As filmmaker Josh Freed’s entertaining new documentary The Trouble with Experts, reminds us, we are all addicted to experts. They tell us what to eat, how to vote, raise our kids, fix our homes, buy our wines, interpret political events and, until recently, choose the right stocks. They’re all over the media telling us what to think, because there’s just too much information for us to sort out ourselves. So we often cede our own opinions to them because, well. they’re experts, so they know better than us. Or do they? In the recent stock meltdown, we discovered that some of our most important experts – our financial gurus – didn’t know much at all. So what about all the other experts out there? Does having expertise actually mean you make better decisions than regular people? Or are they just part of a new cult of expertise, an ever-growing expert industry that’s become our latest new religion?
