[Alpharius]

Came across this piece earlier today and thought it was a pretty interesting read. It goes to the core of what I see a lot of people complaining about here on the RVF. What's the point of having someone who's studied or worked in a field giving their opinion if someone with less education in the subject or less experience in it have an equally valued say?

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Democracy denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It means, instead, that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other.

It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s,” because no one really lives that way. Imagine taking that attitude with your mechanic. (I would say “imagine taking that attitude with your doctor,” except people really do take that attitude with their doctors now.) Imagine you hear a rumble in your car, you go to the garage, and the mechanic says: “I think it’s the transmission.”

You say: “Well, I read a few issues of Popular Mechanics, and I listened to Car Talk, and I think it’s the carburetor.”

“But your car doesn’t have a carburetor,” the mechanic says.

“Says you,” comes the confident answer. At which point the mechanic will (or should) hand your keys back to you and tell you to pound sand.

Full piece written by Tom Nichols can be found here. Nichols expresses his frustration at the internet making every man an expert in everything, reducing the important role of experts in society. I figured some guys on this forum would appreciate this as guys often point out their expertise on a particular subject only to have someone cite a youtube video to discredit their years of research and work.

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More seriously, I wonder if we are witnessing the “death of expertise:” a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between students and teachers, knowers and wonderers, or even between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.

By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields.

Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live. A fair number of Americans now seem to reject the notion that one person is more likely to be right about something, due to education, experience, or other attributes of achievement, than any other.

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This ceaseless demand for information is especially frustrating, because people often reject the parts of whatever information an expert might provide if that information conflicts with their previously held beliefs. When they’re told something they don’t like, they reject what they’re hearing by saying “well, that’s not really evidence.”

Well, yes, it is. Moreover, the ordinary interlocutor in such debates isn’t really equipped to decide what constitutes “evidence” and what doesn’t...
Sometimes, all we are left with is to ask people to take our word on it, a request we’ve earned through experience, research, publication, service, etc.

He finishes the piece with some solid information on arguing with experts that I figured quite a few of the dudes here would appreciate.

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Anyway, expertise isn’t going away, but unless we return it to a healthy role in public policy, we’re going to have stupider and less productive arguments every day. So here’s a good set of rules of thumb when arguing with an expert:

1. The expert isn’t always right.
2. But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are.
3. Your opinions have value in terms of what you want to see happen, how you view justice and right. Your analysis as a layman has far less value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you think it is.
4. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, the expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than yours. At that point, you’re best served by listening, not carping and arguing.