Q&A: What Is the Basis on Which I Can Rely on Myself
What Is the Basis on Which I Can Rely on Myself
Question
Hello,
As is well known, there are very many experts, with the most advanced degrees, with decades of experience and tens of thousands of actions building up experience, who make critical mistakes in their field of “expertise.” For example, Yair Golan, the former Deputy Chief of Staff, whose security views, in my opinion, are fundamentally wrong and lead to the exact opposite of security—and that’s when my own experience is negligible compared to his.
There are psychology professors whose entire lecture I can listen to and feel that every word is nonsense, again despite the fact that I have none of their experience.
Today, for example, I heard Simcha Rothman speaking on Channel 13, and he explained and argued at length about the Religious Zionism party versus Yamina. I listened to everything, but I simply felt it wasn’t right, and that all his arguments were based on assumptions that, in my opinion, are incorrect—and of course I have no experience that even comes close to his in law and other things.
There are top “experts” in nutrition who have studied countless things in the field, and in my opinion they too are wrong about many things.
So those are four examples, and if I think more I’ll probably come up with many more.
So the question is: what exactly is that thing inside me that seemingly gives me this certainty? Meaning: supposedly they ought to be right, and if not 100% right then at least right to a high degree. And again—sometimes I simply feel that none of it is right at all, and I know that I’m right; it’s just an inner feeling that I’m right. For example, even when Yair Golan explains statistics and why the disengagement was supposedly a good thing, and things like that, I simply feel that it’s all complete nonsense.
And nutrition experts explain in depth combinations of carbohydrates and proteins and this vegetable and that vegetable and so on, and there too I feel that of course there are things one should pay attention to, but generally speaking there’s no need for all these precise details at all.
But where does this feeling come from—that I, who don’t understand these areas compared to the “experts,” who have even *devoted their entire lives* to the subjects in which they “specialize,” am right and they are wrong, sometimes wrong about absolutely everything, according to how it feels to me?
I hope the question is understandable….
Answer
The question is completely understandable. With regard to experts, one should adopt the attitude of “respect them, but suspect them.” It is worth listening carefully to what they say and weighing it seriously, but definitely not accepting it just because an expert said it. In the end, there is such a thing as common sense, although of course it too can mislead you—but a judge has only what his eyes can see. Of course, the judge is also supposed to take this very consideration into account: these are experts, and perhaps I’m missing something. And here he must also take other considerations into account, some of which I will mention 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 gave examples of this in my books God Plays Dice and The Sciences of Freedom, where great experts speak utter nonsense when they deal with the philosophy of their field of work. Sometimes they also present positions that have not been well tested scientifically but are based on interpretation or on one approach among several. In that case too, the expert is not always aware of this and does not always point it out (in nutrition this is very prominent. There are major disputes there between different approaches).
Beyond that, there are fields in which there is no real expertise. In the military sphere, for example, in my opinion there is no expertise. It is an illusion. There is expertise in how to carry out a specific action, military strategy, familiarity with different weapons systems, and the like. But policy and general security considerations are not a matter for experts. It is no wonder that you can see each such expert’s agenda through his professional opinion, and on every question you can find “experts” who will say this or the opposite. Ben-Gurion already said that experts are experts in what was, not in what will be. He was of course speaking about experts in history and political science and the like, not doctors, mathematicians, or physicists. Those are fields in which there is real expertise. I would not recommend that you dispute a clear medical position (if you do not have a doctor who disagrees with your doctor), and certainly not the position of a physicist, mathematician, biologist, or chemist when they speak within their field (because they too often go beyond it). If you see that there is an influence of agenda, that is a different matter, and I already mentioned examples above. But do not forget that you yourself are also influenced by your own agenda. And sometimes what seems like nonsense to you is because you yourself have an agenda that biases you.
See also here: https://mikyab.net/posts/63841