There is something very fundamentally wrong with our absolute belief and trust in so-called "Experts" and "Pundits" and their utterances. Now don't get me wrong; experts are needed. For example; since i don't know much about "nuclear physics", i would need to consult with a person who has studied it and hence is an expert relative to me. What i have an issue with is the common man's absolute deference to them. It is pretty common in arguments for one-party to quote a "well-known expert" and claim victory irrespective of whether there is any merit to it. What has happened here is that one has given control to another person and has suspended his own intellect. This is how people get manipulated and have their free will shaped by others. Now i am not saying that you disregard experts completely; they do have their uses (they are a data bank in their area of specialization). What i am saying is that do not swallow wholesale what an expert says without applying your own independent thought and judgement. If after deliberation you are convinced, then accept it but with the caveat that you might change your mind on that later (as you gain more knowledge). This is discriminating judgement.
Now why do i feel this way? Because our current system (educational and social) is completely broken when it comes to anointing experts. All it takes to be labeled an "expert" is a certain period of study (eg: 15 years of education, a master's and then a ph.d) and/or a long period of experience (eg: 10+ years experience). Did the period of study actually result in assimilation of knowledge and has it given rise to new insights? If not you are not an expert, you are simply regurgitating stuff. Does the 10 years of experience constitute actual worthy experience or 1 year's experience repeated 10 times? In the former case you have grown intellectually and have something to offer whereas in the latter case you have stagnated and cannot be named an expert. It is especially important in the current times with the explosion of all sorts of data and news that we learn how to identify true experts whose word we can accept and whom we can ignore.
The essence of an expert is specialization. As somebody once said "An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less". In the course of gaining "expertise" one necessarily has to go deep into the subject of study but in the process if one loses the interrelationships between concepts in the same domain or across domains what has one gained? In focusing on a small piece one loses the organic unity of the whole i.e. "one misses the forest for its trees". But specialization is an inevitability since there is only limited time and unlimited knowledge. Thus the true way to becoming an expert is to hold both the details and the big picture simultaneously in mind while studying. This has to be practiced consciously until it becomes a habit. The second thing is to be clear about the difference between a concept and its formal symbolic representation. Symbols manipulate concepts to derive relationships and/or new concepts. If the source concepts are not well understood then symbolic manipulation becomes useless since one cannot infer anything from the results. This is especially important today with science being so advanced that a lot of concepts are conveyed mainly by symbolic means (i.e. using maths). Hence concentrate on understanding the concept and more importantly the abstraction behind it before manipulating its formal representation. Spend more time in understanding the concepts by consciously searching for different explanations and viewpoints from varied authors. The formalism will follow naturally and before one knows it one has become an "expert".
