Category: expertise

Faith in Expertise

Expert

noun

ex·​pert: one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject

adjective

1: having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience

There seems to be a lot of conversation about what constitutes expertise in the world today, and who or what can lay claim to mastery of a particular subject matter, and how one earns that mastery. I included the definition of the word, because it is as good a place to start at any. Note the words: special skill or knowledge, displaying a qualified skill DERIVED from training or experience. Here is where is gets really sticky for me. The availability of information out there, claiming knowledge, mastery, special skill is just mind boggling…and often times not based in someone who has a special skill, knowledge or practical proof of its application in the real world, i.e. just because you have a website, watched a bunch of videos or podcasts, or took a training course, or are part of whatever group that bestows a title like the wizard of OZ… it does not necessarily make you an expert.

So what does? Well I personally believe it must include a shit ton of hard work. The actual work, whether it is in an academic setting, an apprenticeship, real life experience of climbing up a ladder that includes rigorous study, and experiencing different aspects of a chosen field of expertise that is rooted in hard work, trial and error. And in particular, learning from failure. Failure is an essential quality of becoming an expert at something. If you haven’t failed, and then learned from that failure, and still claim to be an expert, then you are full of shit. I say that harshly, because I am sick of people who skip the hard middle unglamorous part and jump to the end without fault, failure, or effort and claim mastery of a skill, especially without listening to or learning from other experts. its just not realistic. I, in particular, have failed a lot, and I learned from those failures a lot. Thankfully, I was raised to believe that failure could be my greatest tool for advancement if I took responsibility and learned from it, and my teachers always appreciated my diving in whole hog and not giving up even when I landed on my face, and I did…a lot. As a result, I have mastered several skills, and the result? While I know I have performed well in all of them, one of my greatest insights is that the more I know, the more I become aware of how much more I don’t know. And while humbling, it doesn’t render null and void what I have learned, it just means that developing expertise never ends. As my dad used to say, faith in anything unchallenged is dead.

So now that I have decried all the fake experts out there, I also want to take a moment to decry all those true experts out there who have twisted the mastery of their skill as a weapon against those who have put their trust in them. I don’t mean those who have without malice led someone astray, but who have done so because they could exploit their ignorance, manipulate their weaknesses and profit off a desire for power, money, fame or whatever for their own gain. I think that is also a reason why people have a mistrust for those who claim to have their best interest, and have suffered harm as a result.

The way around dealing with the failure of some experts is not, however, to decry them all, or pretend that anybody can do anything they want under the guise of expertise because they think they can do a better job. I think many skills are not transferable. You would never use a plumber to do an appendectomy, or a CPA to teach first grade (and for any of you out there who think teaching is something anyone can do…I hope you have the experience of that…they will rightly eat you alive). In particular for me, I get super pissed at people who dismiss a college education as a mechanism of indoctrination. That is such bullshit. I experienced the exact opposite of that in my many degrees (and if you think I’m simply bragging, fuck off, I earned four) The experts I learned from challenged me on material that first appeared either impossible or berated me on a conclusion on a something I thought obvious rather than research different angles of the issue. As a result of practice, research, and learning and mentoring with those who had already done the work of becoming an expert, I became one myself, with my own unique approach. I didn’t just earn high marks for regurgitating material…I used my own mind, thought processes, and input from actual experts to hone my skill. So excuse me if I get pissed off when someone who either never went to college, or had an aversion to being challenged comes to a conclusion like that just because it didn’t work for them. I would expect the same derision from someone who is an expert in a trade, or non academic skill, if someone judged their training because they didn’t want to do the hard middle part of honing a skill, or even worse yet, didn’t even believe it WAS a skill. I’d want to say fuck off to them too.

Lastly, and it must be said…making the most money at something does not make you a greater, smarter or skilled expert than anybody else. Money isn’t necessarily proof that you are better skilled than someone else (unless perhaps the skill is making money, and even that can be bypassed if, well, you’re a criminal). Some of the least skilled experts I know have made more money than some of the most skilled experts I know (and it works vis versa too, but in this day and age, having money and power are too often mistaken for expertise).

So what do we do? We pay attention to the effort someone has put into their expertise and its application in the real world. We take the time to see if we are just being fed what we want, or what we really need from an expert for our benefit as much as theirs. We have to look at the fruits of their labor. I know that’s a pretty vague answer, but it is a place to start. We have to have faith in the journey and the work that it takes to have a skill, and not cut corners just to proclaim to the world you’ve won the prize.

Expert Witness

Graduation-CapYesterday was one of those days when I had just had enough.  Enough of those biting facebook pre-fab pictures with the pithy sarcastic quotes, be it about a sports team, or personal politics; enough of comments from actual people who fall into the category of “it’s true because I read about it on the internet”, or “my friends brother had a cousin who did this and it worked awesome…”; enough of people who think they know everything about a health issue because they saw it on Dr Oz.  Without wanting to sound judgmental ..No wait, that was the old me…in my kindest and gentlest way let me  say  JUST STOP IT!  Having easy access to so much information isn’t always a good thing.  While everyone gets to have an opinion… and having the freedom to express ideas is one of the things I love about this country, here is the proverbial but….not every opinion is weighted the same, some are more well-formed and researched than others, some are just mean, and ummm, yeah some are just mean.

We need experts, people who have taken the time and energy to study and learn about a subject and can then benefit the rest of us from what they’ve learned.  Quite frankly, though, we have lost the ability to appreciate who they really are…PERIOD!  I would hope that most people, when going to all that trouble to share an opinion, would like to be accurate about what comes out of their mouths.  I know my teenage sons think they are experts.   Much of the time they are far from accurate.  I know, I know, welcome to adolescence which is  my first field of expertise… I should know better.  While I may understand them,  I also feel responsible as a parent to teach them how to formulate a well-educated opinion.  Thinking you know it all will never make it so, even if there is a legion of people behind you who think the same way.  When my boys tell me how frustrated they get when I don’t listen to them, or believe them, it is because A) I have already done the painstakingly difficult work of becoming an expert in the field that they are presently choosing to dismiss with such reckless abandon, or B) or I dismiss it because they saw it on a podcast or other questionable source, and my ears just don’t do stupid anymore.  Silence will always be better than stupid in my book.  Yet I do hear them.  I love their passion, but I won’t tolerate their ignorance, especially when it makes my ears bleed.  I will never ask them to regurgitate my ideas.  I want them to have their own opinions, and they do…many in opposition to mine.  I just  WANT THEM  TO DO THE WORK TO FORMULATE A BALANCED AND WELL RESEARCHED OPINION FIRST!  I want my sons to behave as reasonable people attempting to develop well thought out opinions based on factual information, from both sides of an idea, not opinions that are presented as factual information by pseudo experts who have their own agenda to pursue.  And let me tell you, it is an uphill battle when they watch the behavior of some adults who should know better.  Having a strong opinion is a very good thing.  But it is a very bad thing to expect that everyone else should agree with you, or belittle them when they don’t, especially if you haven’t done your homework.  There were plenty of examples of that kind of ignorance in any daily news cycle.

I have strong opinions…surprise, surprise.  I was taught to do my research, listen to real experts and as much as possible,  see an opposing viewpoint from another’s perspective, by sincerely asking them questions to try to figure out why they think the way they do.  Walking in someone else’s shoes, while very difficult, is also an enlightening experience.  Most importantly, for me anyway, is creating a foundation through higher education.  The experts in law, public policy, theology, economics, literature etc. who I studied under, never tried to indoctrinate me, rather facilitated a necessary dismantling of my ignorance, of sorts, and challenged me to re configured a smarter and wiser version.  The great thing I’ve discovered from having such a strong academic background is that the more I know, the more I realize there is to learn and understand.  More importantly, I learned that no real expert is afraid of not knowing every answer, because they are enthused and challenged to find the answer.

And yet I am also aware of how many experts have betrayed the trust of the many….that will have to be for another post, and a lot more research…..