Experts: Friend or Foe.

We always want to stay in charge, right? Make decisions, stay independent. Well, sometimes, in certain circumstances, we can’t afford to do that. For example, in medical emergencies, would we rather trust a medical specialist or our limited knowledge? The answer is pretty clear.

Now, there are different versions of experts. First, we have the online ones who give us crowd-sourced advice on everything going on in our lives, personal and professional. We direct ourselves towards this advice on all matters: healthcare, restaurants, and holidays. These cyber crowds carry strong opinions and also a great amount of criticism. For the right reasons, they say. Is it for the right reasons, though? The internet can be quite biased. For instance, restaurants and cafes are always rated upon the aesthetic rather than the quality, giving people like us the illusion of greatness, while the restaurant is just average.

Moreover, estimates suggest that 20 percent of comments posted on websites are fake, but we figure that there are enough voices for once to be able to trust the wisdom of the cyber crowds. People can fall prey to scams very easily. This is why it is important to believe in its limited use. For decisions that are not highly significant, online reviewers can be trusted. However, it's important to give them only selective access and control so that all possible mishaps can be prevented.

Next come the experts who are deeply immersed in probabilities and statistics. Pretty boring, right? But they can be helpful if one tries to understand them. Now, isn't understanding them the entire issue? They are displayed as such geniuses that we can’t fathom the language they use, the way they explain, and the methods of showing their knowledge through making graphs or diagrams. For the newer generations, these methods don't carry any value, leading to them not consulting these experts.

These experts are all about sophistication and elegance, which is not a bad thing, but for the non-expert population, it becomes difficult to trust them. Let me explain how.

We trust medical professionals as they are more often than not polite and seem good-hearted. Economists, on the other hand, seem daunting and unapproachable. This is because we have displayed that as their image in our minds. Every expert, to an extent, is beneficial.

However, they have to change their methods to cope with this new generation. They shouldn’t avoid logistics, but if an expert gives good advice with wholeheartedness and not with a graph of probabilities, they will surely be seen as more than just robotic figures.

I believe, for the younger generation, reliance on social media experts should be less than specialists, as I do understand that they may soon be unapproachable at first, but they are always willing to help, with good intentions. Online reviewers are right to some extent, too. Trusting them with decisions does not require serious consultation; they can be referred to. Consult the experts, and without looking at them as pure geniuses, listening will become relatively easier.