Friday 1 November 2013

You don't have to be qualified

Anyone familiar with the jury system will know the principle every person of sound mind has both the theoretical ability, and in this case the practical application, of being able to judge the status of any known situation (there were originally no cases where the jury was not allowed and is still a very small area which is restricted, mainly for security reasons not capability), because given the full picture anyone (especially a group who see more than one angle and can fill in each other's gaps) can assess a situation as to its honesty of genuineness or not.

A professional is qualified to create figures, look at them and explain whether they are genuine and why, using their collection of formulas, equations, and everything else they learned which they can then apply either forwards or backwards to any area of their field. But people are human first and professional second. That means every professional (we all know of examples, most personally) makes mistakes, doctors miss serious symptoms, solicitors get a step wrong, scientists believe the wrong theory for decades or longer (check out stomach ulcers for the best recent example), and on top you have the cheating factor where money and power trump their genuine knowledge as that has to be put aside, knowingly, to get whatever they want at the time.

Now if experts can and do cheat, then what are the lay people then? The jury. They can see the crime if they have enough information. Just because they need another expert to explain the details, if they know what is and is not possible, and for example a scientist tells them you can run a city on wind and solar but another has just told you due to their inherent nature this is impossible, but the first has a huge personal investment, personal and financial, in telling people the opposite as their current job depends on money from the government pushing these things, and who is able to decide? You are only. If you have two different professionals telling you different things (like the mandatory doctor's second opinion) in the end it's down to the individual to decide as they can't both be right. We are all born with the ability, often little more than applying simple arithmetic and logic however complicated the details behind the scenes may be. We can use computers and cars but not program or build them. But when one goes wrong you won't accept the answer that it's perfectly OK as you're the one using it and can see it as it's your own direct experience. Like a parent who knows their child's ill but gets sent back home three times by doctors who can't see it.

The bottom line is where any professional cabal have a theory or conspiracy and use their profession to close ranks to protect themselves, because then it attempts to guarantee no one else has the status to challenge them, they are always wrong. With the internet whatever the media or libraries offer we can now search most academic work online, as even the abstracts giving the summary of their findings is free to read, and often the entire work itself. The summaries are rarely beyond the scope of most to follow as they do not contain the complex calculations required to be a professional to perform, but the conclusions, which are simply telling you their answer to the question you had asked, they can find out, they can tell you when you want to know, and when they've told you then you know as well.  If you know the conclusions you have the information you need, and where two sets of professionals conflict it's the jury principle of logic and arithmetic, basic detective work, which means everyone is equipped to weed out the likely truth from the two sides.

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