Saturday, April 26, 2008
Experts?
I am continually astonished by how much weight we give the “experts” in whatever area of consideration.
Let us take the simplest of examples, the weather. It is Monday and you are planning events for the weekend to come. Would you stake your life on the weather reports of your local news station? Seriously, would you make plans that might impact your life, even put it in danger, based on the weather forecasts? My guess is that you would consult a myriad of sources before taking any risk.
So why are we planning the future of the quality of our lives and economy on the word of a few weather men and Al Gore? Think about it. The technology Al Gore’s experts, the ones he is relying on to validate his theory of Global Warming (soon to be called Climate Change) is the same your local weather person uses to tell you about next weekend’s weather.
Then there are the financial experts. Here is a short memory quiz; which “experts” predicted the stock market crash of 1987? It should not be hard to discover, what with Google. I have to admit that I have not done the research on this one. I lived through it and, frankly, do not remember any expert showing up in the media with an “I told you so” moment. But note this the next time some economic figures are released. Inevitably, the newscast will say that the figures surprised experts, were higher/lower than experts predicted, did not meet expectations and etc.
Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for those who could see into the future and predict what would happen so that humanity might avoid the down-turns of life. They were once called druids, magicians, wisemen, soothsayers, mystics. Now we call them experts. Nevertheless, despite the name, their task is essentially the same. They claim to see into the future and charge customers for the information. Once they used crystal balls, smoke or bones. Today, they used satellites, spread sheets and high speed computers. But the results are the same. Just look at Al Gore's bank account.
Let us take the simplest of examples, the weather. It is Monday and you are planning events for the weekend to come. Would you stake your life on the weather reports of your local news station? Seriously, would you make plans that might impact your life, even put it in danger, based on the weather forecasts? My guess is that you would consult a myriad of sources before taking any risk.
So why are we planning the future of the quality of our lives and economy on the word of a few weather men and Al Gore? Think about it. The technology Al Gore’s experts, the ones he is relying on to validate his theory of Global Warming (soon to be called Climate Change) is the same your local weather person uses to tell you about next weekend’s weather.
Then there are the financial experts. Here is a short memory quiz; which “experts” predicted the stock market crash of 1987? It should not be hard to discover, what with Google. I have to admit that I have not done the research on this one. I lived through it and, frankly, do not remember any expert showing up in the media with an “I told you so” moment. But note this the next time some economic figures are released. Inevitably, the newscast will say that the figures surprised experts, were higher/lower than experts predicted, did not meet expectations and etc.
Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for those who could see into the future and predict what would happen so that humanity might avoid the down-turns of life. They were once called druids, magicians, wisemen, soothsayers, mystics. Now we call them experts. Nevertheless, despite the name, their task is essentially the same. They claim to see into the future and charge customers for the information. Once they used crystal balls, smoke or bones. Today, they used satellites, spread sheets and high speed computers. But the results are the same. Just look at Al Gore's bank account.
