All Agreement should be Provisional

And expertise should be valued, and not rejected out-of-hand.

It is natural to agree to disagree.  Just admit we can’t judge a barrel of apples from one or two apples.  One bad apple, or even two, doesn’t mean we should throw out the rest. 

Or to be less folksy: a sample can be either representative or unrepresentative, and while there are some ways of telling the difference, there are better reasons for admitting that we don’t know. 

One bad decision, one real mistake, one careless judgment does not NECESSARILY mean that an important institution (organization) should be judged unreliable.  There are many local and national organizations in and out of government that, as a whole, provide vital information.  They also get some things wrong, and they may or may not own up to their errors--sometimes because they believe that the jury is still out.   

Experts are not Gods.  Expertise is not “revelation.”  Our major institutions, medical, educational, legal and humanitarian will be wrong, sometimes on important questions.  Nevertheless, they still deserve our respect and their voices still speak with authority. 

It is very dangerous in these times to fly solo, that is live without expert advice even if we know that it might be wrong.  Our major government institutions have a long history of doing the right thing and following the right scientific methodology. 

I’ll go a little further than this.  Some political and economic forces would like to see expertise devalued.  Policy analysis by professional experts is one of the best, sometimes the only, way we have to spot scams and fools.  They are the “iron dome” that “shoots down” harmful, incoming, drones. 

I know that I and my friends will read the signs differently.  When a highly regarded source gets something wrong (at least as we see it with our own less than perfect knowledge), one of us will see it as a flame from a larger fire.  And another accept it as the exception.  Neither of us can be certain.  It is evidence, of course, but far from conclusive. 

That’s why I ask for agreement to disagree and patience unto we learn more, and (at least for me) no out-of-hand rejection of all the rest of the advice and information that we are fortunate to receive from once, and still our most, trusted sources.