How to Be an Expert: A Very Troubling Method
May 20, 2020
DarkCyber found itself worrying about knowledge. Epistemology is not exactly the hot topic in the midst of the collapse of the unicorns, blue skies in Wuhan, and tiny animals in major US cities.
The write up “4 Unexpected Methods for Becoming an Authority on Nearly Any Subject” contains some troubling advice. DarkCyber fears that many search engine optimization, content marketing, and MBA carpetbaggers will be off to the races after taking the advice in the Copyblogger article.
Make Stuff Up and Tell People Who Don’t Know the Subject
We noted with some discomfort:
If you’re the best in the place where your customers hang out, you’re the best. Don’t turn your nose up at being a big fish in a small pond. There’s a lot of success, satisfaction, and wealth to be found in small ponds.
We think this means make up stuff and pitch it to drop outs from the Baraboo clown school. Is that right?
Another point caught our attention:
Make complicated topics easy to understand.
Yes, but… and the but is important. What if the person explaining quantum mechanics or RNA replication does not understand these subjects. Isn’t this similar to the previous idea of pitching incorrect or misleading information to hungry minds in Thurmon, West Virginia.
Teach the subject.
Okay, a person who does not know the subject teaches the methods of nuclear fuel management and also Hopf fibration calculations. That sounds like a winning approach. How does one get this teaching job, pray tell?
Commit to a sincere desire to help.
What? So a person without the requisite expertise is going to supervise drone operations in a war zone? Is a person with zero knowledge of financial markets is going to engage in currency trading at a quant firm on Wall Street?
The write up illustrates the disdain the marketing profession has for those with concrete, high value information. This is not intellectual dishonesty. The use of any of these methods is far worse.
The enshrinement of duplicity. Super.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2020
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