Expert Layman Syndrome
We've all had episodes of this particular affliction (if one can call it that) from time to time. I too have had it. Chances are you have experienced it from someone in many different ways over the years.
How does it work? Take your favorite football tournament where your favorite team is playing. Imagine nothing is going right for your team. You, sitting, thousands of miles away, know exactly the problem. The coach should have done this or that, you tell your friend with increasing frustration. You plan out team tactics and strategies that the coach should be employing. Now pause for a while. You have just had an episode of Expert Layman Syndrome.
This is something that happens to everyone at some point. We become an expert for the briefest of moments in a field of profession that is as familiar to us as nuclear physics is to a 4 year old. You may say strategic football management is not exactly nuclear physics. If that were the case teams would not enlist the expertise of those coaches at the cost of millions. They'd be happy with you doing that for a fraction of the cost. But it does not work that way.
There are pundits of, say, football who form opinions and offer critical analysis. But there too, sitting with other pundits, is not you, is it? Many other such areas of specialization remain that make the idea of the opinion of the expert laymen (not that it matters at any level) seem outright ludicrous.
Take for instance, medicine. Several times I've heard critical analysis of doctors and their procedures from people with expertise in equally intellectually-demanding fields as desk-clerks, taxi drivers and receptionists. The doctor should have done this or that, they say. For them, as it is for many of us, the moment of the expert layman syndrome is something special. Momentarily we are transformed from our current position in the hierarchy of experts to a different position - not necessarily a higher or lower position. If the doctor has expert advice on how a taxi should be operated and is forming opinions about the business dynamics of taxiing then he too is having an episode of the expert layman syndrome (ELS).
This is all fairly harmless stuff, you say. And I have to agree to some level. But there is a very apparent danger in this. The danger is when the society as a whole is suffering from ELS. When that happens we find it difficult to distinguish between the real experts, those who have spent many years in the study of a particular area, and those that are constantly having ELS attacks. Here the problem is exacerbated by the introduction of envy between those suffering from ELS.
Here's how that works. You hear your friend, who's an average paper-pusher in the public sector, comment about some obscure section of the vast sphere of socio-economics of this country and you think: Hmmm, why didn't I think of that first? And so you try to better your friend's efforts. I think this mentality has been so imbued into our psyche that we react in the same style even when real experts express calculated, experience-based and learned opinions.
Now apply this to those few that are privileged with the power of administering this country for us. Most ministers, you feel, are constantly suffering from both the greater form of this envy and ELS combined. Remember when honorable Kamaldeen said, regarding gang violence, that it can only be stopped when they (the gangs) stop it? That's right. He was having a terrible ELS attack right then.
We can only imagine how many real experts from such institutions and establishments as the World Bank and IMF and the UNDP (etc) have given their expert advice on adjusting and transforming our economy, society, quality of life and the country? Remember the Vision 20-20 plan? Everything is big and beneficial to everyone on paper and then some idiot having an especially devastating attack of ELS goes and spends millions of dollars building a jetty for an island inhabited by 12 and a half people.
By the way, if you've missed it, I just had an episode, right there.