The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge.
This isn’t a social media thing exclusively of course, I’ve met it in the real world too.
When I worked as a repair technician, members of the public would ask me for my diagnosis of faults and then debate them with me.
I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to understanding people and how they work, in this field it’s even worse because everyone has opinions on that topic!
And yet my friend who has a physics PhD doesn’t endure people explaining why his theories about battery tech are incorrect because of an article they read or an anecdote from someone’s past.
So I’m curious, do some fields experience this more than others?
If you have a field of expertise do you find people love to debate you without taking into account the gulf of awareness, skills and knowledge?
Was chatting with my manager about this last week. A fabricator of mine gave me a bit of back talk about how I wanted them to build something. He asked me why I don’t just put my foot down. Told him that I never want to be in the position where someone knows that I am wrong but is afraid to say something to me. He agreed.
Being approachable is not win-win. You deal with people undermining you but hopefully one of them has a bright idea that makes it worth it.
