The internet has made a lot of people armchair experts happy to offer their perspective with a degree of certainty, without doing the work to identify gaps in their knowledge. Often the mark of genuine expertise is knowing the limitations of your knowledge.

This isn’t a social media thing exclusively of course, I’ve met it in the real world too.

When I worked as a repair technician, members of the public would ask me for my diagnosis of faults and then debate them with me.

I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to understanding people and how they work, in this field it’s even worse because everyone has opinions on that topic!

And yet my friend who has a physics PhD doesn’t endure people explaining why his theories about battery tech are incorrect because of an article they read or an anecdote from someone’s past.

So I’m curious, do some fields experience this more than others?

If you have a field of expertise do you find people love to debate you without taking into account the gulf of awareness, skills and knowledge?

  • Vector@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 个月前

    I was once accused on Reddit of being a bot after spending half an hour crafting a reply to a question with detail and examples. It’s a great way to discourage people from trying to be helpful 🫠

    • rekabis@lemmy.ca
      1·
      2 个月前

      “This is AI-generated content” seems to be the new slur seeking to shame people into silence. Better than “Incel”, I suppose, but certainly more insidious and less dismissively hyperbolic.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      2 个月前

      My guess is interactions like that are probably going to get more frequent as LLM use and possible backlash against them increases, since people who aren’t particularly good at spotting LLM text just think long = bot.

  • PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    2 个月前

    Yes. I work in the aerospace industry. I’m a woman. When Space Karen first appeared on the scene, he immediately had millions of young, impressionable fanboys. Fanboys who would passionately disagree with you when you explained how something Space Karen spouted into the ether one day didn’t will it into existence. And Space Karen said a lot of dumb shit.

    Nevertheless, he said it, you disagree, you are wrong because you disagree with something he said, and your education, skills, experience, and qualifications over many years are meaningless.

    That went on for years before he finally showed himself to be the narcissistic manchild many of us saw in the beginning. It’s a double-edged sword…on one hand you feel vindicated, but on the other you wish it didn’t have to come to this to make it happen.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 个月前

      The worse is that you didn’t even had to be that well studied to know he was full of bullshit from the start, I remember even before he was Space Karen when he tried to be Train Karen, and their fanboys wouldn’t understand that vacuum tubes Km long for transporting people were a BAD idea for several reasons.

          • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            2 个月前

            I read an article about a (white) guy born in - maybe - Zimbabwe but definitely Africa. He moved to the US and his school had a scholarship / fund for African-Americans. He was the only pupil that qualified so applied for a laugh. Can’t remember how it ended.

            I’d like to think that “Spaceship Karen” doesn’t find the phrase funny - but being such a glorious champion of free speech he’ll just have to suck it up.

          • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            2 个月前

            Tbh my brain immediately gave me a fifty-fifty. Say what you want about Bezos but, in my head, he’s more of a Cruella than a Karen. I then guessed the lady in the post was talking about the other space guy. I don’t blame you drawing a temporary blank, new names and all that.

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 个月前

    I worked in politics and have a degree in international affairs so people definitely argue about that. But I got good enough at coding and Linux that it became my career and people tend to trust me on that stuff.

    There’s certain fields where everyone thinks they’d be good at it and they’re wrong. Voice acting is probably one. Seems easy but it’s really fucking not. And most people who think they understand politics don’t know basics about how legislative committees work, much less negotiated rulemaking.

  • magikmw@lemm.ee
    1·
    2 个月前

    I work in IT and security, where everyone is an expert. Couple that with my inability to tell half-thruths about complex subjects I have incomplete info about, and I come out as incompetent. Yay.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      2 个月前

      That’s my experience too. There’s always a “bigger expert”.

      They tell you you’re expertise is irrelevant. They’re the real expert.

      What a joke

    • essell@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 个月前

      Are you one of the people I depend on who write useful information on the internet sharing their expertise?

  • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
    1·
    2 个月前

    It varies, I think the most important part for any kind of online discussion is to establish credibility based on the argument not credibility based on title or degree.

    It’s also important to recognize a challenge on its own merits. I don’t care if you flip burgers at Wendy’s, if you can argue a point on the merits I’ll hear you out (and try to politely explain why you’re wrong – in understandable language – if needed).

    I hate the “trust me bro I’m a X, it’s an elite field, it would take years to explain this to you and you wouldn’t even understand anyways” attitude some professionals take. The real experts that I’ve met and I respect can simplify the subject matter they’re an expert of (to be digestible and reasonable to most people) and I aspire to be that insightful.

    • essell@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 个月前

      That’s totally fair, I agree.

      The version that upsets me most is when I offer a perspective from my expertise, well founded and reasonable, and rather than ask questions to understand or offer a competing idea, people so often just say that I must be an idiot and know nothing about the topic.

      I can hardly reply with “no, you’re the stupid one!” coz that just really doesn’t help.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 个月前

    I’m a CFI. on the subjects of aerodynamics, navigation, instrumentation, aircraft systems, aviation law, my word is usually accepted. I’m apparently the least knowledgeable person in the world on the subjects of aviation physiology and aeromedical factors. What could a pilot possibly know about hypoxia?

    • essell@lemmy.worldOP
      01·
      2 个月前

      I’ve read a lot of Greek mythology but never met hypoxia. Was she one of the nymphs?

  • pdxfed@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 个月前

    HR is a funny one; if you know what you’re talking about about and can speak to different audiences at their level it’s not generally push back from a professional knowledge point–pushback for HR is usually “yeah but that is hard/not what I want” which is very different and totally fine.

    Except fucking compensation. Glassdoor is the WebMD bane of comp conversations with employees. It’s a selection-bias informed group of people who provide salaries when they think they’re underpaid and need validation. While, for the most part we’re all underpaid, just like WebMD, the dangerous oversimplification of very nuanced and complex data is nothing but a PITA to people trying to to fix or work in good systems.

    “I saw my job is being hired for $xx,xxx I should be getting that”. Location, industry, industry segment, education, KSA, org size, high variance in titles from one company to the next(manager here is VP there), every other pay/bonus/benefit/time off difference, internal pay equity considerations that are often statutory by state/feds–none is captured and people aren’t taught that those are part of comp. Just this title is $xx,xxx. The worst part is that managers run to HR with often this info directly supplied by candidates or their own employees all worked up HR is fucking them by underpaying. I’m the first person to tell a manager their comp is fucked against a market if it is, which helps build trust but it’s exhausting.

    This plays out in every job offer, promotion, annual merit increase and any time you remind people they’re not coming to work for free.

    Again, almost never see this in other areas if you know what the hell you’re doing in HR, but I guess the incentive and stakes are high enough in comp to make people just go off the deep end.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    2 个月前

    Lulz

    “Here’s a complete analysis of your situation and how to resolve it.”

    “I don’t agree with these issues you’ve pointed out.”

    “Ok, here’s the proof that you’re wrong but thanks for pointing these things out as you helped me find more issues, so cost just went up, wanna do that again?”

    😐

  • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 个月前

    Yes. Because if they don’t believe me the internet breaks.

    Source: I am a network engineer

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 个月前

    Regarding my field of expertise, not usually. I have a very technical expertise (frontend software engineering, backend Node.js, JavaScript in general), so most people I talk to about it are asking me for help or are similarly experienced.

    But regarding my experience working in big tech, yes. I get pushback for the strangest things. Like, I’ll be explaining the architecture of some system I worked on at Facebook or something, and someone will tell me that’s not how it works, because they read an article that described it differently. Like, ok sure buddy, I only worked on it for a year. I’ve always found that kind of exchange pretty funny.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    2 个月前

    Ha. The VIP that I work for doesn’t have time for me to tell them how to solve their technical issues. So, no, not currently. But in the past it was different.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
    1·
    2 个月前

    Software engineers, supposed “experts”, can’t even agree among each other how to structure and build software, let alone agree with project managers, users and other laypeople.

    Source: Am software engineer.

    • essell@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 个月前

      I’d call it healthy debate but I’ve never met a software engineer who had a healthy anything

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
    1·
    2 个月前

    Yes. Because none of my coworkers want to openly admit that they’re just as geeky and autistic about the company IP schema and the routing tables as I.

    “Is that NTP server we installed on that ship in Galveston last year available via VPN?”.

    “Yup, 172.20.72.21 and its backup is on 172.20.72.22”