No one can become expert on everything. At some level, you simply need to have trust, because you just wont be able to independently learn and verify everything.
The first paragraph should probably have had a /sarcasm tag. To rephrase with less snark, I don't believe anyone can become an expert without trusting prior experts.
Do you believe it is possible for one person to understand multiple topics in different fields as well as the experts in those fields? That seems like a massive unspoken assumption in your point of view here. If not, it seems like some level of trust in experts is the only possible way to know much about the world beyond the rudiments.
What else can you do? Really? How can you trust or distrust expert advice without the technical knowledge?
Most of the reasons for distrust I've seen have basically boiled down to "I don't like what the expert is saying" or "They were wrong once, obviously all experts are wrong about everything".
No. You don't know enough to be expert at everything, and if you were to become expert at sourcing information etc, you'd become a journalist, the very elite you decry.
> What exactly enables experts to understand a thing, and not "random people"?
Mastery of the domain. Yes, any random person (of sufficient intellect) can become an expert in any topic for all intents and purposes. But it takes a lot of time and effort that they'll have to devote to it. I don't think it's reasonably to expect that everyone will be an expert in everything, and it definitely isn't efficient.
With lots of things, you can do general plausibility checks, but you'll miss essentially all of the non-trivial issues if you're not experienced with the methodologies and tools. It's like asking somebody with no programming experience to judge the merits of some architectural choice. They won't be able to make an informed decision and you can't present a complete picture of the intricacies and implications in a 30 minute talk.
From my experience, your average general physician can't tell you a lot about viral infections beyond what you can learn in 30 minutes on Wikipedia. And that's miles away from being able to actually judge vaccines, or the usefulness of masks. What they typically do is rely on experts that write guidelines and recommendations.
"there’s a never ending list of things to educate people about"
I think you kind of hit on the problem. How do you trust "the expert" not to manipulate their status/authority/credentials without becoming an expert in everything. Rankings and rating are being gamed, scientists manipulate data, government is being corrupted by special interest/big money, corporate owned marketplaces are poor solutions, media is biased and manipulated. trust is failing everywhere.
And never will. How would anyone be able to judge someone else's "intelligence"? The simplest thing might be by proxy, testing how knowledgeable someone is. But knowledge is highly diverse, and I'd have a hard time to judge someones knowledge about something where I am not an expert myself.
I've more than once witnessed people impress others with their deep "knowledge" about subjects where I was in a situation to discern that they were spouting superficially informed hogwash.
It's one of the central societal problems: How can I know who's expertise I can trust unless I have that expertise myself?
In this domain, in an ideal world, things "get made" through transparency, collaboration and scrutiny. Expertise is earned, not declared.
You don't have to "wait", but you do need to trust. These people exist, and nearly anyone can join their ranks.
It is indeed hubris to suggest expert-level ability is possible without the experience to back it up. Expertise in one domain does not confer expertise in another.
Side note: expertise is surprisingly hard to define. And I don't believe that "only the experts can speak". All voices bring something.
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