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April 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
05:54
What Is an Expert?
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So, the answer is, what is an expert?
And that's a fascinating question to me.
A really deeply fascinating question.
What is an expert?
Now, in the past, I would say, as a whole, in general, that expertise used to be credentialism.
You went to Yale, you went to Harvard, you went to Stanford, you went to Oxford, you went to Cambridge, you come out and you've got the four-point hat and you've got the cloak.
Of all of that, and you are an expert.
But tell me if you think this is true.
I think, for the most part, for a lot of people, not for everyone, but for a lot of people, for the most part, credentialism is kind of dead.
Do you agree?
Do you disagree?
Credentialism. Well, this person has a...
PhD, this person is a professor, and therefore this person is correct.
I mean, not for everyone, but I certainly think in this group, certainly for me, I'll just be honest, I view credentialism as a negative now.
To me, it's not just dead, it's like anti-life.
Now, Douglas Murray has an undergraduate degree in English and speaks about all kinds of topics.
In fact, I saw a clip of him not too long ago talking about AI.
I'm not sure how having an undergraduate degree in English qualifies you to talk deeply about AI, but...
So, what is an expert?
I think, to me, an expert is someone who's read deeply in a topic, has thought deeply about a topic, and has absorbed more than one perspective.
Right? I mean, I did a whole presentation, it was available to an NFT a while ago, called The Rise of Nazism.
And I read an ungodly amount of fairly horrible material at times, and went...
With a variety of sort of understandings and explanations.
And... Oh, congratulations on getting your PhD, my lady.
So I just did a little bit on...
Just a couple of notes here about big things that experts got wrong.
COVID, lockdowns, the vaccine.
If you get it, you can't get COVID.
And a lot of people who got it got COVID even more.
If you get it, you can't transmit it.
Turns out it was never tested for transmission.
Big things experts got wrong.
Global warming, at least in terms of the catastrophes that were predicted in the 80s, totally wrong.
And if you look at all the models versus the actual temperatures, there's really not much in common.
The melting pot, that you can just get a wide variety of cultures and they're going to kind of blend into one goo.
That was foundational to a lot of policies.
Doesn't really seem to be happening.
The IQ research that I was revealing to the world some years ago, the sort of chemical imbalance theory of Mental unease, depression, anxiety, and so on, that you have a chemical imbalance and you take these pills to restore that chemical imbalance.
That appears to be pretty false.
There's a replication crisis in science as a whole, and in particular in psychology.
Experts have seen the rise in autism, and experts are not moving heaven and earth to find a source of autism, although RFK Jr. is now talking about having that data out by September, October, which is going to be interesting.
Although it's fair to say that the diagnosis of autism Has gone up with government money for autism.
Media bias, right?
So these, in the media, mainstream Western media, these are experts who claim to be unbiased.
They're reporters, they're well-trained, they claim to be unbiased.
And I think fairly clearly, it's pretty ridiculously biased, right?
Was it NPR?
I'm sure that they would say that they're objective.
And NPR has, like, no non-democrats in any positions of power.
Feminism is supposed to be about female equality.
And has morphed into female supremacy in many ways.
Almost 60% of university attendees are women now, and there isn't like, oh, we've got to find a way to bring more men back.
It's just going more and more women.
Immigration, certainly what the experts want and what the general population want is quite divergent.
The welfare state solving the problems of poverty has not happened.
And of course, you know, one of the things that I talked about many years ago.
Whereas people in the West were told, oh, there's too many people.
You shouldn't have kids.
And then it's like, oh, we don't have enough people.
We need lots of immigration.
And there's this intransigence to all of this expertise, right?
The intransigence is they just don't admit fault.
You know, one of the things that is really essential for me in terms of credibility as a whole is I need people to admit fault and take responsibility for getting things wrong.
Right? I mean, as you know, I've got a whole series of shows called I Was Wrong About.
Now, I've made my apologies.
Because if you want to be an expert, you have to be able to admit fault.
Otherwise, you're just an ideologue, right?
So, I think people are quite frustrated about all of this stuff.
Yeah, you guys are...
Ability to process source data is my big criteria if you're an expert.
Either source data or in the philosophical realm, being able to make arguments from first principles.
If somebody says the same, oh, and by the way, freedomain.com slash donate, if you could help out the show.
I know I've been a little bit lower energy this month, but it was just a health issue.
And if you could help me out, I'd really appreciate it.
freedomain.com slash donate.
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If somebody says same, if I hear on the news experts say, I assume they're just trying to push a narrative.
Someone says, He says, Dave Murray, I think you mean Douglas Murray, also criticized poor white Americans for being hopeful that Trump would help them.
As if they had any choices, yeah.
Somebody says, trust me, bro, versus my university trusts me, bro.
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