What is the point at which I can trust myself?
peace,
As you know, there are many experts, with the most advanced degrees, with decades of experience and tens of thousands of operations accumulating experience, who are critically mistaken in their field of “expertise.” Such as Yair Golan, the former Deputy Chief of Staff, whose security concepts, in my opinion, are fundamentally wrong and lead to the complete opposite of security, and this is when my experience is zero compared to his.
There’s a psychology professor whose entire lecture I can listen to and feel like every word is nonsense, and that’s again when I don’t have any experience like them.
Today, for example, I heard Simcha Rothman speak on Channel 13 and he explained and reasoned with many explanations the issue of the Religious Zionist Party versus Yamina and I listened to everything but I simply felt that it was not true and all his claims were based on basic assumptions that I think are incorrect and of course I have no experience that even comes close to his experience in law and other things.
There are “super experts” in nutrition who have learned countless things in the field, and in my opinion, they are also wrong about many things.
So these are 4 examples and I’m sure if I think about it more I’ll come up with many more.
So the question is – what exactly is it inside me that seems to give me this assurance? That is – supposedly they are supposed to be right, and if they are not 100 percent right then by a high percentage. And again – sometimes I simply feel that everything is not true at all and I know that I am right, it is simply an internal feeling that I am right. That even though, for example, Yair Golan explains statistics and why the disengagement, for example, is actually good and all sorts of things like that, I simply feel that it is all nonsense dressed up.
And nutrition experts explain in depth combinations of carbohydrates and proteins and vegetables, etc. And even in this, I feel that of course there are things that need to be paid attention to, but in general, all this precision is not needed at all.
But where does this feeling come from that I, who don’t understand these fields, compared to the “experts” who have even *dedicated their entire lives* to the subjects in which they “specialize,” am right and they are wrong, sometimes wrong about absolutely everything, according to my feeling?
I hope the question is understandable….
The question is completely understandable. Experts should be treated with respect and suspicion. It is worth listening carefully to their words and considering them seriously, but certainly not accepting them just because the expert said so. In the end, there is common sense, although of course it can also mislead you, but the judge has only what his eyes see. Of course, the judge is also supposed to take into account this consideration itself: they asked experts and maybe I am missing something. And here he must take into account additional considerations, some of which I will list now.
It is important to distinguish between an expert who speaks within his field of expertise and an expert who goes beyond it (and sometimes even he himself, and certainly his listeners, do not notice this). I have given examples of this in my books God Plays Dice and The Science of Freedom, in which great experts speak absolute nonsense when dealing with the philosophy of their field of expertise. Sometimes they also bring positions that have not been scientifically well-tested but are based on one interpretation or approach out of several. Even then, the expert is not always aware of this and does not always mention it (in the field of nutrition this is very noticeable. There are major disagreements between different approaches there).
Beyond that, there are areas where there really is no expertise. In the military field, for example, I think there is no expertise. It’s a show of hands. There is expertise in how to carry out a particular operation, military strategy, familiarity with various weapons of war, and so on. But policy and general security considerations are not a matter for experts. It’s no wonder that you see the agenda of every such expert through his opinion, and on every question you can find “experts” who will say this or that. Ben-Gurion already said that experts are experts in what was and not what will be. He was of course talking about experts in history and political science and the like, and not about doctors, mathematicians, or physicists. These are fields in which there is real expertise. I would not recommend that you disagree with a clear medical position (if you don’t have a doctor who disagrees with your doctor) and certainly not with the position of a physicist, mathematician, biologist, or chemist, when they express themselves in their field (because they too often deviate). Whether you see that there is an influence of an agenda is another matter, and I have already mentioned the examples above. But don’t forget that you yourself are also influenced by your agenda. And sometimes what seems nonsense to you is because you yourself have an agenda that is misleading you.
See also here: https://mikyab.net/posts/63841
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