‘Experts’ Know Less than They Think

Occasionally I hear credentialed professionals with prestigious titles whine about the so-called “war on expertise.”  It really bothers people who see themselves as “experts” that a growing share of society ignores them.  A psychologist might intuit something revealing from the lack of self-confidence plaguing our “expert” class.  If all the fancy degrees, voluminous curricula vitae, and lofty career positions have failed to instill a resilient modicum of self-esteem, then perhaps all those things are not the true measures of a person’s worth.

“Experts” do not like to be challenged.  They say things such as, “I have a PhD in this,” or, “I get paid a lot of money to talk about that,” and expect everybody listening to stop thinking and immediately agree with everything the “expert” has to say.

I once witnessed a young “race studies” professor intrude into an online debate and tell everyone that she was correct and everybody else was wrong.  Her evidence?  She cited the costs of her education, her recent promotion, and her new annual salary.  Traditionally, that’s considered a specific kind of logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority.  When appeals to “expertise” replace reason and rationality, false conclusions are more easily justified.

We have been living in an era rife with appeals to authority masquerading as truth.  In fact, I came across something hilariously unsurprising as I was writing this essay.  Because Internet search engines no longer operate as research tools but rather as propaganda aggregators, I often have to peruse many pages of search results before I find topical and pertinent sources.  Leftwing disinformation index Wikipedia routinely receives prime placement for any online query.  I decided to check how the propagandists at Wikipedia describe appeals to authority these days, and the editors did not disappoint (someone as cynical as I):

“While all sources agree this is not a valid form of logical proof, and therefore, obtaining knowledge in this way is fallible, there is disagreement on the general extent to which it is fallible — historically, opinion on the appeal to authority has been divided: it is listed as a non-fallacious argument as often as a fallacious argument in various sources.”  My sides, they hurt so much as I laugh uncontrollably!  Then Wikipedia’s meaningless equivocation ends with this gem: “Some consider it a practical and sound way of obtaining knowledge that is generally likely to be correct when the authority is real.”

There you go, kids!  So long as the “authority” is “real,” it’s quite “practical” and “sound” to hand your brain over to the resident “expert” or AI machine and let he/she/it do your thinking for you!  It’s not a “logical fallacy” if the “authority” says it’s not!  How very twenty-first-century of the 1984-like censors, history rewriters, and information warfare specialists who manage the world’s “free” encyclopedia.  Wikipedia may be “free,” but it still levies a steep tax.  The “price” of offshoring one’s thinking to “experts” is a life filled with few cogent thoughts.  That’s too high of a cost for any human seeking wisdom.

Appeals to authority are often absurd.  Since the mid-twentieth-century, most of the handsome or beautiful news anchors who tell the world what to believe have been empty-headed script-readers with subpar intellects (Hello, Dan Rather!).  According to renowned climate scientist Al Gore, Miami and Manhattan should have spent the last decade submerged under ten feet of water.  At the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, then-fifteen-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg told world leaders that they were “not mature enough to tell it like it is.”

Those world leaders — prone to lean directly into appeals to authority themselves — immediately told the planet’s youngest generations to listen to the Swedish teenager if they wanted to survive the carbon apocalypse.  Similarly, noted virologist Bill Gates (I forget: Does he have Nobels in both chemistry and medicine?) assured us that we would all die unless we allowed his corporate friends to inject us regularly with experimental serums and did everything government officials say.  All the very smartest people spent at least two years telling us that only totalitarianism and censorship could save us from COVID.

It may be absurd to mindlessly trust the “expertise” of Dan Rather, Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and Bill Gates, but it’s no less dangerous to mindlessly trust the “expertise” of someone whom Wikipedia would no doubt describe as a “real authority.”  Dr. Anthony Fauci has all the credentials that people who enjoy credentials salivate over.  He has a medical degree.  He has a trophy room full of awards.  He’s a member of the best institutions.  He was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly forty years, for goodness’ sake!  Wasn’t he even the highest paid employee in the federal government?  Money, accolades, social status — Fauci has it all.  His prestige drips with prestige.

Yet he told us that COVID couldn’t possibly have come from a Chinese bio-lab (that he and his associates partially funded).  He told us that experimental mRNA “vaccines” would prevent infection…er, reduce spread…er, make symptoms less severe.  He told us that natural immunity was no good (because the pharmaceutical companies can’t profit from that).  He told us to wear one mask (cloth or paper or whatever), then two masks, then three masks, then three masks and a plastic shield.  He told us that small businesses should close their doors, but that “critical” businesses — such as Walmart — should remain open.  He told us that kids should be kept out of school…but perhaps they’d be safe behind plexiglass walls…so long as the powerful heads of public school teachers’ unions thought that “science” was sound.

And plenty of people around the world (including America’s cult of “authority”-worshiping Karens and government-worshiping Democrats) admired Fauci’s lustrous prestige, ignored his illogical and contradictory pronouncements, and did whatever he said.

That’s the danger with appeals to authority.  When you hand your brain to third-parties, don’t be surprised to discover that “experts” value your life less than you do.

Europeans are learning this lesson the hard way right now.  For decades, the “elites” have shunned hydrocarbon energies and made their economies too dependent upon unreliable wind and solar alternatives.  European “authorities” decommissioned nuclear power plants, even though doing so meant that European industries became more dependent upon Russian natural gas.

Then came the War in Ukraine and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.  Eventually, Ukraine’s martial-law-holdover-president/dictator, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blocked oil deliveries from Russia through the Druzhba pipeline to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Germany.  And President Trump’s strikes on Iran made it much more difficult for Europe to obtain critical hydrocarbons from the Middle East.

European “authorities” have spent decades using the “global warming” hobgoblin to scare the public into accepting expensive and unreliable sources of energy whose use will do nothing to “save the planet.”  Those “authorities” have managed, however, to cripple most European industries and make Europe’s cost of living prohibitively expensive.

Inevitably, whenever I even passingly mention Ukraine President/Dictator Zelenskyy, some unhappy readers call me names.  Regular commenter “Megan Draper, M.S.” recently wondered, “how much money the Russian government” must be giving me.  Another commenter going by the handle “asherpat” implied that I am “a Russian influencing agent.”  Putting aside their casual libel, I will point out that both commenters employ another kind of logical fallacy: appeal to ridicule.  Although besmirching my character is one way to counter my arguments, it is not one based on solid reasoning.

I suggest that all authorities be challenged regardless of their credentials.  Just as degrees are incomplete measures of one’s education, titles of “authority” are poor substitutes for wisdom.  It is our capacity for reasoned debate that helps us separate the wheat from the chaff.