So, What Do We Do With This Information

 Does the term “expertise'' hold no value in society?

That is definitely not what I believe. Even after picking apart and scrutinizing the term so frivolously, I still feel uncomfortable claiming that expertise holds no value in society. So then if that feels uncomfortable, what value does it actually hold?

I see there being a few different elements. 

Less valuable to the structure of society but worth noting, expertise is an effective term in marketing. It can draw business and create the perception of skill.

Everyone wants to hire an expert, and many businesses or individuals claim that they are experts, on the basis of nothing particularly valid to differentiate them as expertise, other than claiming to be experts. 

Every exterminator claims to be an expert exterminator because all exterminators are experts relative to non-exterminators; as long as they are able to remove the bugs, the customers are also comfortable considering them to be experts. When other people can’t prove that you’re not, it is advantageous to market yourself as an expert. 

I see expertise as optimally valuable to the structure of society to the extent that it allows us to distinguish who is able to help us solve any given problem. There is tremendous value in being able to differentiate who can help you fix an issue or benefit from your assistance from someone who has the same set of skills as you. This is true at all levels of expertise.

Let’s break that down. Expertise is relative and based on the amount of information that you have in that topic. We see those who have more skill than us to be experts. The notion of expertise can be a measuring stick of how much help, or assistance on a project we might need. For instance, when I went to get my brakes checked out, I could have first brought my car to the most rudimentary and nearby mechanic to see if he could diagnose the problem. That person is still an expert on brakes compared to myself.

It is optimally efficient to take my car to the nearest dealership and to have whoever currently available look at my car. Then, if that mechanic could not come to a sufficient conclusion about the brakes, then he passes the car along to someone who he deems has more knowledge and problem solving ability than he does, maybe someone from the brake specializing team at the dealership.

Solving a problem is a matter of presenting experts with an issue, and for each time the issue is not solved, that person then gives it to who they consider to be an expert.

The value of expertise is being able to recognize who is both more of an expert than you and is also at an appropriate, reachable distance to have them assist you. By a reachable distance, I mean someone who you could realistically reach to help you solve a problem. The Chief Brake Developer at Ford headquarters simply would not answer my calls or be willing to look at my car at a moment's notice. I would need to take several steps before they would even be willing to get on the phone with me, much less look at my brakes.

When my brakes were squeaking, I knew I didn’t need to bring it to the Chief Brake Developer at Ford headquarters- I just needed someone who was marginally more familiar with brakes than I am. 

In my case, the most efficient system of gaining aid would be to take my car to a basic mechanic, then if they cannot fix it, take it to someone who specializes in brakes, and if they cannot fix it, someone who specializes in Ford cars and brakes, and eventually, if no one can fix it, to the Chief Brake Developer at Ford headquarters.

In this hypothetical, my car is being passed each time from someone with a problem that they cannot fix, to someone who they see as an expert in solving that problem. While I would consider everyone who, hypothetically, looked at my car to be an expert, each time my car is moving from someone who does not know how to fix an issue to someone who they perceive to be able to fix the problem. 

We all see experts as those who have more knowledge, skill, and experience than us. It is necessary to distinguish who has greater problem solving ability in a given field, to know who to turn to when searching for a solution. 

Expertise helps us prioritize who might have more information than us about that issue- but expertise typically only exists about a very niche area of information.

Part of understanding expertise is recognizing where we over-interpreting expertise. Often, we assume that because someone might be an expert in one thing, they are necessarily an expert across related fields. No expertise is absolute. 

A friend of mine’s mom is a very talented artist. She can turn an empty canvas into a beautiful work of art that is both visually pleasing and perpetuates a greater message. Yet, when she was commissioned to create a clay bust, she had a very difficult time and the bust came out well below the quality standard of her other pieces. While the customer who commissioned the bust saw her as an expert artist, she was just an expert of canvas. Her expertise does not span all faucets of art.

An important issue arises as we broadly interpret expertise in a given niche as someone who is an expert of all fields. When do we overinterpret peoples expertise?

Immediately, I think of taking cryptocurrency advice from a career stock trader; the two are similar- they both involve investing money- but at the level of expertise there is an important distinction between the two talents. We may want to treat the two career investment watchers to be identical, but they are no more similar than a stock trader and a real estate agent. There is value in distinguishing whether someone is an expert in their field compared to other people in that field, or just experts relative to us.

The value of expertise largely lies in being skeptical of expertise- the reminder that ability is often largely based on perception of skill or knowledge, not necessarily a real substantive ability, or lack thereof. 

Expertise divides society economically. In a sense, being an expert works as a goal to the workforce, in recognizing that someone else has a salary above yours, and you hope to one day make that person's salary. In order to get that salary, in your eyes, you have to get the knowledge and skill of that expert. 

Expertise is also valuable in itself as a goal for high achievers, when paired with the realization that total expertise will never be attainable. Expertise is a capable goal, especially for someone in a position like me. 

Expertise is often hard to recognize when you have it. I think that me and many of my friends would say that our parents are experts at their jobs. I would definitely say my dad is an expert at his job. But I’m not sure my dad would think of himself as an expert, because he is constantly reading the work of others. He would probably cite them as the experts. 

How can we use expertise to our advantage? How can we appropriately value expertise?

We can pay attention to how people perceive their own expertise. Some people throw their expertise in your face, reminding you at all times of their expertise and superiority over you. They allow their expertise to become their personality. Like Chef Ramsay in Hell’s Kitchen. He knows he is the expert of the kitchen and he deliberate in making his contestants understand that they were his inferiors. That is a characteristic that can be very telling in someone. 

Yet, some people are very humble in their expertise. They constantly cite the source of their knowledge and refer their disciples to websites and books to deepen their understanding. These types of people are easily able to admit their shortcomings and the holes in their knowledge. I would argue that this is an example of someone secure in their expertise. They know that they are an expert on some things, relative to some other people, but yet there are many things that they have a total lack of information about.

Three summers ago I worked at a courthouse in Detroit that housed about 20 unique courtroom, each with their own judge. Over my time as an intern, I got to observe many of the judges and how they ran their courtrooms.

Some of the judges, like the one I worked with, had a very calm demeanor and would admit when they had misunderstandings of an argument being made, or had to be reminded of a specific legal precedent from time to time. They had tremendous caseloads, and could never be expected to memorize every fact of every case. Everyone needs to be reminded at times.

However, some other judges had a very different demeanor- they were loud and never wanted to be corrected or informed by a lawyer, who they clearly saw as their inferiors. They would yell and scream at lawyers, simply as a means of ensuring that the lawyers knew who the “true” expert in the room was.

It became quickly clear to me that the second group of judges, who never wanted to be corrected, wanted all the lawyers, clients, and bailiff to know that this judge is all-knowing- that they’ve never made a single mistake. The reality is, no one is all-knowing and we all have gaps of knowledge. 

For no one in the world is expertise absolute and total across all fields. No one expects that of us, and we should not expect that of ourselves. We should recognize that about ourselves.

There is tremendous value in understanding how people perceive their own expertise and how they justify their expertise.