some point, learning more and more about a subject should help you to see how much you don’t know and also how much your initial assumptions were not right, helping to humble you (ideally) enough to defer to experts. Unfortunately, too many people these days are extremely eager to assume they know better than the experts. The experts, after all, are clouded with institutional bias, groupthink, echo chambers, their inability to look outside the box, their financial motives, etc. “The experts never see breakthroughs and disruption coming, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
A great regular reader and commentator wrote today, “Yes, the dumbing down of this country over the past several to many decades has been enormously successful. We are now a deeply stupid and selfish people, education is misrepresented as liberal indoctrination, and the ability and inclination to think critically is not just skipped over, it’s now been villainized.”
That first sentence is something I’ll come back to in a moment, because there is no doubt about it — this has been intentional by a number of groups, some bigger and more influential than others.
First, though, let’s acknowledge the small truth that exists within the bigger claim. Experts do sometimes get it wrong. Disruptions occur that many experts were not prepared for. Covering the EV industry for 13 years, I have seen countless automobile industry experts say stupid, incorrect things (because they don’t understand EVs or the EV market). There are all kinds of ways medical science has evolved. Cigarettes were once prescribed to pregnant ladies. I was raised in a kind of anti-establishment, the-“experts”-are-wrong way. I understand the mentality and have heard countless arguments and examples. However, on any given matter, does it make more sense to trust someone who has spent years in the field or someone who has spent a little bit of time learning a few things? Should you trust your own hunches and theories about what’s wrong with your pet or should you trust a veterinarian? Should you trust your friend to try open-heart surgery on you or go to a doctor? Would you rather drive across a bridge designed by engineers or one designed by your smartest DIY friend?
Also, if you’ve decided you can’t trust the experts for some reason and you at least acknowledge you don’t know enough about a subject yourself, who are you trusting when it comes to making a decision or having an opinion on something — expert non-experts? Often, people are trusting someone in order to come to their opinion. Narratives are powerful, and with the right narrative, many will quickly assume that a critic of the experts knows more than the experts. The experts are all just corrupt and biased, remember? Don’t consider that the critics often lack a lot of insight and context, or have their own biased motives. On that matter, attacks on climate scientists by fossil fuel industries are well established — and still occurring and effective. Unfortunately, some Christian groups have been attacking scientists, and experts across the board, for decades because of disagreements around evolution. Natural, instinctive concerns for one’s babies and children — along with some mistakes in the past — have also led to quite widespread distrust of vaccines and doctors.
“The experts can’t be trusted” now apparently means firing a bunch of experts and assuming they were useless. Where does that leave us? Rather than letting experts guide us, we are increasingly choosing to say, “F*** the experts, I trust Chad!” Maybe that will be the right choice 1 out of 50 times and you can say, “See! Chad knew better!” However, if that’s the wrong choice 49 out of 50 times, that’s not good.
The United States became a great and wealthy nation in part from a reverence for science, in part from the ideal of unbiased and uncorrupted decision making, and in part from massive trust in each other and in our institutions. The United States is slowly eroding as we discredit science, demonize experts, and only trust “our side.”
We are doomed to failure if we are going to keep going down this road. But it’s hard to see how we are going to get off this road.
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