All Episodes
Previous Next
April 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:08
What is Expertise? Notes from a Debate...
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So, the question of expertise came up.
I'm going to go real wide and deep.
I've got a bunch of notes here.
So, yeah, the show with Douglas Murray is 3738, The Strange Death of Europe.
So, the debate is around expertise, and that's kind of an interesting...
And it's a big difference between American culture and British culture.
British culture is very hierarchical.
There's snobbery in the schools.
There's a sort of insufferable superiority in this kind of elitism that goes on in the UK, every class-based society.
And the question is around expertise.
Now, what I found fascinating about this discussion is that I can see everybody's point of view.
I can see everyone's point of view.
I'm going to characterize these individuals' points of view.
Whether I get it exactly right doesn't really matter, but this is the general thing.
So, Douglas Murray is saying, look, if you're going to put yourself forward as an expert, you need to have some rigor, some discipline, some standards, some strictness.
You need not to just do confirmation bias.
You need to do a proper analysis of the topic as a whole.
If you're going to put yourself forward as an expert.
Now, the frustration that Douglas Murray had was he was talking about some podcasters.
I can't remember.
Jake Shields, I think, was one.
There was some other guy.
And he was talking to Dave Smith and saying, look, you're an expert on this, that, or the other.
You talk about history.
You talk about U.S. foreign policy.
You talk about whatever, right?
And if you're going to be an expert, you need to have some rigor.
You need to have some discipline.
Maybe you need some training.
Maybe you need to work in the archives.
You can't just go and shoot from the hip and then say you're an expert.
And then, of course, the response to that tends to be, hey, man, I never claimed to be an expert.
And that is...
And to which Douglas Murray was like, well, this is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall, trying to sort of get an answer, right?
So if you freeform have a debate conversation for two hours on U.S. foreign policy, you're explicitly...
You're implicitly communicating expertise, right?
So I've done one show on the Armenian genocide.
I really don't know much about Armenian history, so I couldn't do two hours on Armenian history.
But, you know, if you're Dave Smith and you do two hours on U.S. foreign policy and things like that, then you're implicitly communicating expertise.
So if someone says, well, you claim to be an expert, but you don't have the rigor of an expert, the answer is not to say, hey, man, I never claimed to be an expert.
That's a cop-out.
That's a cop-out.
And love Dave Smith.
I have a bias towards Dave Smith.
But nonetheless, if somebody were to say to you, you claim to be an expert, but you don't have the rigor and discipline and training and credentials, maybe credentials of an expert, the answer is not to say, hey man, I never claimed to be an expert.
The correct answer is, what is an expert?
What is an expert?
Now, you could say somebody with a PhD in Armenian history is an expert.
Me, who knows actually nothing about Armenian history, I'm not an expert.
Somewhere in there, right?
What is an expert?
And this frustration where they were talking about, was it Ian Carroll?
And there was some other guy, I can't remember.
This guy is not working in the archives, this historian guy.
He's not the historian of the generation to which, you know, Joe Rogan and Dave Smith say, well, he never claimed to be.
He never claimed to be these things.
That's not an answer, though.
If you're going to do 30 hours on, say, the rise of Nazism or the fall of Constantinople or the Roman Empire, then you are...
This is the Dan Carlin argument.
I did some shows with him back in the day.
You are implicitly communicating expertise.
And if you are communicating that you are an expert in something, you have to have some rigor.
And the way that I view it, this is sort of my...
Definition of an expert.
An expert is someone with deep knowledge that surmounts or opposes confirmation bias.
In other words, have you read opposing arguments?
Have you integrated opposing arguments, opposing data, opposing quote facts or whatever, right?
So an expert to me is someone who has a more 360 view, right, of a particular issue, right?
So if you are You're going to put yourself forward as an expert.
Ideally, you should work with some source materials and not just read what other people say, because then you're just an expert who's interpreting what other people say.
You know, if I was in my History of Philosophers series, if I didn't read the actual philosophers but just read what other people said about them, I'd be an expert in other people's opinions of those philosophers, but not the philosophers directly.
So, the frustration that Douglas Murray had, which I sympathize with to some degree, and I'll sort of get into sort of when and how and why.
And by the way, is this of interest to you guys?
Do you hit me with a why?
I want to make sure that the show is of interest and a value to you.
Yeah, okay, good.
I think the question of expertise is really, really fascinating.
So, if, like Dave Smith does, you're going to...
Talk for a long time about particular technical subjects like U.S. foreign policy or the causes of the war in Ukraine or the sort of Wesley, the General Wesley, the seven nations that were supposed to have a regime change and so on, right?
Well, then you're claiming a certain amount of expertise.
And if somebody says, well, you claim to be an expert, but you lack this or that or the other, the answer is like, hey, man, I never claim to be an expert.
But if you don't claim to be an expert, why are you talking continually about?
These particular topics.
▲
Export Selection