Experts and vested interests

How do you approach the advice of experts? Allan Catlin says in particular with the internet as a massive noticeboard of opinions, facts and fantasies we have to make sure we stay critical and look at the big picture.

The old joke defines an expert as made up of its parts, where ‘x’ is an unknown quantity and a ‘spurt’ is a drip under pressure. Many a politician and public figure bears this out, especially when he or she has been promoted to a new department or given a new job portfolio. The temptation to believe the title is all that is needed to make you superior and better informed than everyone else is easy to fall into. Stay open minded, both speaker and listener.

I do not doubt that the opinions of experts and those with vested interests can bring about long needed change, development and improvements to our understanding of life and our life experiences. However, we would be wise to be careful that we don’t take their advice out of context, nor on its own. Always look at the big picture. Where does this advice belong? The big picture will help us to fit such advice into the right place and to reject what doesn’t fit. Ask yourself a few questions first. Who will benefit? Mankind? The earth? Or just the expert’s bank balance? Is the advisor connected to any group, radical or political? How does that information affect you? Beware!  Is the advice actually for sale? Or is it offered in a genuine spirit of helpfulness? Is any corroborating evidence quoted that you can easily check? If so, it must be reliable and verifiable.

Should it appear to be just an opinion, place it in a basket with all other opinions that you can check later or decide, on reflection, to reject. It’s worth noting that ten people giving the same advice could be connected, working for the same company or cause. One dissenter should also not be cast aside without follow-up. You may find twenty more. Squeaky wheels do make the most noise. If you can find an opposite opinion, you can investigate both in order to make up your own mind.

Sometimes we may find ourselves agreeing with an expert, perhaps because we want to believe the advice to be true. We are now in danger of ignoring all the checks and balances we would normally apply. That is of course a decision you may take, but bear in mind later that you had a choice. Self- delusion may hurt more if it turns out poorly for you. Such decisions can be the worst because we each have long held beliefs which we see no need to question. We thus may pay scant attention to any evidence, even if it is right before our eyes, because we don’t need or want convincing. It doesn’t hurt to question ourselves occasionally.

The internet is a massive noticeboard of opinions, facts and fantasies on every topic imaginable. Just Google it. It’s all free and often freely given. It is easy to find eighty or ninety percent of “customer reviews” stating how poorly a product has performed. The net has given us an easy way to vent our spleen when something goes wrong. Google the website and have your say, with no apparent need to be grammatically correct or even to spell correctly. It might take just five minutes. Sadly, if other people are happy with the exact same product they rarely bother to go online to say so. Hence the verdict is likely unscientific, given the small and probably biased sample.  It represents a small number of people who have purchased this item out of possibly hundreds. People allot stars according to their own system. Three out of five stars may mean a product is good for some people but unacceptable for others. I personally am reluctant to assign five stars to anything because my brain says there is a tiny flaw here or there. But to me, four stars says the product is as good as they come and worth the money. Others won’t accept anything less than five stars.

The world has thousands of view-points on thousands of topics, from race to religion, from climate change to the deniers, from socialists to democrats, rich to poor, haves to have-nots, and so on ad finitum. The need for tolerance and understanding, for achieving consensus rather than a simple majority decision-making process, has become more important as the world evolves. Experts tell us to crush the opposition, not talk to them. Would experts prefer to divide the world? Why not try to unite it? The world seems to have become overwhelmingly politicised. Politicians seem to believe that they need to be black or white, Liberal or Labour, left or right. They toe the party line for fear of losing an election rather than seek out opposing arguments, facts and findings.

This is, of course, just my opinion, which you should check out for yourself before accepting or rejecting it.