Quotes About Expertise

This is not a trivial obstacle when it comes to the problems of expert engagement with the public: nearly 30 percent of Americans, for example, think "a secretive elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world," and 15 percent think media or government add secret "mind-controlling" technology to TV broadcasts. (Another 15 percent aren't quite sure about the television issue.)

In a democracy, the expert's service to the public is part of the social contract. Citizens delegate the power of decision on myriad issues to elected representatives and their expert advisers, while experts, for their part, ask that their efforts be received in good faith by a public that has informed itself enough to make reasoned judgments.

Experts can go wrong, for example, when they try to stretch their expertise from one area to another. This is not only a recipe for error, but is maddening to other experts as well.

Knowing things is not the same as understanding them. Comprehension is not the same thing as analysis. Expertise is a not a parlor game played with factoids.

This is why the collapse of the relationship between experts and citizens is a dysfunction of democracy itself. The abysmal literacy, both political and general, of the American public is the foundation for all of these problems. It is the soil in which all of the other dysfunctions have taken root and prospered, with the 2016 election only its most recent expression.

The Internet, however, is nothing like a library. Rather, it's a giant repository where anyone can dump anything, from a first folio to a faked photograph, from a scientific treatise to pornography, from short bulletins of information to meaningless electronic graffiti. It's an environment almost entirely without regulation, which opens the door to content being driven by marketing, politics, and the uninformed decisions of other laypeople rather than the judgment of experts. Can

Yes, it is unbridled ego for experts to believe they can run a democracy while ignoring its voters; it is also, however, ignorant narcissism for laypeople to believe that they can maintain a large and advanced nation without listening to the voices of those more educated and experienced than themselves.

Order and simplification are the first steps towards mastery of a subject

The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.

A light, even playful handling, therefore implies a firm grasp and perfect control over the instrument.

You don't know what you are talking about, and no one sounds so silly as one who tries to talk about something he knows nothing about.

Can't tell, Si. Never had no talent that way.

Real men don't use instructions, son. Besides, this is just the manufacturer's opinion on how to put this together.

I think you could get a good accountant, but I think I am the best accountant for me. Can't nobody count my money like I can count it.

People realize this man knows what the hell's going on and nobody else does.

Though I have no real understanding of the mechanics of football, and can only nod along helplessly at complex post-match analyses, I do enjoy watching people who are enormously good at something doing that thing very well.

I know how to make noise; I really do. I'm really good at it.

I've been nominated for Academy Awards, I know what I'm doing.

Normally, I know what I'm doing.

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

I think I'd have to say my favorite IWC. They have been around for so long and the craftsmanship is top notch. A watch maker that has been in business over 100 years has to know what they are doing.

Everyone knows where I play, as a defensive midfielder, more or less the same, so in the last six or seven years I play in that position and there is nothing new for me.

I'm saying nothing new that Dave Pasquesi is really good at what he does.

You only notice long snappers when they screw up.