We Weren't Meant to Have This Many Opinions
Hot take: we need the experts back
As someone who makes a living opining on AI, I constantly ask myself: do I have the training, experience, and expertise to back up my opinions and assertions? Often, no. It's something worth reflecting on.
I. The invasion of the idiots
One of modernity’s biggest crises is the erosion of respect for intellectual authority—the legitimacy we once granted to those with greater knowledge or skill: Experts.
Experts, by nature, are thinkers. Most people, in contrast, don’t like to think—never have, never will. That’s not an opinion. It’s a fact. And not a new one. (I’m good at pretending I like to think, but I actually don’t; takes too much energy.)
The world has lately mutated into a strange place. People who don’t like thinking—and thus can’t be experts nor recognize those who are—find undeserved refuge in the cheering of their peers. They eagerly seize any chance to dismiss those who do like thinking, all while clinging to a sense of effortless, unearned, righteous equality in the form of fleeting applause (the likes on my posts, for instance). That is new.
The primary mechanism through which this happens was best captured by the late historian Umberto Eco:
Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.
Or, as I imagine the idiots shouting in the virtual bar: “Why would I bow to the self-appointed wise ones when my social media megaphone is just as big?” I agree with Eco’s sentiment, even though I’m being called out, but I want a less contemptuous explanation than saying everyone else is an idiot.1
Why do people feel compelled to speak up against others who know more than they do? Is there something special about our modern world that incites us to act this way? I resist answering yes. It’s tempting, yet often wrong, to overstate the importance of contemporary issues by thinking they—and by extension we—are historically unique. I’m tempted, so I say we look for the answer in the specifics of today.2
As Eco says, social media (and the accompanying cultural homogenization and globalization) is an interesting contender. But perhaps it is better understood as a vehicle that enables this radical behavior, not the primary cause.
There’s a different (also novel) phenomenon that can explain the ubiquitous rebelling against the Enlightenment’s values: We’ve seen them fail. And fail badly.
II. The falling of the heroes
Take the most prominent example in recent history: The COVID pandemic.
Watching the scrappiness of science unfold in real time was both poignant and jarring—a raw, unfiltered glimpse into its messy, iterative nature. For those familiar with the scientific method, it was a painful reminder of how progress often stumbles forward. For everyone else, it felt downright outrageous.
Were masks necessary? First, no. Then, maybe. Then, yes. Then, mandatory. And the virus—airborne or not? Certainly not! So, just scrub every damn surface and wash your hands until they’re raw. Oh, wait—now it’s airborne? Great. So my groceries aren’t contaminated, but my lungs are. Right. And now you will want to inject me with some rushed vax, after spending months downplaying the whole thing? Sure. F*ck you.
People witnessed firsthand the obstacles scientists usually face in the lab, in silence, safe from prying eyes: the uncertainty that challenges even the most skilled and the inevitable mistakes from which they typically have the luxury of learning. All complicated with a new element: the near-impossible balance of urgency, meticulousness, and overwhelming public pressure that demanded optimizing both at the same time—“We needed a cure yesterday!” “It better not kill anyone!”
Science’s sacred aura vanished when the world saw it in action—the curtains veiling its imperfect innards behind a polished facade were abruptly pulled back. What the Great Famine and the Black Death did to the 14th-century Catholic Church, COVID did to modern science and rationality.
The Enlightenment, suddenly undeserving, toppled from the altar we had placed it on. “It’s flawed and fallible,” we realized, “not the omnipotent creed they made us think”—and thus, unfitting to play any role in our beliefs or decisions over our own testimony or intuition. People’s attitudes went from distanced respect toward wisdom, quiet submission to expertise, and grateful (at times) inclination toward progress, to having internalized that their anecdotal experience is just as good, if not better.34
For those wondering why the backlash has been so intense now when all of this has already happened—e.g., the Spanish Flu—I can only say that we don't have good memory. We forget. It won’t happen again because we now have a vast collection of digital recordings, always in circulation. The COVID pandemic and its consequences—unlike the Black Death or even the Spanish Flu—will remain forever with us. If not in our short-term memories, at least a couple of clicks away.
Eco was right that social media helps sow and spread doubt and mistrust, but it is only the failure of our imperfect power and authority structures that allowed them to sprout in the first place. The pandemic was a prominent example of this, but far from the only one. Similar events, broadcast for all to see thanks to the radio, TV, and safely stored thanks to internet servers, have been deteriorating the rule of the Enlightenment throughout the 20th century.
They say “never meet your heroes” because the people you idealize are still people. Flawed and fallible. If you read about the personal stories of prominent scientists, writers, and thinkers, you’d be surprised how often they don’t pass the bar you hold for “That’s a good person.” For many of us, the same kind of disillusionment has now touched science, intellect, and knowledge, once the bastions of modernity.
We had them idealized, then we met them, struggling, against the ropes, and found out they knew if ever slightly little more than we did.
People aren’t idiots, as Eco said; they’ve just stopped worshipping their heroes.
III. The elitism of the people
Yet experts exist.
I will prove it to you right now.
Do you prefer to fly in a plane made by a Twitter thread-bro self-appointed aerodynamics expert or by the person who studied aerospace engineering for five years, then did a master's degree (or two), then spent a not-so-good half decade pursuing a PhD and finally, after all that painful thankless studying, went on to work at Airbus? (Hopefully not Boeing.)
Do you want your dentist to know a lot about teeth? Do you want your car mechanic to know a lot about cars? Do you want your gym trainer to know a lot about lifting weights? Do you want your dermatologist to know a lot about skin and hair? Do you want your physics professor to know a lot about physics? I could go on with literally every discipline we’ve explored and every tool we’ve invented.
The answer is always yes.
So you, my friend, like me, are an elitist who respects expertise and intellectual authority.
How could you! That’s an immoral form of discrimination, and you should be ashamed! You want by your side the very experts you disregard! In all seriousness, I’m sure you’d head straight to the hospital if you happened to break your leg. But how easy it was for some people to disparage doctors’ inability to confront the COVID tragedy, right?
So, how do we square these seemingly contradictory stances? How do we square people's private trusting behavior with their public obstinate behavior?
In our daily lives, we trust things we don't understand all the time. We have faith that the ground won't break under our feet. Is this building safe? You sure believe that or you wouldn't be standing there. Does everyone respect those well-crafted traffic rules? You sure believe that or you'd never cross the street. Is your spoon contaminated with lead, your plate inked with inedible paint, or the fruits you’re eating laced with toxic chemicals? No. You can eat peacefully. You sure believe me.
These things require you to implicitly ascribe intellectual authority (and goodwill) to those who made the myriad of decisions that impact your existence. They’re people you don't know! And at the same time—oh, the COVID pandemic, how it thwarted science’s two-hundred-year quest to become the definitive replacement for religion in our hallowed (now hollowed) spirits.
I keep coming back to COVID because it already gave us our answer: You don't square these contradictions. Our trusting self and our obstinate self are at odds and will remain so. The world is uncertain and the only way to make it appear less confusing is to let our brains do what they do best: conceal both the fact that everything breaks at the edges (making you obstinate) and the fact that, damn—you truly know nothing (making you trusting).
Perhaps realizing that the experts, at times, know only slightly more than you do and are mostly just as lost is frightening. It is like finding out that only a thin pane of opaque glass floor separates you from the deepest abyss imaginable. And now, the glass has turned transparent. You can’t help but peek below. (You shouldn’t have, that’s how minds unravel.)
Realizing that the protective umbrella you once took for granted isn’t one at all is a hard pill to swallow. Science took religion away from us, and now the universe’s intrinsic complexity is pulling science away too. We’re the forsaken audience, staring into the backstage of this masterpiece we call reality. It doesn’t answer our worries, our dreams, or our fears; it merely echoes our uncertainty back at us.
So, we retreat, seeking shelter in the only place that feels safe: our dumb prejudices. Because at least those don’t threaten to shatter when confronted with the unknown. They just circumvent it, unfazed.
IV. The gatekeeping of the experts
Anyway, let me end with how this affects people's opinions of AI.