agajeenian #25

Many years ago an elderly insurance salesman said to me, ‘Jim, I have met a lot of brilliant persons in my work; and it seem to me that the higher one climbs in his own profession, the less he knows about other things.’ As the years have gone by and I have reached the age from which he made his observation, I have come to share his conclusion.

I suppose it is understandable, maybe inevitable. Even the brightest have only limited time, energy, and intellectual capacity; these resources can’t be invested everywhere. As a result, a person who is among the elite in one field is among the masses in most others.

And so I place little confidence in position statements by groups of experts, even Nobel Prize winners. A prize winner in medicine or economics may have only a limited knowledge of that very field, let alone wisdom about the rest of life’s problems.

Distressing to have to be responsible for thinking for myself. But nice to have a site like BC, where others are trying to do the same.