CDXIX – The Problem Of Experts And Obedience

I have become an ironclad defender of the Church, over the last year. I am not her best defender, nor am I her most articulate defender. But upon seeing some controversy, I felt compelled to speak in defense of Holy Mother Church and in defense of obedience to her mandates. Doing so created in me a firm resolve to continue to do so.

I have also been a snarky critic of secular experts. I found the COVID chaos to be ridiculous, I found the knee jerk reactions of administrators and bureaucrats to be disheartening, I found the unmitigated drama of much of the populace’s reaction to these administrators and bureaucrats to be exhausting and misplaced.

It has occurred to me that there is a potential contradiction in these two positions so I wanted to sort it out for myself and for you before either of us got confused.

What’s wrong with Experts?

Secular experts–usually scientists, ancient politicians, or moneyed interests–have an agenda when they speak. What it means to have an agenda is that whatever area they have an expertise in is being deployed to accomplish some political objective. Take, for example, a climate scientist speaking on the subject of climate change. Climate Change is a highly politicized topic, because Government is trying to justify it’s engagement in addressing climate. A climate scientist speaking on the subject of climate change might have an agenda when speaking. What he will say is sensible facts about the situation based on his observations–observational anecdotes cannot be contradicted. What he will suggest is a political outcome: some law ought to be passed, some tax levied, some bureaucracy established to support the amelioration of the observational anecdotes. To fully abridge what the climate scientist is saying, it would be something like, “I have authority by my credential as an expert; I can tell you my observations; my observations lead me to support an increase in taxes.”

That’s it. Secular experts are trying to accomplish political ends and their credential is intended to pre-suade and not reinforce their argument. To Pre-suade is to put someone in the disposition of believing what you say before you say it. Because a climate expert is a doctor from a prestigious university with many years of experience then the average listener might be pre-suaded to believe them on whatever topic, no matter what they say.

Criticism of this brand of experts is well placed. A proper deployment of expertise would be something like being an expert witness in a court case. Your comments are restricted to data-supported observations of some kind, you do not suggest an outcome to the trial nor do you offer a suggestion of guilt or innocence. An expert witness will speak to the data without suggesting a conclusion unless the conclusion can be firmly supported by the data. To be clear–this is empiricism which has been restrained.

Wait a minute, aren’t Bishops Church Experts?

The difference between secular experts and Church authorities is that you have a concrete and definite duty to obey Church authorities, a duty which you do not have with secular experts. The Church authorities have a reciprocal duty of custodial care for you, which the secular experts do not share. So Church authorities are a different kind of expert. You should listen to them not because they are experts but because you are bound by the Church to be obedient to the hierarchy within the Church.

Church authorities are not the same kind of expert as the secular experts. When Church authorities speak, they do not have an agenda the same way secular experts have an agenda. Church authorities agenda does consist (or ought to consist) of protecting and preserving the lay faithful, of leading the laity to heaven, and of promoting peace and concord within the Church. They are tasked with caring for the spiritual wellbeing of every soul (and not just the Catholic ones) in their jurisdiction–parish, diocese, or province.

Disdain for Church authorities qua expert is always misplaced. They are speakers for God, while also being imperfect humans. While imperfect and human, they have received specialized training and education making them well informed in matters pertaining to the spiritual wellbeing of the souls in their jurisdiction. They have not received specialized training and education for all matters, primarily just the spiritual ones.

So what’s the difference?

The agenda spells the difference between a secular expert and a Church authority. Secular experts are trying to accomplish political goals; Church authorities are trying to help you accomplish spiritual goals.

So, buy your priest something nice, and tell him Thank you, if you haven’t done so in a while. He’s praying for you more than you realize.

AMDG

CLXV – Ad Hominem

Beliefs can be evaluated independently of people. If an incontrovertibly evil man says that a piece of good stock advice is to buy low and sell high, that does not make the stock advice incontrovertibly evil. It might induce an element of skepticism, encouraging one to seek out a more authoritative source for stock advice.

Communication relies on the authority of the speaker and the validity of what is spoken. Trust is what you get when a speaker consistently speaks truth. A speaker with a lot of authority has a higher starting point of trust than a speaker without authority, but consistent truth can lead to equally trustworthy communicators.

Evaluating whether or not a statement is true relies on a value judgement of the person receiving the communication. The person’s value judgement begins with the authority of the speaker, and is adjusted by their biases for what they are saying.

For example: A person with high authority (A subject matter expert) says that good stock advice is to buy low sell high. I recognize the authority of the speaker, and have heard this advice elsewhere, so the authority of the speaker is given to this advice.

I, a person with low authority, say that good stock advice is to buy low sell high. A person with whom I don’t get along hears what I have to say. They do not acknowledge my authority, and so the advice is discounted, and they happen to believe the stock market is intrinsically evil, so the advice is discounted further.

This nemesis then goes and hears a person they admire, who they perceive as having high authority, making the claim that a good bit of stock advice is to buy low and sell high. This is a claim they have already discounted extremely. The high authority of the speaker is not enough to offset the bias in this regard, but perhaps in the eyes of the nemesis the stock trading maxim has gone from “A false statement” to “A misguided judgement”.

Evaluating the authority of people is not something that can be generalized, because there as many ways to do it as there are people. We all have a way peculiar to ourselves for determining who we trust and who we do not.

So when someone makes a claim, their own authority doesn’t make it credible, but the validity of the claim itself determines its credibility.

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Persuasion is the talent for making people either accept your authority or accept the validity of your claim. Persuasive writing, for example, asserts some claim and then supports it to show that it is true, presuming that the reader does not know the claim or does not know the evidence. Persuasive writing is usually limited to formal debates or business pitches, because in every day life most people know something about any given topic and usually will have an opinion on it. When two parties know the claim but have different evidence for it, that is argumentation. Both sides have to be looking to trying to establish that their claim is the true one, and simultaneously be willing to admit that, given specific evidence, their claim is not true.

AMDG

CLXIV – What is Leadership

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here, but I’m halfway through an MBA program. This is one of the concerns which occasionally draws my attention away. One of my courses is about Management, as you might expect, and how it pertains to leadership. In the lecture, there was a discussion about how exactly one would define leadership. They went through a number of ideas but one that stuck out to me was this: “If you want to know if you’re a leader, look behind you.” This struck me because something about it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know exactly what and I am not sure I have a better definition to offer right now.

I feel like this backwards looking idea is missing some je ne sais quoi expected in leadership. The idea is that if people are following you, you are a leader. But at the same time, many leaders started out with no one following them, yet persistence in the face of countervailing wisdom is what won out. If those leaders felt they were not leaders, and went looking for people to follow them, they would have tread no new ground because they would have pioneered a cause which people already agreed with.

I’m tempted to say Leadership is less backwards looking than it is forward looking. A leader navigates the un-navigated and leaves a path for others to follow, be it now or a hundred years from now.

It seems to me that leaders should also know that they are in charge. A military officer doesn’t need to look behind him to know his company is marching with him. A manager doesn’t look back to see which team they are responsible for. So this quote loses the mundane aspects of leadership and grasps for the inspiring aspects of leadership.

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How does one convince people to follow? I don’t think it’s possible. I can’t go up to someone and say, “Follow me, I will lead you!” Maybe it would work for some, but it won’t work for the vast majority. No amount of argumentation can convince someone to follow if they are determined not to follow. The language of leadership is relationships, the currency is trust. Leaders build relationships with people, and over time build trust. I follow someone because I trust them. A person who has no trust is not a leader, but a liability. Followers must trust that a leader has their best interests in mind, and knows best how to navigate the un-navigated.

A person who trusts freely is called naive. A person who does not trust is called a cynic or skeptic. A leader must know how to lead both kinds of people, and everyone inbetween.

A leader who builds ingenuine relationships is a manipulator. They use the trust-capital of their relationships for some personal benefit, not for the benefit of both the leader and the led.

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A knowledge leader is called an expert. They deal in both relationships and subject matter. A person who has no relationships is not a leader; a person who doesn’t know anything on a subject is not an expert in it. An expert must have attributes of both. How does an expert convince people to listen to him? Argumentation might work. There’s a subset of people who are willing to follow knowledge wherever it leads and who will pull on a thread just to see what is attached. There’s another subset of people who will not be convinced by simply hearing new information. The former group responds to information, the latter group responds to relationships.

AMDG