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How do you know if something is true? How to Spot Logical Fallacies (Featuring J... Why I stopped listening to Joe Rogan A Guide to Critical Thinking 4 Reasons Why We're So Divided Why we fall for con artists And as promised, here is the script from my video: These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had access to so much knowledge, and yet been so resistant to learning anything. - Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise Street Studio My name is Matt Beat, and I’m standing out here on a street. But if you’re familiar with me already, you probably know me as Mr. Beat. If this is your first time watching me, you probably don’t trust me. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to be skeptical about people you don’t know or people you’ve just met. However, if you’ve been watching my videos for awhile, you probably DO trust me. I want you to think about WHY you trust me. Really think about that. In fact, pause this video to think about it if you have to. Ok, you can unpause it now. Thank you. I’ve worked really hard to earn your trust, but it doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I’m biased. Sometimes I make mistakes. Despite that, I’m hoping you trust me anyway because I am trying really hard to get it right. What does “getting it right” mean? I’ll explain that a bit later, but first, I need to tell you what this video is about. This video is about why we trust experts. Let’s do a little exercise… What is this man an expert at? (Stephen A. Smith) What is this woman an expert at? (Oprah Winfrey) What about THIS man? What is THIS man an expert at? (Bill Nye) Ahh, here’s another person. What is THIS woman an expert at? (Brett Cooper) What about THIS man? (pointing to myself) Well…we are all experts at the same thing. At least, we are all TRYING to be experts at the same thing. What is that same thing? I’ll tell you at the end of the video. No! Don’t skip ahead! What the whole video, if you don’t mind. I decided to make this video because I realized a while back that we are probably living in what future historians call The Misinformation Age, a time when it was easy to believe whatever we wanted to believe because it was easy to find evidence to back up what we believed, even if that evidence ignored lots of other evidence that proved the opposite was true. One of the most troubling trends of this Misinformation Age is the growing trend to not trust experts. https://youtu.be/WfA4jtUHG5k?si=ttvcrq0VSNE87Ejw&t=1088 https://youtu.be/IYGG84s1a28?si=VaB4oU-uqKTVyf6h&t=550 Or, at least, experts that tell us what we don’t want to hear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY4Yx8CTVbc&t At the same time, we all seem to think we are experts about everything. https://youtu.be/q_Ogixg1WTg?si=64KG1jeqalHdy_8D&t=676 https://youtu.be/Ahr5biR8OAw?si=8yRJKbpBlmJvk2-F&t=1199 Ok I don’t trust anyone on the internet who says they’ve read studies. I am fairly certain that anyone who has ever said they read studies has probably never read one study. Mk? Anyway, I do think it’s good to question experts. We should question EVERYONE. But in this video, I want to convince you that trusting experts will make your life a whole lot easier. Like, you’ll be so much happier if you do. Titlecard: Why do we trust experts? Before I explain why we trust experts, I think it’s probably better to explain why we trust…ANYONE. Why do we trust ANYONE? Nearly all of us trust at least a few people. Mostly, we trust our family and friends…well…CLOSE friends. Robert is our friend, but we don’t always trust Robert because Robert tends to…exaggerate sometimes. Sorry Robert. We also trust people in the media. Yes, you do. You trust people in the media whether you realize it or not. Hey, speaking of which, the sponsor of this video is pretty freaking relevant. One great way to find out whether or not we should trust a media source is by going to Ground News. I’ve used Ground News for many years at this point. Need I remind you that Ground News is a website and app that gathers articles from over 50,000 news sources around the world to show you media bias. Here’s an example…. left/right/center Factuality Ownership And don’t forget the Blindspot feature, which shows you stories that have been underreported by either side of the political spectrum. With Ground News, you develop a more well-rounded worldview and see the nuance behind the headlines. Go to ground.news/mrbeat to subscribe through my special link for 40% off unlimited access with their Vantage Plan, the same plan I use. By subscribing, you’re directly supporting an independent platform on a mission to restore facts, transparency, and trust in the news. Thanks to Ground News for sponsoring this video. Let’s look at people we typically trust and people we DON’T trust. People we trust
But there’s another type of people we tend to trust…or at least we DID trust until the current Misinformation Age we live in. Experts. Why do we trust experts? Wait, I still haven’t answered that question yet? Man, I really need to get to the point. We trust experts because they often predict the future. Sure, experts tend to have certifications and degrees. There’s the accreditation process, in which fellow experts approve of other experts. But how does someone even get to that point? Well, other than school and training, we generally know someone is an expert if they consistently have a track record of getting things right and can easily show how they know what they know. A real expert generally can explain something simply without dumbing it down. A fake expert will speak vaguely and dodge specifics or lean too heavily on jargon or authority. But overall, we listen to and trust experts because they are basically the closest thing we have today to fortune tellers. They know sooo much about a topic that they are often able to predict the future with their knowledge. They see patterns in data, history, or experience that most people miss. But unlike a fortune teller, their predictions can be checked, tested, verified, and improved over time. Let’s look at an example. (clip) In the early 1950s, scientists analyzed thousands of medical records to argue that cigarette smokers were far more likely to develop cancer. They predicted that lung cancer rates would rise and it’d become a major public health crisis. But many people doubted them. Many said they were being alarmist. But they were right. Lung cancer rates climbed exactly as they forecast. By the 1980s, it had become one of the leading causes of cancer death. Let’s look at another example. How about human-caused climate change! Climate scientists have been predicting human-caused climate change as far back as the late 1800s.^1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9s0XyEctI Their predictions came true, which means they are experts. And I’m not talking about someone who predicts the future once. (Peter Schiff) I’m talking about people who CONSISTENTLY correctly predict the future. And fortunately for humanity, experts are consistently trying to debunk each other. Few things are more satisfying than dunking on a fellow expert. Due to this, different experts emerge. And if challenged, true experts tend to correct themselves and acknowledge their uncertainty, rather than double down or dig in their heels. In the Misinformation Age, many in the media either don’t have to predict the future specifically or are rarely held accountable if they make a specific prediction and get it wrong. I say we change that. I say if someone in the media consistently talks confidently about a topic, we ask them to make specific predictions. (Tim Pool 49-state landslide) And then follow-up by calling them out when their prediction is uh…VERY…wrong. Oh Timmy Boy (shaking head). I can’t believe people take that guy seriously. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR3Rnhm8UPI Titlecard: A brief history of knowing stuff But we all can’t be experts about everything Sure, humans USED to be “Jacks of all trades.” If you lived in the year 1025, you probably knew how to farm, how to fix your roof, how to deliver a baby calf…I mean…you HAD to be good at as many things as possible. But then, society got complicated. We embraced the division of labor, or the separation of work so that workers may specialize. This led to specialization, or the process of focusing on specific areas of knowledge or work, and in turn led to both an increase in efficiency and productivity. I make shoes, you bake the bread, and that guy over there? He spends 40 years studying infectious diseases. The division of labor and specialization is literally why we have experts. And I’ve got what might be surprising news to some of you. Most human beings only specialize in one thing throughout their lives. Ok, if you’re superhuman you might specialize in maybe two things or even three. Modern civilization literally runs on the fact that we all specialize in something and that we trust that others specialize in something else. I don’t need to know how to refine crude oil into gasoline, because I trust that a chemical engineer figured that out for me. This is what the author Tom Nichols calls “the social contract of expertise.” We trade our own ignorance for someone else’s knowledge. By the way, have you guessed what I specialize in yet? Titlecard: These are dangerous times So, what changed? Why are people increasingly not trusting experts? Three words: The internet (walks away and but then turning around) Ok fine that was two words. The internet democratized information, which is great and all, but it also democratized the ILLUSION of competence. It fueled what’s now known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or a cognitive bias in which people with low knowledge about something tend to overestimate their knowledge. Basically, if you read three articles about vaccines, you might feel like you know as much as a doctor who went to medical school for eight years. Well sorry, Amy, but you don’t. But it’s deeper than that. Even WITHOUT the internet, human beings often instinctively resist information they don’t want to hear. So why wouldn't we trust an expert? Because an expert sometimes tells us stuff we don't want to hear. (Chernobyl clip) We especially don’t like to hear information that threatens our ability to make money. (I like money, though) During the 1930s, after farmers over-plowed their land and drought hit, an ecological collapse known as the Dust Bowl displaced millions of Americans. But look, these farmers…they were warned. For decades before this, agricultural experts had warned farmers in the Great Plains that deep plowing the topsoil would lead to disaster if a drought hit. People didn’t listen. They wanted profit. They trusted their gut. Now scale that up. If we ignore civil engineers, bridges collapse. If we ignore epidemiologists, pandemics kill millions more than they should. If we ignore astronomers, we may all die because we didn’t believe that asteroid was coming. (Don’t Look Up clip) But hold on. I can already hear the comments section going crazy. “But Mr. Beat! Experts have been wrong before!” And you are absolutely right. Experts can sometimes be corrupt and be influenced by money. Experts once said that lead in gasoline was safe. Experts gave us eugenics. Blind faith in authority is bad. That’s how you get dictatorships, after all. (running toward camera) But there is a huge difference between healthy skepticism and straight up denialism! Healthy skepticism be like, “Where is the evidence? Has this been peer-reviewed? Who FUNDED this study?” Whereas denialism be like, “I don’t like what this expert is saying because it threatens my worldview or my wallet, so I’m going to pretend they are lying.” Science isn’t about one person being right. It’s about a constant process of correction. When experts are wrong, it’s usually OTHER EXPERTS who prove them wrong. Last year, I released a video about the history of Mormonism. Well, many practicing Mormons didn’t like the video, especially if that was the only video they had ever seen of mine. I realize this is not surprising, but they particularly didn’t like that I was making their religion look bad by saying that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a con artist. But he WAS a con artist. Like, 100% he was a con artist. This is a fact that has plenty of evidence to back it up. So why is it that people trust Joseph Smith, a proven con artist, more than me? Well spoiler alert- it’s because I’m not part of their family. They don’t know me. Even the few who unsubscribed I’d argue didn’t really know me. It’s completely understandable that people would get upset. In fact, I absolutely expected this would happen when I released the video. There’s even a Mormon apologist who immediately made a reaction video dunking on it. I predicted this as well. One of the biggest criticisms I got was that I was ignorant of the history of Mormonism. And sure, that’s fair. I’m no expert on Mormonism. I just made one video on the topic. I’ve only read a few books about Mormonism and listened to a few podcasts about Mormonism. Nah man, as I do with nearly every video I produce, I leaned on EXPERTS for information in that video. Here’s all the sources I used for that video. Sources from experts like Dr. Benjamin Park. I trust Dr. Benjamin Park when it comes to Mormon history, and you should, too. Dr. Park is a credible expert because he is a historian who has spent decades of his life studying the history of Mormonism. He uses primary sources extensively. He’s recognized by other historians and his work is peer-reviewed. He’s neither an apologist nor an ex-Mormon out to destroy the religion. And if you’re coming to me as an authority on Mormonism, you are sadly mistaken to do so. Like, stop it, bruh. Which brings me to my final point. Remember how I wanted you to think about what these four people were experts at? And how it’s the exact same thing I’m TRYING to be an expert at? We are all trying to be experts at communication. That’s it. I’d argue Stephen Smith’s knowledge of politics….or even sports for that matter…isn’t that deep. Sorry if it seems like I’m throwing shade there, Stephen, you seem like a nice guy. The same goes with Oprah Winfrey, Bill Nye, and Brett Cooper. They are all just really good at talking. Oprah isn’t an expert in literature. She’s an expert at TALKING about literature. Bill Nye is not an expert in most scientific fields. Although he studied mechanical engineering. Nah man, Bill Nye is an expert at TALKING about science. Brett Cooper isn’t an expert in politics. I mean, you probably knew that, though, didn’t you. Didn’t ya. And finally, I’m not an expert when it comes to history or even American history or even American political history. I’m an expert, or at least I strive to be an expert, in TEACHING American political history. That’s it. And so, if you think about it, MOST of the YouTubers we watch, MOST of the podcasters we listen to, and even MOST of the authors we read, are NOT experts about what they communicate about. They are simply experts at communication itself. Not only that, some of the people who are WORST at communicating are experts themselves. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see this trend starting to change with an increasing number of “influencers” who also happen to actually be experts in certain fields. It’s a rare gift to be an expert in a subject AND be an expert communicating about that subject. Titlecard: Trust Experts Or We All Die I am not an expert when it comes to just about everything. And, as it turns out, YOU are not an expert when it comes to just about everything, either. If we’re lucky, we’ll be an expert at maybe one or two things. For all OTHER things, we simply must trust experts. We live in a society that relies on trust. And not just trusting people we know or people that we like or people that we THINK we know. Look, I trust the person that purified this water. If we lose that trust- if we decide that one Google search is equal to decades of research- we aren’t just being annoying. We are dismantling the safety net that keeps us alive. Simply put, if we don’t trust experts, we all die. (walk off) _________________________________________________________________________ ^1. https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/ Sources/further reading: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols Purchase here: https://amzn.to/489B9TX Egan, T. (2006). The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.
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