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We’re all experts

October is right around the corner, and that means an inundation of polling results from across the Commonwealth and the country. Every day there are new polls in the race for senate, governor, congress, and quite possibly, regional dogcatcher. With those polls will come feelings of validation, disbelief and everything in between.

Here’s a tip to decipher the validity of polling: If a candidate says “the only poll that matters is on Election Day,” they are pretty worried about their polling.

With everybody between the ages of 8 and 108 being asked their opinion (sorry 7 year olds, the only people with valid thoughts are those old enough to enjoy a game of Cranium), we are now in a world where everybody is an expert in politics.

Let’s start with the definition of the “likely voter.” Here, pollsters make an educated guess about who will come out to vote in November and what percentage of that vote will go to the various candidates. Every pollster from Franklin & Marshall, Public Policy Polling, Survey USA and on and on have some slightly different voter turnout model. After all, if they all agreed on turnout, why would we need 7,000 polling firms?

Naturally, people start to cling to whatever polling firm has a model that they find most appealing, because that is the only one who can be correct. So Republicans love Rasmussen’s polling, which consistently shows Republicans to have a majority support among every conceivable demographic, including Ralph Nader volunteers. Democrats love the polls that show they are winning, like, well, informal surveys of their best friends.

Since we all love to get our news and information from people who agree with us, it is easy to take the thinking a step further. You know who agrees with me the most? Me! At least 98 percent of the time, I find myself in agreement with myself. With that kind of thinking spread across 300 million of Americans, everybody is an expert!

For the most part, is this really that big of a difference from what we see on television to begin with every day? The “resident experts” that are so often butting heads on any show on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, or possibly Nickelodeon (Dora the Explorer vs Spongebob of course) always come down to “Democratic consultant” vs “Republican consultant.” I imagine I’m not the only one who watches these faux debates and thinks “if these guys are consultants, what moronic campaign is hiring them?”

This belief that everybody is an expert gives us carte blanche to dismiss any different idea because it must be wrong. It is very easy to credibly dismiss these opposing views because there are so many other experts who already agree with us!

The real problem with everybody insulating themselves into these ideological cocoons is that, in the end, if everybody is an expert then nobody is an expert. No poll need be universally accepted as accurate because there is another one that points in my direction. So now they’re all essentially worthless in as much as people will believe what they want to believe.

More importantly, there is no longer a respected expert in the media or academia. Los Angeles just recorded their hottest day ever at 113 degrees, but there is ample reason to not do anything about climate change because there are plenty of “experts” who agree with my skepticism! So go ahead and disregard all of those other experts who point to all that evidence that increased warming is at dangerous levels for humanity and other life.

We no longer have to develop a plan where we can all agree on the economy, health care, environment, war, budget, or regulation because there is no shortage of experts who can verify that we are unequivocally right and the other side is undeniably wrong. If one side is right and one is wrong, why should we ever capitulate or compromise on anything? After all, it’ll just take us in the wrong direction when so many experts have told us with great conviction that it’s our way or the highway.

Today we are at a point where gridlock is almost assured. Compromise for the greater good seems like a fantasy and with so many issues that have such great urgency, there are more ways to avoid action than to move forward to fix the big problems that we face not just as a state and country, but as a species.

If you find this discouraging, take heart, there are surely lots of people who will come to your side and agree with you. No matter what direction we go, you will not be alone, but we won’t be all together.

September 30, 2010 at 12:33 pm

--Tony Heyl

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