The Importance of Inexpert Opinion

I was out with a friend for lunch the other day (yeah, I still have a few of those left). This friend leans more to the liberal side of things. He certainly doesn’t care for Trump, is a vax advocate, etc. A very nice guy, I have to say—a superb artist, an excellent father, and just a good all-around person. I won’t go off on a tangent here, but sheep types typically are not bad people. Many of them can be just like us, only asleep. Anyway, I digress.

Needless to say, our conversation focused on music and other safe subjects and didn’t venture into the dark zone of world politics, public health, and the like. But he did say one thing that got me thinking. It’s something you hear often, and usually when you hear it, the person saying it is rather livid. They just can’t believe it, and they present it as if it is one of the main reasons the world is going to shit. Here it is:

“Why does everyone think they are an expert and run off at the mouth all of the time? Why can’t they just shut up and listen to the people who know what they’re talking about?”

Quite frankly, I hear this from shrew and sheep alike (though more from sheep, actually—at least they seem more angry about it than shrews do).

One of my pet peeves over the years is seeing headlines like “Scientists Discover!” or “Experts Agree!” or some other equally breathless proclamation that suggests only “scientists” can discover something and only “experts” can have anything important to say. What about all the very important discoveries that trained scientists did not discover? The wheel? Fire-making techniques? Countless effective folk remedies? Even modern examples like the microwave oven and Post-it notes?

Screw the scientists and screw the experts. What about Grandma? Or Joe the auto mechanic? Or Bob next door—the guy working ten hours a day out in his garden, nurturing his roses? Doesn’t he know something worth hearing?

Sad to say, this sustained effort to train us to believe that only certain sanctioned people are allowed to speak to us is clearly part of the agenda. And whenever it comes up in conversation, it makes my blood boil.

Now, there is a flip side to this as well. I am not a fan of putting all of my eggs in the basket of someone who is not informed or has not done their homework. I don’t necessarily believe that Joe the mechanic knows how to treat my chronic back pain—but he might. That is the key element to what I am saying. Average, everyday people may know something useful.

In our complicated world, though, this “common sense” knowledge does become less and less likely to be beneficial when applied to highly technical matters. I doubt many people intuitively know how to fix a cell phone if it goes on the fritz, but that doesn’t mean they can’t express an opinion about it. I can’t tell you the number of times a suggestion my wife makes about remedying some weird computer issue has actually fixed the problem. Maybe it’s voodoo and has little causal reason behind it, but it will often work.

Still, there is a continuing problem: many people don’t bother to learn even basic things about a situation they are confronted with. This is where our shrew mantra “do your research” comes in. I don’t think we expect sheep-types to learn all of the intricacies necessary to come up with valid and useful opinions based on truth and facts, but we do expect them to know the basic things so their instincts are based more on what is actually happening rather than some fabrication (or outright lies) the agenda has fed them in order to form an opinion that aligns with its intentions.

The irony here is that the sheep-types don’t keep their uninformed, inexpert mouths shut either. They babble on with the story that the agenda has presented to them. The agenda gives the label of “expert” to the select few in their ranks. They pay for the scientists to do their work and the experts to do their bidding; they themselves are the moneymakers and the power brokers of the culture. The public sees all of this as the authority, the expertise, the purveyors of reliable information. So, they spout off about it: “experts agree,” “scientists discover.”

Two things are happening here. First, these sheep masses want everyone else to shut up. If everyone they want silenced are not presenting opinions based on what they have been told is the only source of truth (the experts), then they want them quiet. Second, these sheep masses believe they already know everything they need to know. They simply refer to the experts, scientists, and politicians. None of their own thought, instinct, common sense, or experience is factored into their conclusions. They think that when they “express their opinion,” they are expressing what they know. But they are not—they are simply spitting back what authority (their experts, thus their truth) has told them.

I don’t think us shrew-folks do this. In fact, we don’t trust the mainstream to a fault. For the most part, nothing the mainstream says is trusted, including the scientists and the experts. Unfortunately for us, this is not always the smartest way to go. Believe it or not, some of these people (scientists and experts) actually have something good and useful to say. Believe it or not again, even some politicians are not under the power of Satan (I would say this is typically found at the local level of government).

For the most part, though, we formulate our own opinions about things; we don’t automatically defer to someone with a fancy label. Hopefully, we listen to them as well when formulating our opinion — hopefully we listen to everyone.

The point here is that no one should be silenced. It is up to the listener to determine whether what the speaker is saying is useful. If the speaker is downright lying and knows they are lying, then that is a problem. But again, we have to individually be the final arbiter of what is truth and what isn’t. Obviously, this is where free speech comes in. We don’t get to determine what is said and who has the right to say it, but we carry the responsibility ourselves of assessing what is said.

We all have the right to express our opinions. Expert and non-expert alike. You never know when a gem will turn up. It could be found in the most unlikely of places.