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1. Observations On Experts
Real experts are always practitioners of the craft. They rarely have time to write about their craft until they retire. Very few take up the pen even then.
Real experts are always practitioners of the craft. They rarely have time to write about their craft until they retire. Very few take up the pen even then.
2. Never trust the expertise of anyone whose lifetime experience is only in writing articles and books and talking about them. Their only expertise is in writing and reading, not in what they write about.
3. In particular, no professional writer, reader (e.g. news anchors and commentators), or talker should ever be considered an expert on public policy, foreign policy, business policy, science, technology, or strategy of any kind.
4. Let me illustrate with a couple of concrete examples. You can spend your entire life writing profiles and biographies of all the famous computer scientists and software technology leaders, and you will still not be able to write a single line of functioning code.
5. You can spend your entire life talking about the business practices of businessmen, millionaires and billionaires, and you will still not be able to run a corner store well for even one day.
6. And you can write about wars, foreign policy, domestic policy, and social policy your entire life, and you will still not be able to make good real life executive decisions for one single day if you were miraculously made President for a day.
7. It's fine to have opinions on anything and everything, but one can be an expert only on things one has personally done and practiced for a very long time. Mere observation and bloviating, no matter how many times and for how long, does not an expert make.
The End.
The End.
