Who Do You Believe, and Why?

There is an awful lot of “I know I’m right” chatter going around on both sides. I am just curious, what makes you so sure you are right? And what makes them so sure they are right? Unless you are Einstein or something, I’m sure you are like the rest of us and need to get most of your information from another source. Sure, you can apply common sense and gut intuition to the information you receive from other expert sources, but I doubt if you would let Uncle Bob do surgery on your brain unless Uncle Bob is a well trained brain surgeon, “hey, let me at that tumour in there, all I need is a good pair of needle nose pliers and I’ll just pluck that nasty little bugger right out.” (Sorry, I just had to revisit Uncle Bob, the DIY Neurosurgeon.) Don’t think so.

So what makes Dr. XYZ neurosurgeon better than Dr. ABC? We don’t need to go into that here, but I am sure you get the point. (See my “sister” article “Creating a World of Distrust” to see a different angle to all of this.) There could be many factors that would make you choose one over the other, and unless you are making your choice in some third world country where the education is known to be dicey, usually your choice is based on the “best of the best,” i.e., most likely any board certified brain surgeon is going to do a good job. Most likely you are not going to diss Dr. ABC if you chose Dr. XYZ and say things like, “Dr. ABC is a complete ass, he doesn’t know a scalpel from a butter knife!” Although that IS possible, most likely that possibility is an outlier on the bell curve.