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“The Expertocracy” - experts with expertise

I have learned, that it, and they, are problematic. That is very unfortunate for us, in life: Hard to find a good ______. When we like to think, that “the professionals” can be trusted.

I have found, that a study of a person’s self-estimation (ego scale), combined with a study of that person’s willingness to listen and study in, and outside, their knowledge base, helps me to get to know that person and leads to trust. Because, I get to see how they (that person) think(s).

At the college I attended, there was a Student Health Center, where most of the doctors were residents at the college’s hospital. After wondering if a couple doctors whom I had seen, knew what they were doing, I started digging around the fringes of the clinic, getting the opinions of some of the regular employees.

One employee suggested that I try Dr. W. OK; I set up an appointment. And on the occasion of my first visit, I wandered thru a bit of the back alleys of the health center, finding his office . . . way in the back.

There he was, at his desk, studying. Every time I visited, he was always there, studying. He resembled a USSS agent I had known, briefly, who also was careful and studious (old guard). Over the last years of my college career (ahem, cough), the good doctor and I had several conversations about medicine and things. He was thoughtful and considerate.

Eventually, I really did have a medical problem, and the good doctor referred me to a fellow doctor who really knew his business (and was also the chief of surgery at a local hospital). This surgeon could be cryptic and tough, but he knew that I was in a tight spot, and he came to my rescue (along with his nurse, who really, really knew her business).

All three of them, the two good doctors plus the nurse, were good people who I could trust. If they ever had an unkind word to say, I never heard it. None of them wished (as far as I could tell), nor seemed inclined, to do harm - in deed and in word. Instead, they conveyed what they knew that was helpful, and they conveyed along with that knowledge, their carefully applied skills.

Yet, I had to dig, to find them -— instead of trusting any schemes of “experts with expertise” that functions as a moat around bodies that are not as good as such bodies profess.

I expect professionals to be self-critical, and therefore very curious to learn beyond what is the knot of their mistake, in addtion to how they flubbed something(s) at that knot.

Trotting out their certificates and “I’ve been doing this for 20 years!” do not work for me.

A friend, and GI doctor, readily admitted something that he did not know. Along with admitting where he had been wrong about something, years earlier - when he then thought he knew it all. In my view, his honesty - that, I could trust.