Qualified and experts

Qualified

We ignore what the common man has to say and listen intently to someone that has qualifications. It matters little qualified people are stuck with conventional thinking. Rising above the qualified person is the someone with fame. We listen to them far too much. Your challenge is to determine who to believe.

A junior pilot was unsure about the message they heard on the radio but said nothing thinking that the captain was unlikely to make a mistake. Had he queried the take-off permission, they along with hundreds of passengers, would not have perished. If that junior pilot was alone, they would have rechecked with the control tower. They lost the courage to say something because they were sitting next to someone they held in high regard. Pilots have since been taught to believe in themselves and speak up if in doubt. We all make mistakes including highly experience qualified people.

As we gain experience, we become more confident. As pilots fly more hours, the accident rate goes up not down, peaking at around 150 hours. Over-confident and not experienced enough. You are safer flying with someone with 75 hours practice than 150. Best of all, someone with 300 hours or more. Likewise, the saying; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you know nothing you leave alone. If you know a lot, you do it properly.

I would rather get clarification even it invites the odd snigger. Better to be reassured than blindly assume that all is well. A mile from an airport, a quite large one, the controller asked me if I had the field in sight. “Negative, field not in sight.” I heard a little chuckle in the controller’s voice. Most usually see the runway well before that point. As I can’t see it, they are now obliged to direct me, However, I don’t end up flying where I should not be flying and end up looking truly idiotic. People soon forget little instances like this but point out big mistakes.

If you break apart the word expert into ex and pert you can re-evaluate the meaning. An ex is something that used to be the case as in ex-partner and pert being pertaining. Thus, expert could be someone who used to have a lot of knowledge on a subject. Therefore, that expert may have wisdom that is not useful anymore. You can break things apart like this and come up with countless arguments, some with merit and some without.

I say dogs have four legs. You say that is not always the case and point out that you have seen three legged dogs. Stating that all dogs have four legs is not necessarily true. And quite correct you are as some will lose a leg through injury and may even be born like that. An exception to the rule but also a distraction. We all know that dogs in general have four legs. Sometimes it will be necessary to be precise and complete in presenting an argument, but quite often you will get those that bring up irrelevances.

Humans are adept at using selectively chosen statistics to back up their argument. Data can be used to show very different things. A sector of the economy was shown to be in decline. As a proportion of all economic activity the percentage was indeed dropping, but the value was actually rising every year. With other parts of the economy rising much faster, it makes that sector appear to be getting smaller. Seeing it as expanding up or contracting depends upon which way you want to view it. If something is said to have increased by 50% that can sound alarming. That is until you read the detail; the cases rose from 4 to 6 out of 100000.