Replacing Experts With Ourselves

ON MY LAST VISIT to my doctor, I had a confession I was afraid to make; on some days, I sheepishly told him, I adjust my blood pressure medication due to what I perceived was appropriate based on changes in my monitor readings, which I monitor daily. I fully expected to be lectured sternly, or if not, reprimanded gently at the very least. Isn't that strictly verboten? No such bad luck. He dismissively shrugged and said: "No problem. People do that all the time." I was shocked. He is, in my estimation, a top notch doctor, serious, professional, and assiduous. Yet, he was perfectly content to let me play doctor in the privacy of my own home, and adjust my own prescription. Maybe he trusts me; I've been going to him a long time, and we have a good relationship. Or maybe he had simply decided to accept the inevitable; I would probably do what I want to do anyway, no matter what he says. We live in a society in which everybody is an expert, everybody knows everything about everything, or thinks they do. We the American people are so self confident, or arrogant, that we are a society of self proclaimed experts, in everything. As such, we have become dismissive of and even disrespectful towards the true experts, of which every field of endeavor has a class. We Americans self medicate, we accept our own homespun legal advice, and we choose to manage our own stocks on sites like Ameritrade, rather than taking the time and trouble to play it safe, and do it right, and pay for the benefit of getting good advice from people who know more than we. Not only are the real experts often ignored, they are nearly as often held up to ridicule as charlatans and impostors. The most dangerous and common driving mistake is following too closely, we are repeatedly told. And yet we all tailgate without the slightest concern, even though it accomplishes nothing expect putting our lives and the lives of others at great risk. A plant based diet prolongs life, we are told. So what? Where's the next cheeseburger? And the coup de grace: every credible climate scientist, chemist, biologist, and physicist and every person who teaches these subjects from the high school level on up warns us that climate change is real, and is a threat to our very existence unless we address it seriously and immediately. And yet, at least one third of the American population denies it, laughs it off as pure fantasy. as if they know more than people with advanced degrees in physical science. It can't possibly be happening, because it happens all the time, the climate is always changing, and there's nothing we can do about it, as if that is in any way relevant, or somehow precludes human impact. No group is more often ridiculed than academics. Ivory tower eggheads, cut off from the real world by their own cloistered lives, unaware of reality. All that education for nothing. My high school diploma is just as good. No, the opinions about climate change presented by trained scientists are not "opinions", and they are not "all over the map". There is a universal consensus that global warming, as we used to call it, is very real, and that consensus is supported by decades of redundantly verified research and observation. The term "global warming" has been replaced by the term "climate change" not because it is a hoax, but because the updated terminology is more accurate; some parts of the world will experience cooler weather, most will experience warming. And no, it is neither a liberal nor a Chinese hoax, depending on which politician or conservative radio talk show host you mistakenly listen to. As a rule of thumb, your doctor knows more about medicine and health than you do, your lawyer knows more about the law, your mechanic knows more about cars, and the professors of science at places like Harvard and M.I.T. know more about the climate and the forces which affect it than either Donald Trump or Rush Limbaugh, much as we might like to believe otherwise. Experts are expert, even when we don't like what they say.