The Three Stages of Understanding (Or, Why We Don't Trust Experts)

In this country, we have a distrust of experts. I have one theory about why that might be.

Systems are defined by interaction. Worse, the influence of any ONE element depends on at least one other element. For instance, two children who are continually undermined by their mother will experience this differently. The impact of the mother will depend upon at least one other element - from differences in personality to fashion daring between the siblings. Systems - from markets to people - are hard to predict.

This is one reason why experts in any domain become tiresome. As people learn more, they become harder to understand. Imagine you are asked to predict the behavior of a system - from an economy to the effect of summer cold on wheat production. There are three levels of understanding that will generate three different answers to the question, "What will happen when ...?"

1. "I don't know." At this level you might be able to define the system but you can't predict it.

2. "I know! It will ...." At this higher stage, you've seen the system respond to this variable before. You can predict based on the example or two from the past.

3. "It depends." At this, the highest stage of knowledge, you know that the influence of any one variable will depend on at least one - maybe dozens - of other variables.

And once an expert launches into his list of variables upon which the system depends, the average person begins to hear, "blah, blah, blah ..."

This is one reason that liars and people at stage two are more likely to be trusted than experts at stage three. They are easier to understand. They sound more confident. This preference is not certain, of course. Because whether or not people will prefer someone at level 2 to someone at level 3 depends on ... blah, blah, blah. But of course, I'm no expert.