As every journalist and lawyer knows, it takes about half an hour to become an expert on any subject. In the days when I wrote for some of the less cerebral but well-paying publications of the British press, my protestations that I knew nothing whatever of the subject on which they wanted me to write was no discouragement to a commission. At most, it produced a slight prolongation of the deadline — about half an hour, in fact.
One of the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic has been to reveal to a very large percentage of the population the joys of instant expertise. The world now has hundreds of millions, if not several billions, of epidemiologists, virologists, and clinicians, all of whom know best how to deal with the pandemic. The only problem is that their solutions are at variance with one another.
It sometimes seems as if the certainty with which views are held is inversely proportional to the solidity of the factual basis on which they are founded. If commentary on the internet is anything to go by (it might not be, of course, for those who avail themselves of this means of self-expression are a self-selected rather than a representative sample), people often take a religious attitude toward their own doctrine and condemn as heretics all those who express doubts about it. I don’t want to sound like a psychoanalyst, that class of person who believes that he unfailingly knows the real meaning of what is said rather than its merely apparent meaning, but stridency of views is often indicative of unacknowledged uncertainties. Zinc supplementarians and others of the type cling to their beliefs with a fervor that evidence does not merit.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Everyone’s an Expert”, Taki’s Magazine, 2020-10-16.
April 9, 2021
QotD: Instant expertise
Filed under: Health, Media, Quotations — Tags: Epidemic, Internet, Lawyers, Newspapers, SocialMedia, TheodoreDalrymple, WuhanCoronavirus — Nicholas @ 01:00
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