The Problem with “Trust the Experts”
We’ve been through all this before. It was known as the Dark Ages.
Long ago, in a distant, halcyon epoch known as the mid-90s, I took a philosophy degree. I specialized in the History and Philosophy of Science. I took classes in what, to most people, probably seems like a senselessly esoteric subject: epistemology, the study of the foundations of knowledge itself.
We studied things like: when can a knower be said to “know” something? And, what are the foundations of “justified true belief”?
It’s the sort of academic intellectual exercise that most people think has no application to real life. And, stimulated though I was, that’s just how I thought of it, too.
Imagine my astonishment when twenty-five years later, these exact issues would grind our society to a halt and have us at each other’s throats in the grips of red-hazed hatred.
We are now in a war over epistemology.
I say “war” with no sense of exaggeration, since there have been, and will continue to be, casualties, both in terms of human life, and in the dooming of society to perpetual conflict, tyranny, and eventual collapse.
All over what constitutes justified true belief.
Specifically scientific belief.
No one is more surprised than me.
How do you “justify” a belief, anyway?
Naturally, everyone thinks they’re “justified” in what they believe, otherwise they wouldn’t believe it. But, as about ten minutes in any philosophy class will demonstrate, the foundation for most beliefs is flimsy at best.
We believe things for all kinds of reasons, very few of them having anything to do with evidence, or good reasoning, or anything resembling “justification”.
As we discussed in “The Pandemic Proves That Humans Follow Stories, Not Evidence”, people believe things because:
someone they like, trust, or revere uttered the claim (including a friend, celebrity, or guru);
the claim agrees with their more general worldview, belief system, or politics;
they read a single article, opinion piece, or saw a news piece and adopted the belief prima facie (without any further consideration or questioning);
they heard the claim being uttered so often it became “true by repetition”;
the claim has some social benefit or secondary gain: it smooths things over with friends, family or peers, doesn’t upset the herd or the tribe, it is in vogue to express, gives you a sense of belonging, gets you attention or accolades, increases your feeling of importance or significance, results in financial gain (or prevents financial loss), keeps you safe from harm from oppressors who would persecute you for expressing otherwise, etc.;
the claim has some private psychological benefit such as allaying a deep-seated fear, granting one a sense of certainty, confidence, or well-being.
When it comes to believing things for good reasons, most humans… well, they suck.
So we’re tempted to turn to “experts” to justify our belief.
We think: if the claim was uttered by a supposed “expert”, authority, “fact-checker”, or someone we feel otherwise unqualified to challenge, it is a justified true belief.
How many times a day over the past nineteen months have you heard some variation of “trust the experts” or “follow the science”?
Great! The problem of humans believing badly is solved.
Except one teeny-tiny problem: this takes a loud and long piss in the face of everything I was taught about the nature of knowledge, critical thinking, logic, and yes, science.
I can’t help but recall my earliest philosophy classes. One of the first figures a young philosophy student encounters is Socrates, for good reason: he is the model for any would-be thinker. He made it his life’s mission to debunk and expose the fragility of knowledge claims. Especially knowledge claims made by the so-called “experts” of his day.
The experts, Socrates showed us, are often regarded so because of the position they hold in society, not because of the value of their knowledge claims. The proof of this was that even a simple peasant-philosopher could undo them.
This is why Socrates is not just regarded as another dead philosopher in a long line of them, but as a hero.
The many, many problems raised by “Trust the Experts”:
Without trying very hard, I can think of seven:
1. For one, it raises the glaringly obvious question: how did the supposed “expert” come by his or her knowledge? If we must trust them, whom did they trust? If only expertise is a source of truth, then they must have received their knowledge from an even higher authority and they from an even higher authority… a model of received knowing that goes not by the name of science, but religion. If, on the other hand, observing reality, hypothesizing, testing claims, adducing evidence, and reasoning are a source for knowledge, (i.e., the scientific method) they are doable, and challengeable, by anyone. Note that one of the cornerstone standards for good science is that experimental results are reproducible (by someone other than the initial researcher.) The so-called “expert” has no special claim to knowledge. We are all knowers.
2. Is it really that hard for us to unpack terms like “trust” and “follow”? When uttered by an authority, these are synonyms for “accept without questioning”. Essentially, they are a subtle exhortation: “Do not think, do not question, accept. The truth is what we say it is.” Obviously, this is exactly what anyone in power wants. If you can convince a populace that your utterances are synonymous with Incontrovertible Truth, you are, for all intents and purposes, omnipotent. As a corollary, there is enormous potential harm to the wider populace if those unquestioned policies are false. Wouldn’t a rational populace, then, submit every authoritarian knowledge claim to extra levels of scrutiny?
3. Expertise does not mean infallibility. Experts can be (and often are) wrong. This is why science involves disputation, argumentation, and criticism. This is meant as a corrective to false ideas becoming entrenched into policy. (From Galileo’s admonishment by the Inquisition to the acceptance of heliocentrism by the Catholic Church took two hundred years, for example). Science must involve criticism, or it is not science— it is authoritarian edict.
4. “Experts” can be badly motivated. Tobacco companies paid “expert” scientists to publish in prestigious journals such as the Lancet, JAMA, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Experts are no more immune than any other human to bias, profiteering, bribery, professional backstabbing, herd mentality, guru worship, accolade-seeking, career-protecting, political influence, etc. Even so-called “fact-checkers” are paid by corporations, who themselves have an agenda. If you think experts have no motive other than unbiased truth-seeking, you are speaking of Vulcans or some other race of beings, not human beings. Again, the corrective to this is the ability to challenge the findings of anyone, for any reason.
5. Experts disagree with one another, and should do so. We should never, for any reason, only be hearing from one expert, or only a “crown-approved” expert, or a contingent of experts all aligned with a single view. And we certainly should not be suppressing, censoring, silencing, and firing anyone who disagrees with an official view. What is the nature of science if it does not allow for debate? As we’ve talked about before, dissension is definitional of science. It is what makes science what it is. The very nature of science is that it does not allow for authoritarian pronouncements about what is true. There should be no “official” view. There should be debate.
6. Experts are not exempt, by virtue of their position in society or accolades or chairs or degrees they may hold, from the basic requirements of logic, common sense, and evidence. They are subservient to these, and must answer to them, and they must continue to do so, forever. Knowledge claims are never “final”. They must be continually questioned, tested, challenged, and proved. That is the price of making a knowledge claim: you agree to defend it, for life (or be convinced otherwise).
7. Experts are not blessed with wisdom that somehow extends beyond their area of expertise. For example, if a respected epidemiologist starts making knowledge claims about economic policy, fiscal policy, foreign policy, social behavior, education, sexual behavior, law enforcement, mental health, child psychology, etc.… we do not have to unquestioningly accept these claims simply because they’re being made by a perceived “expert”. In fact, given how narrowly-focused their expertise is, we should be extra guarded against granting too much authority to such figures, since their edicts have the potential to cause widespread disasters in those parts of society for which they have no specialized knowledge.
And yet… here we are.
Despite these obvious problems, “accept what the experts say” is the reigning epistemology of the day.
In a society in which the government, media, and corporations are indistinguishable conglomerates, this really means: “Accept what the TV says.”
Well, sorry, but… no.
For some of us, that is just not good enough.
If certainty and truth are things only to be derived from an authority and the truth is whatever the authority says it is, and we should unquestioningly trust them, then what on Earth is the point of critical thinking? Why do we even have such a faculty? In such a society humans would not be required to think, question, or criticize. They, like Thoreau’s wooden men, would only need to be manufactured, wound up, and pointed in the direction they are meant to walk.
Einstein said: “Those who march in rank and file have earned my contempt, for they were given a large brain by accident when a spinal chord would have sufficed.”
Why do we possess a large brain? Why do we possess the capacity for thinking and questioning? Why do the powerful seek our mental assent to things? If we’re not meant to use our minds on a higher level than unthinking obedience, why not simply lobotomize humans when they are born?
The answer has to be because our mental faculties are a) necessary and b) are our birthright, in exactly the same way as are our eyes, ears, nose, and tongue.
Imagine a corporation/government/media entity said: “You are not using your senses correctly. From now on, our experts will tell you what to see and hear, and you will be happy. We must blind you and deafen you to everything other than the sights and sounds we deem fit for you. We can observe the world better than you, with greater expertise. It’s for your own good.”
Naturally this would be met with horror, indignation, outrage, revolution.
Yet the very same pronouncement, when it concerns your mind, is met with compliance, obedience, and ready surrender.
How easy then, to get a populace to willingly surrender their minds: make them doubt their own faculties. Make them believe that critical thinking is a kind of madness or mental breakdown. Make anyone who disagrees with the authorities out to be wrong-headed, ”misinformed”, “anti-science”, a “conspiracy theorist”, a “denier”, a lunatic, an idiot, or just plain mentally ill.
The message is clear, and it’s an epistemological one: “Do not trust your own faculties, for any reason, for they will only lead you astray. Trust ours. There is only one source of justified belief: that which we declare to be true. Our views are infallible and will only lead you to a paradise of certainty and truth. Cast down the unbelievers! Their minds are sick.”
And doesn’t this sound familiar?
*
The Re-Embrace of Anti-Enlightenment Philosophy
Of course it does. Because the so-called Dark Ages weren’t so very long ago. We have persistent cultural memory about times when Monarchs and Theocrats dictated how humanity were supposed to think, and how they punished the non-believers accordingly. In such times, people, by and large, believed:
Knowledge is only revealed to the select few, who are worthy of it.
Trust authority. It has exclusive access to the truth. You, from your lowly position, could not possibly understand.
Do not think, obey. It is for your own good.
If you question, you are a heretic and an unbeliever, and you will be silenced, stripped of privilege, admonished, excluded, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, or killed.
The select few will not hear criticism or dissension, which will go by the name “blasphemy”.
Can you distinguish these beliefs from those in vogue today?
The shift away from this kind of thinking, which we can roughly call the Enlightenment philosophy, had humanity believing:
That we are all knowers, not just the select few, and necessarily so;
That not only is it our birthright to use our minds, but also our moral obligation;
That dissent is our birthright; that we must speak truth to power, and voice our disagreement with whatever we perceive to be false;
That unthinking obedience is a moral failing; that if we fail to stand for what we believe, we fail ourselves, but we also fail humanity by letting falsehood and injustice prevail;
That if we are silent about what we believe, the powerful will inevitably fill that void of silence with beliefs that, when widely adopted, serve them to have us believe;
That anyone, no matter their station in life, can challenge the establishment, the powerful, the authority, and that authority must answer. As Carl Sagan said: “The most fundamental axioms and conclusions may be challenged. The prevailing hypotheses must survive confrontation with observation. Appeals to authority are impermissible.”
That no one is to be punished as a heretic in such a society, no matter how distasteful or incorrect we find their views, for the freedom to speak and act according to one’s conscience is held to be so inviolate it is the highest law in the law in the land, the first principle, the foundation upon which all other laws rest;
That in such a society, the lowliest worker (a patent clerk, say) might, in his spare time, derive the mathematical foundations of an entirely new understanding of the physical world, and the scientific establishment, no matter how enshrined, tenured, or highly-esteemed, must acknowledge and celebrate that patent clerk as one of the greatest scientific minds of the day, despite any desire to silence or dismiss him;
That we must therefore question authority. (And no, that doesn’t mean opposing authority for the sake of doing so. That too, would be a species of dependent thinking. Rather, it means rejecting authority as a basis for knowledge claims.) We must think for ourselves. We must never go along with the herd or the tribe or the society, easier though that might be, if it would mean compromising one’s own understanding of the truth. We must be independent thinkers.
Utter madness, right?
Who on Earth would we believe such nonsense? I mean, these beliefs do allow for the flourishing of science, make knowledge available to all, empower the masses, and undermine authoritarian control over our lives.
But who needs science and knowledge and empowerment and freedom? We can all feel warm and complacent in the glow of any belief justified by “Because I said so.” I mean, that is good enough for children, so it should be good enough for the bulk of humanity, apart from an elite few…
Right?
*
Not for a critical thinker. It is not enough.
In fact, it is an offense.
You will never reach my mind by telling me that I must believe what you believe, or that I must arrive at my belief by deactivating my mind—a contradiction if ever there was one.
Stop telling me to turn off my mind.
You will never get my mental assent that way, to anything.
The second you express anything close to that sentiment, you do succeed in turning off my mind… to you. You cease to be of any intellectual value to me, nor can you contribute in any meaningful way to my understanding of the world. Appeal to my reason, show me evidence. Relenting is not the same as believing.
In fact, if you have to obtain my assent to your belief by force, I wonder if you truly believe what you believe, or know what you think you know.
The philosophy behind critical thinking taught me it was right to question, to think for myself, and that the truth did not derive from authority or tribal belonging, and often had to be fought for, in spite of these entities.
Convince me that these principles are not true.
Convince me that Socrates was not a hero. Convince me he should have shut off his questioning mind when confronted with the “experts” of his day, quietly minded his place in society, not rocked the boat. Convince me that he really was guilty of poisoning the minds of the Athenian youth, and that he deserved to be imprisoned and killed for his “blasphemy”.
Good luck.
Yes, we are limited in what we know, and yes, we often believe badly. But I was taught that the antidote to these shortcomings is not surrendering your mind but learning to use it better; to strive (even if not always succeeding) for an unbiased, clear-eyed view of the universe; and that justified true belief is not what I am told to think, but what I freely grant my assent to, based on my understanding of the world and nothing else.
Little did I know that I was being raised in that philosophy’s last dying gasp.
Maybe.
Or maybe there is enough of us, still clinging, to keep that candle alight in the growing dark.
I hope so.
The Problem with “Trust the Experts”
thank you for this post! i just do NOT believe "the experts" any more! now what? what now? i used to be "one of them," which makes it that much more unsettling. (i refused to get/ give jabs...)
i didn't know i was being indoctrinated by pHARMa shills when i spent thousands to study and become a pharmacist, back in '09 at age 40... and hundreds (?) more to maintain my credentials over the years... i thought it would be ok to be "the expert," because i was an independent thinking, hyper-analytical, truth-seeking-for-the-good-of-my-patients, type of professional... but since '20, it stressed me out TO THE MAX and i got some kinda "sick" that I'm still struggling with... and not many that i care about will even listen to me... sigh... EXPERT should be a 4-letter word, imho...
p.s. hope you don't mind my posting here, it's just that the designation of "expert" has been overrated in my experience... now what to do with all this knowledge... who would trust me? who cares what i believe? why should they care... ? it feels like everything i learned has been tainted by pHARMa shills! now i know it's true!!!
p.p.s. it was a desire to know truth and HELP patients make the best use of medicines that brought me to the pHARMa world, retail, specifically, but now it has become job-threatening to speak the truth about so-called medicines... so so sad and disorienting 😥