You believe that the Sun is much larger than the Earth, that the Earth is a roughly spherical planet that rotates on its axis every 24 hours and it revolves around the Sun once every 365 days. You believe that you were born on a particular date, that you were born to two human parents and that each of your human parents was born on an earlier date. You believe that other human beings have thoughts and feelings like you do and that you are not surrounded by humanoid robots. You believe all of these things and many more, not on the basis of direct observation, which can't, by itself, tell you very much about the relative size and motion of the Sun and the Earth, or about your own family history, or about what goes on in the minds of other humans. Instead, these beliefs are mostly based on what you've been told. Without spoken and written testimonies, human beings could not pass on knowledge from one person to another, let alone from one generation to another. We would know much, much less about the world around us. So learning about a topic by asking an expert on that topic, or appealing to authority, helps us gain knowledge, but, it doesn't always. Even the most highly respected authorities can turn out to be wrong. Occasionally this happens because a highly respected authority is dishonest and claims to know something that she or he really doesn't know. Sometimes it happens just because they make a mistake. They think they know when they don't know. For example, a number of respected economists did not expect the financial collapse of 2008. They turned out to be wrong. Maybe they were wrong because they were overlooking some important evidence. Maybe they were wrong because they were misinterpreting some of the evidence they had noticed. Or maybe they were wrong simply because they were reasoning carelessly from the total body of their evidence. But whatever the reason, they turned out to be wrong and many people who trusted their authority ended up losing lots of money, losing lots of other people's money, on account of that misplaced trust. So while appealing to authority can sometimes provide us with valuable knowledge, it also can sometimes be the cause of monumental errors. It's important to all of us to be able to distinguish those occasions on which we can safely and reasonably trust authority from those occasions on which we can't. But how do we do that? In order to do that, nothing is more useful than an authority's track record on a particular topic. If someone turns out to perform well in a given situation much of the time, then it's likely that he or she will continue to perform well in that same situation, at least in the near term. And this generalization holds true of the testimony of authorities as much as of anything else. If someone can consistently pick winners in both politics and baseball, then we should probably trust him or her to keep on picking winners in both politics or baseball, though maybe not in other things where his or her track record may be less stellar. If other forecasters have a poorer track record on those same two topics, then we shouldn't trust them as much. So whenever you're considering whether to trust the testimony of some authority, the first question to ask yourself is, "What's their track record on this topic?" And notice that you can apply the very same lesson to yourself. Your instincts tell you that you've just met Mr. Right, but what sort of track record do your instincts have on topics like this one? Have your instincts proven themselves to be worthy of your trust? Just as we judge other people's testimony by their track record, so, too, we can judge our own instincts by their track record. And this brings us one step closer to an objective view of ourselves and our relation to the world around us.
Verujete da je Sunce mnogo veće od Zemlje, da je Zemlja planeta otprilike sferičnog oblika koja svaka 24 časa rotira oko svoje ose i obiđe oko Sunca jednom u svakih 365 dana. Verujete da ste rođeni određenog datuma, da imate dva ljudska roditelja i da je svaki od vaših ljudskih roditelja rođen nekog ranijeg datuma. Verujete da druga ljudska bića imaju misli i osećanja kao vi i da niste okruženi humanoidnim robotima. Verujete u sve ove stvari i u mnoge druge, ne na bazi direktnog posmatranja, koje vam ne može, samo po sebi, reći mnogo o relativnoj veličini i kretanju Sunca i Zemlje ili o vašoj porodičnoj istoriji ili o tome šta se dešava u mislima drugih ljudi. Umesto toga, ova verovanja su uglavnom zasnovana na onome što vam je neko rekao. Bez usmenih i pismenih svedočenja, ljudska bića ne bi mogla da prenose znanje s jedne osobe na drugu, a kamoli sa jedne generacije na drugu. Znali bismo mnogo, mnogo manje o svetu oko nas. Tako da učenje o nekoj temi tako što ćemo pitati stručnjaka za tu temu ili obratiti se autoritetu, omogućava nam da steknemo znanje, ali, ne uvek. Čak i najpoštovaniji autoriteti mogu da pogreše. Povremeno se ovo dešava zato što je visoko poštovani autoritet neiskren i tvrdi da zna nešto što ona ili on, u stvari, ne zna. Ponekad se to desi samo zato što naprave grešku. Misle da znaju kada u stvari ne znaju. Na primer, brojni ugledni ekonomisti nisu očekivali finansijski kolaps 2008. Ispostavilo se da su pogrešili. Možda su pogrešili zato što su prevideli neki važan dokaz. Možda su pogrešili jer su pogrešno tumačili neke dokaze koje su primetili. Ili su možda pogrešili prosto jer nisu zaključivali pažljivo iz kompletnog skupa svojih dokaza. Ali šta god da je razlog, ispostavilo se da su pogrešili i mnogi ljudi koji su verovali njihovom autoritetu izgubili su na kraju mnogo novca, gubeći mnogo novca drugih ljudi, zbog tog pogrešnog verovanja. Tako da, dok obraćanje autoritetu ponekad može da nam obezbedi vredno saznanje, ono takođe ponekad može biti uzrok monumentalnih grešaka. Važno je za sve nas da možemo da razlikujemo one prilike u kojima možemo bezbedno i razumno da verujemo autoritetu od onih prilika u kojima ne možemo. Ali kako to da uradimo? Da bismo to uradili, ništa nije korisnije nego iskustvo autoriteta u vezi sa određenom oblašću. Ako su nečiji rezultati najčešće dobri u datoj situaciji, onda je verovatno da će on ili ona nastaviti da daje dobre rezultate u toj istoj situaciji, barem u bliskoj budućnosti. I ova generalizacija je tačna kako za svedočenja autoriteta, tako i za bilo šta drugo. Ako neko može konstantno da bira pobednike u politici i u bejzbolu, onda njemu ili njoj verovatno možemo verovati da će da nastavi da bira pobednike i u politici i u bejzbolu, iako možda ne i u drugim stvarima gde je njegov ili njen rezultat možda manje sjajan. Ako drugi prognozeri imaju slabije rezultate u ove iste dve oblasti, onda ne treba da im verujemo toliko. Zato, kad god razmišljate da li da verujete svedočenju nekog autoriteta, prvo se zapitajte: "Kakvi su njihovi prethodni rezultati u ovoj oblasti?" I zapazite da možete da primenite ovu istu lekciju na sebe. Vaši instinkti vam kažu da ste upravo upoznali gospodina "Pravog", ali kakve prethodne rezultate imaju vaši instinkti u oblastima kao što je ova? Da li su se vaši instinkti dokazali vrednim vašeg poverenja? Baš kao što sudimo o svedočenju drugih ljudi prema njihovim prethodnim rezultatima, tako takođe možemo da sudimo o svojim instinktima prema njihovim prethodnim rezultatima. I ovo nas dovodi jedan korak bliže objektivnom viđenju sebe i našem odnosu prema svetu oko nas.