Michael, I think Seinfeld should have ended like the end of the movie Animal House - you know, with the brief bios of what each character went on to become: “George Costanza graduated from Cornell with a degree in Marine Biology, and has distinguished himself in the field. . .” And “Kramer and his business partner, Darren, secured $150 million in Round 2 funding from Silicon Valley investors to successfully market their oil tank bladders. . .”
I agree with you that it’s a problem for everyone to posit themselves as expert.
It’s a major problem that people go around saying they are experts and then giving screwed up views so that people decide there must be no difference between a person who knows a lot about something and a person that doesn’t.
I think you are showing it does matter if people opining about something know a lot about that thing. Maybe the problem is, that doesn’t do what we want, or do it enough. We want someone to be sure and correct, and get it totally right and tell us what to do—even in novel and unexpected situations. We often want them to predict the future. Then when experts fail to do a thing nobody can ever do, everyone starts to think it is not important to know a lot about something.
Most domains where we want to seek advice and wish there were real experts probably do not lend themselves well to expertise in the traditional sense. Among these, I think are ‘what’s going to happen in politics,’ and ‘how to parent’ and ‘how to live your life.’
I’m sure there are a ton more. Most seem to do with with social aspects of human life.
Still, you can do better at these things if you listen to a lot of people who have experience, pay a lot of attention to the world, and try to draw conclusions with humility. You increase your chances of doing a better job the more you know, anyway.
It seems like there are a lot of domains where you can have ‘expertise’ but this doesn’t make you correct about practical or normative questions. Here, the expertise gives you the power to back up your arguments. The arts is one area where it helps to have a wealth of knowledge to back up your arguments. This doesn’t mean you’re correct about whether something is ‘well-done’ or whatever but you have evidence, if you’re talking to other knowledgeable people. Finance is an area where you might lose your shirt if you know nothing but even financial experts who got it right many times can still cause you to lose your shirt.
But in medicine, and the sciences, one must listen to experts.
If we could foretell the future, we would need no experts (except to accurately describe those future events). Right now, we want a fortune-teller. But a real one.
It is incredible to me that humans can send a robot to space, and communicate with it, and have it do things on another planet, and get information about that planet—but we cannot really understand ourselves well enough to prevent wars, and other social horrors. And sometimes we cannot understand ourselves well enough to live happily.
People SOMETIMES see when to leave enough alone. We don’t generally opine wildly about many engineering problems. We don’t say we know how to build a bridge, or the safest kind of elevator design.
It’s when there is complexity and doubt that the stupidity comes in.
I'm closer to Socrates or whoever said it first. Or maybe Descartes who should have said, I think I know something, therefor I think I am something.
One of the first things they teach in Medical School is, "Half of what we teach you is probably wrong. Unfortunately, we don't know which half."
Seinfeld should have ended with Larry David waking up in bed and telling his wife, I had this strange dream about a bunch of weird people I knew back in New York.
Of course you can verbify Weekend at Bernies. And the way things are going, you could be right for once.
1. I generally assume I don’t know what’s coming next. Chaos gets three votes. I walked into a Pixar film, and walked out to an assassination scare.
2. As a Larry David cultist, I vote dragging Seinfeld out until everything sucked. Give me every drop of blood from that wonderful stone. That golden talent pool could’ve DDT’d a dead horse through a table.
3. Tom was telling us where things were headed.
4. Dick jokes and story outlines. Questionable choice.
5. It’s going to be every part of speech by September.
Eeeee, I did not have the events of last evening on my bingo card for this year. This just makes things even more uncertain, and if there is one thing we humas are THE WORST at (John Ralphio voice), it is dealing with uncertainty. Seriously, I think most folks would rather live through something wretched than to live in relative ease with uncertainty. This is surely a flaw, but it has nevertheless kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Today, those same knee-jerk, quick-thinking instincts are utterly tearing our world apart.
If ever we need a Mortimer pic, it is today! Please post one and tag me over on Notes.
1. I'm always smart/right/young/hip inside my head, which is why I choose to hang out there more than I hang out on the internet where everyone says I'm dumb/wrong/old/uncool.
2. Seinfeld should have ended with an orgy. Full stop. Seriously, those hounds had sex with EVERYONE but each other for 10 years. Except that one episode where Jerry and Elaine backslid for a day and a half.
3. MySpace was before my time. See how young/hip I am over here?! It's not true really. I was alive and capable of having an OurFace page when they were the rage. I just didn't think MyFace was interesting enough to demand a whole Page. So, I jumped the trend.
4. Self-sabotage. I could LITERALLY write the book on it. And I probably will.
Your take for a Seinfeld (happy) ending is gold, Meg, gold! I highly recommend you find a community for Seinfeld fan fiction and write 50 Shades of Nothing. You will win the internet.
"A good word to describe someone who thinks they know better than everyone else is moron." I am remembering this line, Michael. I know a couple of morons... Thank you.
Yup. Turns out half the people I know are security experts. They never said much about their expertise before, but they came out of the woodwork in the past 24 hours.
Seinfeld and Game of Thrones should have ended…….way earlier. I’m Irish so I was out enjoying myself with people most of the time of them being on. A boyfriend I had at the time was watching Seinfeld and I had to end it after too many boring synopsis he told me about episodes! I read the books of GOT and found them far better. People need to get off the couch and dance!
In fairness though, the world kind of did end in 2012. I can't think of a good thing that happened since then, like we're living in a simulation of the before times.
No it’s really bad. They get super powers and jump the shark about every episode, but in the last season a magic fairy teleports the Archie gang back to the 1950s and destroy the whole rest of the universe so nothing else exists, additionally effectively wiping out The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Pretty Little Liars.
All that remains is the gang having neato adventures in the 50's. It is easily the wildest thing I've ever heard of on TV, especially since it started as a little mystery show.
My real areas of expertise are Muppets and VCR board games. When there’s a pandemic caused by Rap Rat infection, I’ll be ready to jump back on social media!
You know your lane and it’s a good lane. But let’s keep it positive. When world piece breaks out because the Muppets took the UN and instituted a policy where nations settle their differences with games of Risk, you’ll be the expert voice we need.
Thanks for the Edie Brickell ear worm! Hey, now there’s a celebrity marriage that’s lasted a good long time. She’s been married to Paul Simon for how many years? I suppose I could Google it…
What should've happened was Sam should've spelled out "Goodbye" in the Game of Thrones equivalent of toilet paper (parchment? I don't know) as Jon Snow flies off on a dragon overhead. If it worked for M*A*S*H....
1. "I don't know." are three of the most powerful words in English. I use them all the time. This way, when I do start running my mouth, people can have a modicum of confidence in what I'm saying.
2. Here's a wrong answer: I've seen neither!
3. If it'd only been OurSpace then Facebook never would have risen, Twitter never would have become a thing, and Instagram and TikTok would have never been invented. Thanks, Tom. Fascist.
Michael, I think Seinfeld should have ended like the end of the movie Animal House - you know, with the brief bios of what each character went on to become: “George Costanza graduated from Cornell with a degree in Marine Biology, and has distinguished himself in the field. . .” And “Kramer and his business partner, Darren, secured $150 million in Round 2 funding from Silicon Valley investors to successfully market their oil tank bladders. . .”
“A good word to describe someone who thinks they know better than everyone else is moron.” Haha love this!
I agree with you that it’s a problem for everyone to posit themselves as expert.
It’s a major problem that people go around saying they are experts and then giving screwed up views so that people decide there must be no difference between a person who knows a lot about something and a person that doesn’t.
I think you are showing it does matter if people opining about something know a lot about that thing. Maybe the problem is, that doesn’t do what we want, or do it enough. We want someone to be sure and correct, and get it totally right and tell us what to do—even in novel and unexpected situations. We often want them to predict the future. Then when experts fail to do a thing nobody can ever do, everyone starts to think it is not important to know a lot about something.
Most domains where we want to seek advice and wish there were real experts probably do not lend themselves well to expertise in the traditional sense. Among these, I think are ‘what’s going to happen in politics,’ and ‘how to parent’ and ‘how to live your life.’
I’m sure there are a ton more. Most seem to do with with social aspects of human life.
Still, you can do better at these things if you listen to a lot of people who have experience, pay a lot of attention to the world, and try to draw conclusions with humility. You increase your chances of doing a better job the more you know, anyway.
It seems like there are a lot of domains where you can have ‘expertise’ but this doesn’t make you correct about practical or normative questions. Here, the expertise gives you the power to back up your arguments. The arts is one area where it helps to have a wealth of knowledge to back up your arguments. This doesn’t mean you’re correct about whether something is ‘well-done’ or whatever but you have evidence, if you’re talking to other knowledgeable people. Finance is an area where you might lose your shirt if you know nothing but even financial experts who got it right many times can still cause you to lose your shirt.
But in medicine, and the sciences, one must listen to experts.
If we could foretell the future, we would need no experts (except to accurately describe those future events). Right now, we want a fortune-teller. But a real one.
It is incredible to me that humans can send a robot to space, and communicate with it, and have it do things on another planet, and get information about that planet—but we cannot really understand ourselves well enough to prevent wars, and other social horrors. And sometimes we cannot understand ourselves well enough to live happily.
People SOMETIMES see when to leave enough alone. We don’t generally opine wildly about many engineering problems. We don’t say we know how to build a bridge, or the safest kind of elevator design.
It’s when there is complexity and doubt that the stupidity comes in.
I'm closer to Socrates or whoever said it first. Or maybe Descartes who should have said, I think I know something, therefor I think I am something.
One of the first things they teach in Medical School is, "Half of what we teach you is probably wrong. Unfortunately, we don't know which half."
Seinfeld should have ended with Larry David waking up in bed and telling his wife, I had this strange dream about a bunch of weird people I knew back in New York.
Of course you can verbify Weekend at Bernies. And the way things are going, you could be right for once.
1. I generally assume I don’t know what’s coming next. Chaos gets three votes. I walked into a Pixar film, and walked out to an assassination scare.
2. As a Larry David cultist, I vote dragging Seinfeld out until everything sucked. Give me every drop of blood from that wonderful stone. That golden talent pool could’ve DDT’d a dead horse through a table.
3. Tom was telling us where things were headed.
4. Dick jokes and story outlines. Questionable choice.
5. It’s going to be every part of speech by September.
In some ways Seinfeld never ended, it just became Curbed, which did end, but it'll probably just become the next LD thing. Proud cultist here.
Eeeee, I did not have the events of last evening on my bingo card for this year. This just makes things even more uncertain, and if there is one thing we humas are THE WORST at (John Ralphio voice), it is dealing with uncertainty. Seriously, I think most folks would rather live through something wretched than to live in relative ease with uncertainty. This is surely a flaw, but it has nevertheless kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Today, those same knee-jerk, quick-thinking instincts are utterly tearing our world apart.
If ever we need a Mortimer pic, it is today! Please post one and tag me over on Notes.
Post a Mortimer pic! Your plan is working!
Keep the pic trade going - we can literally do this all year. I want to get to know Mortimer, and you should know Dinkles, too!
1. I'm always smart/right/young/hip inside my head, which is why I choose to hang out there more than I hang out on the internet where everyone says I'm dumb/wrong/old/uncool.
2. Seinfeld should have ended with an orgy. Full stop. Seriously, those hounds had sex with EVERYONE but each other for 10 years. Except that one episode where Jerry and Elaine backslid for a day and a half.
3. MySpace was before my time. See how young/hip I am over here?! It's not true really. I was alive and capable of having an OurFace page when they were the rage. I just didn't think MyFace was interesting enough to demand a whole Page. So, I jumped the trend.
4. Self-sabotage. I could LITERALLY write the book on it. And I probably will.
5. 1000%.
Your take for a Seinfeld (happy) ending is gold, Meg, gold! I highly recommend you find a community for Seinfeld fan fiction and write 50 Shades of Nothing. You will win the internet.
That idea for fan fic is brilliant. And well within the salty side of my wheelhouse.
And I'm certain that community exists on this, our very broken internet.
You can crush this!
"A good word to describe someone who thinks they know better than everyone else is moron." I am remembering this line, Michael. I know a couple of morons... Thank you.
You’re welcome!
And as of today everyone will become ballistics and security experts! Imagine what expertise tomorrow will bring.
Yup. Turns out half the people I know are security experts. They never said much about their expertise before, but they came out of the woodwork in the past 24 hours.
Seinfeld and Game of Thrones should have ended…….way earlier. I’m Irish so I was out enjoying myself with people most of the time of them being on. A boyfriend I had at the time was watching Seinfeld and I had to end it after too many boring synopsis he told me about episodes! I read the books of GOT and found them far better. People need to get off the couch and dance!
I’m all for dancing! Yes! But your boyfriend summarized Seinfeld!? That sounds awful.
In fairness though, the world kind of did end in 2012. I can't think of a good thing that happened since then, like we're living in a simulation of the before times.
Did it end in 2012 or did we end up in one of those bizarro alternate universes like in Back to the Future?
Have you seen the last season of Riverdale? It’s kind of like that bonkers idea, I think, maybe.
I haven’t seen Riverdale. What am I doing with my life?
No it’s really bad. They get super powers and jump the shark about every episode, but in the last season a magic fairy teleports the Archie gang back to the 1950s and destroy the whole rest of the universe so nothing else exists, additionally effectively wiping out The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Pretty Little Liars.
All that remains is the gang having neato adventures in the 50's. It is easily the wildest thing I've ever heard of on TV, especially since it started as a little mystery show.
Wow! That’s way beyond jumping the shark. It’s like jumping a sharknado.
My real areas of expertise are Muppets and VCR board games. When there’s a pandemic caused by Rap Rat infection, I’ll be ready to jump back on social media!
https://youtu.be/m2WTc09EjBc?si=KVcYuhovbc7CS5bD
You know your lane and it’s a good lane. But let’s keep it positive. When world piece breaks out because the Muppets took the UN and instituted a policy where nations settle their differences with games of Risk, you’ll be the expert voice we need.
If that ever happens, Australia will rule the world!
Yas!
Thanks for the Edie Brickell ear worm! Hey, now there’s a celebrity marriage that’s lasted a good long time. She’s been married to Paul Simon for how many years? I suppose I could Google it…
I did look it up. Edie Brickell and Paul Simon have been married for 32 years.
From my ear to yours! And yes, that marriage has lasted a long time.
Wait a minute, Bran becomes king?
In my house, Bran has been king ever since I turned 50.
Touché.
What should've happened was Sam should've spelled out "Goodbye" in the Game of Thrones equivalent of toilet paper (parchment? I don't know) as Jon Snow flies off on a dragon overhead. If it worked for M*A*S*H....
Yes! Let me get you in the room with HBO.
1. "I don't know." are three of the most powerful words in English. I use them all the time. This way, when I do start running my mouth, people can have a modicum of confidence in what I'm saying.
2. Here's a wrong answer: I've seen neither!
3. If it'd only been OurSpace then Facebook never would have risen, Twitter never would have become a thing, and Instagram and TikTok would have never been invented. Thanks, Tom. Fascist.
4. Nothing.
5. Yes, well conjugated.
You make an excellent point. People who say “I don’t know” build trust.