The Illusion of Expertise
An Indictment of the Laptop Class
A friend shared something with me that crystallized my growing concern about how we think about expertise and intelligence in our society. She knows I've been wrestling with this topic, seeing patterns that become clearer by the day. In response to a poll asking "Why are Democrats 5x more likely to trust mainstream media than Republicans are?" Zach Weinberg declared on X: "Because they're smarter. (the data shows this, you are much more likely to be a Dem the more educated you are) Sorry it doesn't feel good to say this but it's the truth. If this makes you mad, it's probably because you yourself are dumb(er) than others."
The partisan framing is tedious - just another example of how power structures maintain control through engineered division. The more revealing aspect of Weinberg's response is his reflexive equation of education with intelligence - a dangerous equivalence that deserves deeper examination.
In these few dismissive lines lies a revealing snapshot of our current moment: the conflation of credentials with wisdom, the equation of compliance with intelligence, and the casual arrogance of those who mistake their ability to repeat approved narratives for genuine critical thinking. This mindset reveals a deeper crisis in our society's understanding of true intelligence and the role of expertise.
This mindset of credential-based superiority had devastating real-world consequences during COVID-19. The 'smart' people's blind faith in institutional expertise led them to support policies that caused immense harm: school closures that set back a generation of children, lockdowns that destroyed small businesses while enriching corporations, and vaccine mandates that violated basic human rights - all while dismissing or censoring anyone who questioned these measures, regardless of their evidence.
Let me be clear: genuine expertise is vital to a functioning society. We need skilled surgeons, knowledgeable scientists, and competent engineers. True expertise is demonstrated through consistent results, transparent reasoning, and the ability to explain complex ideas clearly. The problem isn't expertise itself, but rather how it has been corrupted - transformed from a tool for understanding into a weapon for enforcing compliance. When expertise becomes a shield against questioning rather than a foundation for discovery, it has ceased to serve its purpose.
This distinction - between expertise itself and the expert class that claims to embody it - is crucial. Expertise is a tool for understanding reality; the expert class is a social structure for maintaining authority. One serves truth; the other serves power. Understanding this difference is essential for navigating our current crisis.
The Perception Chasm
At the heart of our societal divide lies a fundamental difference in how people consume and process information. In my observation, the so-called "smart people" - typically well-educated professionals - pride themselves on being informed through traditional, respected media sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, or NPR. These individuals often view their chosen information sources as bastions of truth and reliability, while dismissing alternative viewpoints as inherently suspect.
Reliance on mainstream narratives has created a class of institutional gatekeepers who mistake authority for intellectual rigor. They've become unwitting participants in what I call the Information Factory - a vast ecosystem of mainstream media, fact-checkers, academic journals, and regulatory bodies that work in concert to manufacture and maintain approved viewpoints. This system maintains its grip through tightly controlled messaging, selective fact-checking, and the dismissal of dissenting views. We saw this system in action when mainstream media outlets simultaneously declared certain COVID treatments "debunked" without engaging with the underlying studies, or when fact-checkers labeled demonstrably true statements as "missing context" simply because they challenged official positions. The Factory doesn't just control what information we see - it shapes how we process that information, creating a closed loop of self-reinforcing authority.
The Expert Class and the Illusion of Independence
The expert class—doctors, academics, technocrats—often fails to recognize their own blind spots. We saw this when public health officials with multiple degrees insisted masks prevented COVID transmission without evidence, while nurses and respiratory therapists working directly with patients questioned the policy's effectiveness. We saw it again when education “experts” promoted remote learning while many teachers and parents immediately recognized its devastating impact on children.
The depth of this corruption is staggering and systemic. The tobacco industry's campaign to cast doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer demonstrates how conflicts of interest can distort public understanding. For decades, tobacco companies funded biased research and paid scientists to dispute growing evidence of smoking's harms, delaying essential public health measures. In the pharmaceutical realm, Merck's handling of Vioxx illustrates similar tactics: the company suppressed data linking Vioxx to heart attacks and ghost wrote articles to downplay safety concerns, allowing a dangerous drug to stay on the market for years. The sugar industry followed suit, funding Harvard researchers in the 1960s to shift blame for heart disease from sugar to saturated fat, shaping nutrition policy for decades.
A 2024 JAMA study revealed that peer reviewers at top medical journals received millions in payments from pharmaceutical companies, often reviewing products made by the companies paying them. Similarly, a 2013 systematic review in PLOS Medicine found that studies funded by the sugar industry were five times more likely to find no link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity than those without industry ties. Recent studies show that food industry-funded research is four to eight times more likely to produce results favorable to sponsors, skewing dietary guidelines.
This pattern extends far beyond medicine. A 2023 investigation revealed that prominent think tanks advocating for aggressive foreign policy received millions from defense contractors, while their "independent experts" appeared in the media without disclosing these ties. Major financial publications routinely feature stock analyses from experts who hold undisclosed positions in the companies they discuss. Even academic institutions have been caught allowing foreign governments and corporations to influence research priorities and suppress unfavorable findings, all while maintaining the facade of academic independence.
Most disturbing is how this corruption has captured the very institutions meant to protect public interests: both the FDA and CDC receive most of their funding from the very pharmaceutical companies they regulate, while media outlets report on wars funded by the same corporations that manufacture weapons. A pharmaceutical executive friend recently stated bluntly, "Why would we not control the education of those who will prescribe our products?" What was most revealing wasn't just the statement itself, but his matter-of-fact delivery - as if controlling medical education was the most natural thing in the world. The corruption was so normalized he couldn't even see it.
This systemic corruption isn't hidden in shadowy backrooms - it plays out daily in plain sight on our television screens, though most have become so desensitized they no longer notice it. Consider this typical evening news broadcast sequence, where the line between journalism and pharmaceutical marketing becomes indistinguishable:
Notice how seamlessly the pharmaceutical advertisements blend with the news content itself - the same authoritative tone, the same emphasis on expertise and trust, often even the same hosts. This isn't coincidence. The pharmaceutical industry spends nearly twice as much on advertising as it does on research and development, with the majority going to these news networks. The result is a system where the distinction between journalism and marketing has effectively ceased to exist, yet the educated viewer, trained to trust these 'reputable' sources, rarely questions this arrangement.
These examples barely scratch the surface—they're glimpses into a deeply embedded system that shapes public health, policy, and scientific integrity. Meanwhile, Zach's comment frames any dissent as "dumb," suggesting those who question such systems are simply less intelligent. But these examples show that questioning isn't a sign of ignorance—it's a necessity to recognize the conflicts that the expert class so often overlooks.
Most tellingly, many of these same professionals - including people I consider friends - cannot even entertain the possibility that the system might be fundamentally corrupt. To acknowledge this would force them to confront uncomfortable questions about their own success within that system. If the institutions that granted their status are fundamentally compromised, what does that say about their own achievements? This isn't just about protecting social status - it's about preserving one's entire worldview and sense of self. The more someone has invested in institutional credentials, the more psychologically devastating it would be to acknowledge the system's corruption. This psychological barrier - the need to believe in the system that elevated them - prevents many intelligent people from seeing what's right in front of them.
The View from Both Sides: A Personal Case Study
These systemic patterns of corruption aren't just theoretical - they played out in real time during COVID, revealing the human cost of expert class failure. My position at the intersection of different social worlds has given me a unique vantage point on our society's expertise divide. Like many New Yorkers, I move between worlds - my social circle spans from firefighters and construction workers to physicians and tech executives. This cross-class perspective has revealed a pattern that challenges conventional wisdom about expertise and intelligence.
What I've observed is striking: those with the most prestigious credentials are often the least capable of questioning institutional narratives. During COVID, this divide became painfully clear - both professionally and personally. While my highly educated friends unquestioningly accepted models predicting millions of deaths and supported increasingly draconian measures, my blue-collar friends saw the immediate real-world impact: small businesses dying, mental health crises exploding, and communities fraying. Their skepticism wasn't rooted in politics but in practical reality: they were the ones installing plexiglass barriers in stores that did nothing, watching their children struggle with remote learning, and seeing their elderly neighbors die alone due to visitation restrictions.
The cost of questioning these measures was severe and personal. In my New York City community, simply speaking against vaccine mandates transformed me from a trusted neighbor into a pariah overnight. The response was telling: rather than engaging with the data I presented about transmission rates or discussing the ethics of medical coercion, my "educated" friends retreated into a stance of moral superiority. People who had known my character for years, who had seen me as thoughtful and reliable, turned their backs on me for questioning what amounted to arbitrary biomedical segregation. Their behavior exposed a crucial truth: virtue signaling had become more important than actual virtue. These same individuals, who displayed Black Lives Matter signs and rainbow flags, who prided themselves on "inclusion," showed no hesitation in excluding their neighbors over medical status. And not because these neighbors posed any health risk - the vaccines didn't prevent transmission, a fact that was already clear from Pfizer's own trial data (and could be seen by anyone with eyes). They supported excluding healthy people from society based purely on obedience with top-down mandates. The irony was glaring: their celebrated inclusivity extended only to fashionable causes and approved victim groups. When faced with an unfashionable minority— those questioning medical mandates—their principles of inclusion vanished instantly.
This experience revealed something crucial about our expert class: their commitment to "following the science" often masks a deeper commitment to social conformity. When I attempted to engage them with peer-reviewed research or even basic questions about vaccine testing protocols, I discovered they weren't interested in scientific dialogue. Their certainty wasn't derived from careful analysis but from an almost religious faith in institutional authority.
This contrast became even more apparent in my interactions across class lines. Those who work with their hands—who confront real-world challenges every day rather than theoretical abstractions—demonstrated a kind of practical wisdom that no credential can confer. Their daily experience dealing with physical reality and complex systems gives them insights that no academic model could capture. When a mechanic fixes an engine, there's no room for narrative manipulation - it either works or it doesn't. This direct feedback loop creates a natural immunity to institutional gaslighting. No amount of peer-reviewed papers or expert consensus can make a broken engine run. The same reality check exists across all practical work: a farmer can't argue away a failed crop, a builder can't theorize a house into standing, a plumber can't cite studies to stop a leak. This reality-based accountability stands in stark contrast to the world of institutional expertise, where failed predictions can be memory-holed and unsuccessful policies can be reframed as partial successes.
The class divide transcends traditional political boundaries. When Bernie Sanders' campaign was blocked by the Democratic machine, and when Donald Trump gained unexpected support, the expert class dismissed both movements as mere 'populism.' They missed the key insight: working people across the political spectrum recognized how the system was rigged against them. These weren't merely partisan divisions but fault lines between those who benefit from our institutional structures and those who see through their fundamental corruption.
The Failure of the Expert Class
The pattern of expert class failure has become increasingly apparent over the past decades. The false claims about WMDs in Iraq provided an early wake-up call for many people. Then came the 2008 financial crisis, where economic experts either failed to see or willfully ignored clear warning signs of impending disaster. Each failure grew larger than the last, with ever less accountability and ever more expert confidence.
In the years that followed, experts and media figures spent three years promoting "Russiagate" conspiracy theories, with the most prestigious newspapers winning Pulitzers for reporting that was completely fabricated. They dismissed Hunter Biden's laptop as "Russian disinformation" just before an election, with dozens of intelligence officials lending their credentials to suppress a true story. During COVID-19, they mocked ivermectin as merely a "horse dewormer," despite its Nobel Prize-winning applications for humans. They insisted that cloth masks prevented transmission despite lacking solid evidence. The New York Times didn't just dismiss the lab leak theory as wrong—their lead COVID reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli labeled it "racist," expressing contempt for anyone daring to question the official narrative. When the theory later gained credibility, there was no apology, no self-reflection, and no acknowledgment of their role in suppressing legitimate inquiry.
This reflexive dismissal of dissent has a darker history than most realize. The term "conspiracy theorist" itself was popularized by the CIA after the JFK assassination to discredit anyone questioning the Warren Report—a document that, sixty years later, even the most basic critical thinking reveals as deeply flawed. Today, the term serves the same purpose: a thought-terminating cliché to undermine valid concerns about power and corruption. Labeling something a conspiracy theory reduces complex systemic analysis to paranoid fantasy, making it easier to dismiss uncomfortable truths. Do people in power not conspire? Are citizens not entitled to theorize about what might be happening to protect their natural rights?
The Blind Spot in Expertise: Understanding Corruption
A commonly overlooked aspect of expertise is the ability to recognize and understand corruption. Many individuals may be experts in their respective fields, but this expertise often comes with a significant blind spot: a naive trust in institutions and a failure to grasp the pervasive nature of institutional corruption.
The problem lies in specialization itself. We've created a class of experts who see a mile deep into their field but can't grasp the broader terrain or how their facts fit together. They're like specialists examining individual trees while missing the forest-wide disease. Sure, you're a doctor who went to medical school - but have you considered who paid for that education? Who shaped your curriculum? Who funds the journals you read?
Towards True Critical Thinking
To break free from this system, we must shift toward a "show me, don't tell me" society. This approach is already emerging in alternative spaces. Journalists, scientists and academics at organizations like the Brownstone Institute, Children's Health Defense, and DailyClout exemplify this by publishing raw data, showing their sources and methodology, and engaging openly with critics. When these organizations make predictions or challenge mainstream narratives, they put their credibility on the line - and build trust through accuracy rather than authority. Unlike traditional institutions that expect their authority to be accepted without question, these sources invite readers to examine their evidence directly. They publish their research methods, share their data sets, and engage in open debate - precisely what scientific discourse should look like.
This transparency allows for something rare in our current landscape: the ability to track predictions against outcomes. While mainstream experts can be consistently wrong without consequence, alternative voices must earn trust through accuracy. This creates a natural selection process for reliable information - one based on results rather than credentials.
True expertise isn't about never being wrong - it's about having the integrity to admit mistakes and the courage to change course when evidence demands it. This means:
Rejecting credentialism for its own sake
Valuing demonstrated knowledge over institutional affiliation
Encouraging open debate and the free exchange of ideas
Recognizing that expertise in one area doesn't grant universal authority
Understanding that true wisdom often comes from diverse sources, including those without formal credentials
Redefining Intelligence and Expertise
As we move forward, we must redefine what we consider intelligence and expertise. True intellectual capacity isn't measured by degrees or titles but by one's ability to think critically, adapt to new information, and challenge established norms when necessary. True expertise is not about being infallible; it's about having the integrity to admit mistakes and the courage to change course when evidence demands it.
To create a more resilient society, we need to value both formal knowledge and practical wisdom. Credentialism for its own sake must be rejected, and demonstrated knowledge should be prioritized over institutional affiliation. This means encouraging open debate and free exchange of ideas, especially with diverse voices that challenge mainstream perspectives. It requires recognizing that expertise in one area doesn't grant universal authority, and understanding that true wisdom often emerges from unexpected and diverse sources, including those without formal credentials.
The path forward requires us to question our institutions while building better ones and to create space for genuine dialogue across the artificial divides of class and credential. Only then can we hope to address the complex challenges facing our world with the collective wisdom and creativity we so desperately need.
The paradigm of outsourced thinking is crumbling. As institutional failure compounds upon institutional failure, we can no longer afford to delegate our critical thinking to self-appointed experts or trust approved sources unquestioningly. We must develop the skills to evaluate evidence and question narratives in areas we can study directly. But we can't be experts in everything - the key is learning to identify trustworthy voices based on their track record of accurate predictions and honest acknowledgment of errors. This discernment only comes from stepping outside the Information Factory, where real-world results matter more than institutional approval.
Our challenge isn’t merely to reject flawed expertise but to cultivate genuine wisdom—a wisdom that emerges from real-world experience, rigorous study, and an openness to diverse perspectives. The future depends on those who can navigate beyond the limits of institutional thinking, blending discernment, humility, and courage. Only through such balance can we break free from the confines of the Information Factory and approach the complex challenges of our world with true clarity and resilience.
Part 2 will explore how the Information Factory manufactures and maintains its authority, shaping not just what we think, but how we think - and more importantly, how we can break free from its influence.