Unfortunately, in practice, being as knowledgable about the details of a particular scenario as an expert does not imply that you will process the facts as correctly as the expert. For instance, an expert and I may both know all of the facts of a murder case, but (if expertise means anything) they are still more likely to make correct judgements about what actually happened due to their prior experience. If I actually had their prior experience, it’s true that their authority would mean a lot less, but in that case I would be closer to an expert myself.
To give another example, a mathematically inclined high school student may see a mathematical proof, with each step laid out before them in detail. The high school student may have the opportunity to analyze every step to look for potential problems in the proof and see none. Then, a mathematician may come along, glance over the proof, and say that it is invalid. Who are you going to believe?
In some cases, we are the high school student. We can stare at all the raw facts (the details of the proof) and they all make sense to us and we feel very strongly that we can draw a certain inference from them. And yet, we are unaware of what we don’t know that the expert does know. Or the expert is simply better at reasoning in these kinds of problems, or avoiding falling into logical traps that sound valid but are not.
Of course, the more you know about the expert’s arguments, the less their authority counts. But sometimes, the expertise lies in the ability to correctly process the type of facts at hand. If a mathematician’s argument about the invalidness of step 3 does not seem convincing to you, and your argument about why step 3 is valid seems totally convincing, you should still at least hesitate in concluding you are correct.
Unfortunately, in practice, being as knowledgable about the details of a particular scenario as an expert does not imply that you will process the facts as correctly as the expert. For instance, an expert and I may both know all of the facts of a murder case, but (if expertise means anything) they are still more likely to make correct judgements about what actually happened due to their prior experience. If I actually had their prior experience, it’s true that their authority would mean a lot less, but in that case I would be closer to an expert myself.
To give another example, a mathematically inclined high school student may see a mathematical proof, with each step laid out before them in detail. The high school student may have the opportunity to analyze every step to look for potential problems in the proof and see none. Then, a mathematician may come along, glance over the proof, and say that it is invalid. Who are you going to believe?
In some cases, we are the high school student. We can stare at all the raw facts (the details of the proof) and they all make sense to us and we feel very strongly that we can draw a certain inference from them. And yet, we are unaware of what we don’t know that the expert does know. Or the expert is simply better at reasoning in these kinds of problems, or avoiding falling into logical traps that sound valid but are not.
Of course, the more you know about the expert’s arguments, the less their authority counts. But sometimes, the expertise lies in the ability to correctly process the type of facts at hand. If a mathematician’s argument about the invalidness of step 3 does not seem convincing to you, and your argument about why step 3 is valid seems totally convincing, you should still at least hesitate in concluding you are correct.