Should Smart People's Opinions Have More Weight?

 

Evolution

I was pretty self confident when I got out of college. I didn’t make super grades but I had other interests. I spent a lot of time with friends. I read a lot. I spent a lot of time playing in the orchestra and in doing my comedy routines. But when I went to med school I decided to get serious. I wanted to be a good doctor, so I studied hard and tried to do my best. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t do much better than average. Suddenly I realized that there were just a lot of people smarter than me. It was devastating. I went to the dean and told him I wanted to repeat my freshman year. He told me that I didn’t have to learn everything. What made a good doctor was how he (or she) kept learning after med school. He told me that he wasn’t at the top of his class either. So I continued, doing as well as I could. 

I always remembered that, and throughout my career, I tried to keep reviewing my patients’ conditions, and keeping up with new advances in medicine. But, in the back of my mind, the fear remained that I wasn’t good enough, or that someone smarter might have found something I missed. Some doctors get more confident as they age. Some continue practicing into their nineties. In my case, I continued to doubt myself and as soon as I thought my memory was slipping, I retired. 

I enjoy writing, and I have opinions about almost everything, but the same issue continues to bother me. What right do I have to disagree with someone smarter than me? I realize that you can find smart people on either side of every issue, but that’s no excuse. A smart person has a tremendous advantage. He (or she) can remember more facts related to a given issue.  He can make a better case for his opinion. But there are disadvantages too. A smart person can filter out the facts that don’t support his opinion. And he can rationalize an opinion that’s not supported by the facts. In every field of science, smart people tend to rise to the top. They don’t necessarily take leadership positions, either because they don’t want to, or because they aren’t outgoing, or if, like my wise cousin Steve, they know enough to see that every issue has different sides so they try to remain open minded.  

Also there are many factors that effect people’s opinions regardless of how smart they are. There’s prejudice of all kinds: racial, religious, social. There’s the effect of culture. That’s why Christianity is the main religion in the US and Europe, and Islam is predominant in the mid-east. Then there’s situational effects. I saw it in Vietnam, where the American soldiers tended to look down on Vietnamese lives as worth less than ours, and now in Gaza where the Israelis think their lives are worth more than the Palestinians, attempting to justify killing over 67,000 Palestinians out of revenge for Hamas’ murder of a little over 1000 Israelis. Then there’s money. People with a lot of money often use it to campaign and influence people to support their interests, which may not agree with the interests of the population. 

It's tempting to become egotistical and think you’re smarter than you are, especially if you don’t talk to a lot of people. That’s my situation now.  I’m retired and only have my wise cousin Steve to reign in my self-confidence. Also when you see a smart person who supports your views on TV or read a book that agrees with you, you have a tendency to think you’re just as smart as they are. If you were talking to them in person, you would find out you can’t come up with nearly as clear an argument as they, or as a smart person with the opposite opinion, so you tend to just listen to those who agree with you, and the more you hear, the more confident you are that they (you) are right. Maybe that’s why our society is so polarized. People just listen to those who agree with them, and they are isolated from those who disagree.   

So what can I do? We live in a democracy – so far – so we can vote to express our opinions. In fact, I think we have to vote, to keep unscrupulous people from having their way. Voting is not foolproof. Polls may be wrong, and the majority of people may be misled by lies, selective reporting, or their own prejudices and culture. 

I think the answer is to be very, very careful. Try to verify facts and eliminate prejudice from your reasoning. Listen to smart people, and also those who aren’t so smart. You never know who’s going to be right. Also don’t close your mind. People believed in creationism for millennia before Darwin came along with his theory of evolution. And, I'll have to admit, I still pay more attention to the opinions of smart people. I think if they are honest and have access to the facts, their opinions are worth more than mine.