Something has been worrying me more and more in recent years. It is not that people have an opinion on almost everything, but the certainty with which they express it, even when there is little behind it beyond a few articles they have read and some well-rehearsed sentences.
You sit across from someone who has a ready answer to every question. They speak calmly, use technical terms and give the impression that they have been through it all. Then you ask what actually happened when they tried to put those convincing explanations into practice. And suddenly the conversation changes.
Over the years, I have learned that knowledge and the ability to talk about knowledge are not the same thing. I have met people who knew an extraordinary amount yet spoke cautiously, aware of how much they still did not understand. And others with far less experience who spoke with a certainty that left no room for doubt.
I do not believe we have to experience everything ourselves to understand it. I do not question the value of books, research or other people's experiences. But there is a considerable difference between what we have learned, what we assume and what we are prepared to take responsibility for.
Artificial intelligence has made it possible to find information in minutes that once took days of research. I see an enormous opportunity for learning in that myself. But the same technology allows someone who knows almost nothing about a subject to speak about it so convincingly that it becomes difficult to distinguish them from someone who has devoted half a lifetime to it.
The problem is not that they used technology. It begins when they start believing that the ability to produce a good answer is the same as the ability to understand its consequences.
Because giving advice and living with a decision made on the strength of it are not equally difficult. One person can finish the conversation and carry on with their day. The other may invest their savings, change jobs or lose years trying to undo what was presented as a simple solution.
That is why I place more trust in someone who pauses before answering. Someone who says they need to check something, that they do not know enough about the circumstances or that they cannot responsibly assess the outcome. Sometimes that restraint says more than ten confident answers.
I worry that we will value this quality less and less. That we will mistake caution for incompetence and a confident manner for expertise. And that one day we may start believing our own polished sentences without asking whether we truly understand them.
It does not worry me that almost anyone will be able to sound like an expert. What worries me is that we may stop looking for the difference between someone who knows something and someone who merely knows how to talk about it.
Because the consequences of that difference will not always fall on the person who spoke.
Far more often, they will fall on the person who believed them.
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