The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge.

This isn’t a social media thing exclusively of course, I’ve met it in the real world too.

When I worked as a repair technician, members of the public would ask me for my diagnosis of faults and then debate them with me.

I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to understanding people and how they work, in this field it’s even worse because everyone has opinions on that topic!

And yet my friend who has a physics PhD doesn’t endure people explaining why his theories about battery tech are incorrect because of an article they read or an anecdote from someone’s past.

So I’m curious, do some fields experience this more than others?

If you have a field of expertise do you find people love to debate you without taking into account the gulf of awareness, skills and knowledge?

  • Ogmios
    11·
    6 months ago

    That’s a very wise choice not to go to the mat on this, because it’s simply the truth that this novel genetic treatment has never passed the ordinary testing regimes for such products, which very few products ever pass because we simply do not know the lion’s share of what there is to know about how genetics impact our body’s function.

    If you want to ignore the potential risks that’s fine. At the very least, whether you’re safe or not, we’ll get some valuable scientific data from you.