Expertise is a great thing, and one can do worse than investing the time and effort at one’s disposal to become competent in a field of one’s interest. The problem with expertise and competence, however, is that they are not necessarily transferable to areas outside one’s line of work. Far too many otherwise intelligent men have trouble understanding this simple fact, usually with consequences that are either very unfortunate or exceedingly funny.
It is true that all other things being equal, on average a man who has demonstrated genuine competence in one sphere of life is way less likely to spew ranked nonsense about another field of inquiry, even if the latter does not happen to be his strong suit. Even when he ventures opinion outside his specialty, he is apt to be much less ridiculous in the positions he takes than the man who is not competent in any area whatsoever. For even the guesses of an intelligent man are usually sensible. Besides, from the painstakingly laborious process of acquiring of expertise in one area, he is expected to realize that there is no road to becoming an expert except persistent hard work; in other words, that competence comes easy in no field of inquiry. This type of person is therefore expected not to make a fool of himself by offering half-baked opinions on things he has not yet got a hold of. By dint of habit, his utterances are therefore expected to be exercises in care and caution. Unfortunately, this does not always happen, for expectations and reality can be notoriously distinct from one another. Success in one area, especially if it is accompanied by renown, has a way of making many individuals to overestimate their competence in other fields as well. They are too quick to start preaching on topics that they should be studying instead.
Admittedly, some skills are transferable to other fields: for example, facility for mathematics to almost any quantitative arena such as statistics, computing or actuarial science. Or technical skill in one area to other areas of the same, or similar, domain: for example, a man with knowhow in automotive technology is likely to be generally good at managing and troubleshooting most other technical devices and gadgets as well. So far, so good. But it is rather easy to overdo it. So, the moment the aforementioned technical geek starts believing he is qualified to speak authoritatively on religion or world peace, for example, it should be obvious to all that he has overstepped the boundaries of the region where his opinions should be taken seriously on reputation alone – a reputation earned in a completely different sphere of life. Unfortunately, this is not always obvious to his listeners and to the ‘expert’ himself. Way too frequently, expertise is offered (and accepted) outside the niche in which it has been earned.
If you, reader, have ever had occasion to listen to some esteemed physicist on politics or sociology or the like, the chances are that the performance would have been disappointing, probably outright cringeworthy in places. Although famous successful men have a way of voicing their opinions on almost any subject under the sun, it so happens that religion is the arena of choice for these celebrities to air their ‘expert’ opinion. They are not all antagonistic to religion. Some of them are exceedingly devout, to the extent of wearing their religion on their sleeves. But, regardless of whether they enthusiastically preach religiosity or atheism, their ideas are invariably clichéd and superficial. Owing to their success and fame in one field, they are usually taken seriously in other fields as well. A bit too seriously, indeed, for anybody’s good.
Most human beings are prone to an irresistible urge for hero-worship, and therefore it is understandable for them to mistake genius on the part of somebody in one area for infallibility in another area, howsoever far-removed from the first. But the ‘genius’ himself does not demonstrate a very high level of intelligence either when he too starts taking himself that seriously outside his genuine area of expertise. There is little difference between famous chemists who, on the strength of their quite genuine scientific accomplishments, dismiss all religion as nonsense; and the religious scholars who discover quantum mechanics in revealed texts. For some unknown reason, the latter end up becoming objects of much sterner criticism and humiliation than the former.
Starting from adolescence and well into my thirties, I kept struggling in vain to reconcile the fact that some extraordinarily clever men had some really silly ideas about the world. Only a few years ago did it dawn on me that the most fundamental realities of life were such as could be perceived by those who cannot perceive anything else, while the same realities could easily escape the notice of those who do not fail to notice the most minute of details elsewhere. ‘Deferring to the expert’ is a great policy – just make sure that his area of expertise is relevant to the issue at hand!
