"Are you an “Expert”, or just opinionated?" Topic

I've read a lot of books (remember them?) on a lot of subjects, and I can confidently say that…. that I'm opinionated.

For instance, I believe that Benedict Arnold had his exploits pre-treason highly exaggerated, to show how great was his fall as a Fallen Angel. Just my opinion, based on how history becomes an allegory at that time.

In my opinion, I think that because we have near Zero enemies of Rome to write histories, that Roman tactical superiority is greatly exaggerated. This is a follow-up on "pilum worship". Just my opinion.

I believe, in my opinion, that any wargaming rules about Putin's War will change quarterly, and that nobody will know what the truth is.

Let's hear some OPINIONS that fly in the face of conventional wisdom.
I'm not setting any rules for this discussion, or an agenda.

I am often offered expert opinions.
Most wargames groups have a high number of ex special forces members/experts or folk who carry out "intel work". They do seem to have put on a lot of weight since leaving the service though.
This must surely give us "on the ground combat experience"?

One chap would regale listeners with his combat para drop injury.
I think he got it mixed up with his drunken fall out of a train door on to the platform?

martin

Kind of depends on how you define "Expert" I suppose.
If you consider it to mean something like "world's leading authority" – then no.
If you mean something like, "knows more than the average Joe" – than sometimes

IMHO- Opinionated. I do know a bit more about some nations' SYW flags and pre-Millennium service in the Oz army than most people, though probably not enough to be considered an expert.

Most wargames groups have a high number of ex special forces members/experts or folk who carry out "intel work".

Tip- the more action stories, where the teller was on some secret-squirrel jobbie, knee-deep in grenade "pins" and hip deep in expended cartridges, then the more likely the bloke telling the story (never seen a lass do it) is a Walt ("wannabe" in Yanklish).

I've met plenty of people who have done everything and anything and bought the t-shirt. The ones I respect are the ones who don't need to tell you they have done something. The s are the ones who think FIGJAM.

I think we can at least qualify as people with "informed opinions" which is better than just opinionated-which usually has negative connotations for inflexible but loud ignorance..

I will claim expertise in a very narrow field -- Virginia manpower policies and practices during the revolutionary War -- based on having read all the relevant primary sources and then written a dissertation. Don't know everything even about that, and I might be wrong, but there's nobody who knows more, or even as much. But of course I wasn't there, and there's a lot of what really happened that was never written down, or that we no longer have. (Court houses burn down.) So "expertise" is probably still an opinion, but the best available opinion.

Having spent my share of time working with Crown Prosecutors, plaintiff's counsel and defense counsel, I define expert with a very narrow lens

So I am expert in certain very selective domains – and for the rest, I know a bit about other things but really have informed opinions rather than expert insights

I rode the bus for some years with a wiry, fit-looking, middle-aged chap who used to read fantasy novels or management how-to's as we chugged along. He was well-dressed but casual, nondescript, very ordinary in that bureaucrat-filled vehicle at 0630 every morning. Minor chit-chat, pleasantries were exchanged. He knew I worked in history; I knew he was in the service, and not much more than that.

Then one day I had an off-site meeting with some special forces types who were sounding me out very unofficially about a major project, which we eventually did. Guess who was there, in uniform, as the unit's CO, a full colonel? Turns out he was one of the most decorated operators ever, a real-life legend, and went on to baby general status before later retiring after 30+ years at the sharp end. A proper gentleman too, and a very formidable intellect. I think of him often, and very fondly, when I hear tales of derring-do from gum flappers and rules lawyers.

RE unpopular opinions?

Not sure I can add to that Roman comment above, which is bang on. But why not?

The Germans in WWII were better than us, from start to finish. Two generations of 'me too' scholarship can't dodge it. If you spot the Jerries even a portion of the Allies' advantages in numbers, geography or time, the war ends very differently.

US Grant is vastly overrated. RE Lee is not.

We'd all have been better off if Napoleon had won in 1812, 1813, or 1815.

Drops pen, ducks head…..

Undoubtedly I am a world expert, on our rules (well you never said in what subject).

In all elss it varied from opinionated to better informed than some, but that is a low base to start from in some cases.

I took my dad (retired naval officer) to a convention shortly after 9/11. He was not a gamer; he was helping me run our booth. Anyway, he wanders around for a while and comes back and mentions conversations around the hall that we need to put troops on a plane and go to Afghanistan to get bin Laden. My dad said something like, "Don't these people know anything about logistics or what it takes to conduct a military operation?"

I consider myself a student of history and especially military history. I know more than the average person on the street but a lot less than an expert and I agree that word should be used very narrowly. A large part of being an expert is knowing where to find the possible answers.(Notice I did not say "find the answers") Compared to me, many people on TMP have more expertise and I respect their knowledge. On the other hand, I believe I have more history and military history knowledge that I have forgotten than most people generally have ever learned. I am 72 years old.

Both. But that entirely depends on what we are talking about.

My former pastor said "an expert is a drip under pressure." And he also said "an expert is a guy from out of town."

I've always appreciated both definitions.

One of the routine exercises, in graduate history education, used to be -- and I assume still is -- to read and try to reconcile competing narratives by first rate historians using the same facts to reach not just different but contradictory conclusions. My favorite is Schlesinger versus Bray Hammond on Jackson's Bank War. Both won Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award, a dozen years apart, and each must be considered an expert. But it is impossible to reconcile them.

Sometimes I'm one, sometimes the other. It depends a lot on the subject.

Martin, I treat pretty much everything as rumor unless confirmed by multiple independent sources, but I would not regard post-service weight gain as indicating a lack of military experience. Go to some place where everyone has to be a vet of some sort, and have a look around.

Dal, I think, is closer, but I've seen some spectacular exceptions.

Internal consistency and relevant vocabulary are helpful. Do someone's stories place him in two theaters of war at the same time? Is he calling things by their right names? But be sure of your own facts before discounting other people's stories.

I have long treasured the tale of a USAF awards ceremony conducted in [REDACTED] in which the C.O. said "I'm very pleased to see you men getting these awards which, since we are not here, you could not possibly have earned."

I've met plenty of people who have done everything and anything and bought the t-shirt.

Dal, I think, is closer, but I've seen some spectacular exceptions.

True, korsun 0 and Robert. But it's very rare to meet a true horn-blower. Most vet's don't want to talk about things they'd rather forget, especially just so some civvies can get a vicarious thrill from the story. However, when with some mates who were "there" the lies, exaggerations, snarls and laughter flow.

But I'm not an expert in that either, it's just my opinion.

There has been a take or two here that I might disagree with.
But then, that's just my opinion. 😄

"it's very rare to meet a true horn-blower."

True in my experience as well. The case I was thinking of most wasn't bragging at all--just explaining why he disliked a particular road or a certain portion of the government. Then one day he came to work in his Class "A" uniform for an official photo update--and yes, he had the hashmarks, patches and awards to make a man sit up and take notice. (I was only with that sort of people on a run-up to an exercise. Never functioned at that level. But they were great people to be around.)

Bit of both.

Answering OP.

ἔοικα γοῦν τούτου γε σμικρῷ τινι αὐτῷ τούτῳ σοφώτερος εἶναι, ὅτι ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι.

I found the more I know about a subject the more I realize how little I actually know about it.

pjm

mckrok beat me to the definition I was going to toss out. A longer winded way of saying it is "an expert knows the limit of what they know and that there's a helluva lot they don't know." I've been an expert on a few topics in the past that were unrelated to our hobby, but mostly I've been opinionated.

As a teacher, I have developed expertise in a few niche topics that I teach in depth. Also an expert on running history based classroom simulations. Everything else is informed opinion or uninformed opinion.

I like to think that I'm seeker after truth. I am always open to new information. I think I know a lot about a few things and a little about a lot of things. I am curious and interested in many subjects. I re-evaluate continuously and I don't presume I am THE expert in anything; even oddball esoteric subjects like Scottish bagpiping, of which I am a long-time practitioner, there's always someone who knows a lot more than I do. So I keep everything in proportion and trust in Athena as my patron, knowing that Dread Nemesis always lurks in pursuit of hubris.

I don't talk about my specific work for the government here, but I was no expert, and clashed with some experts in my time. But I did develop a sort of 6th sense about people I worked for regarding whether THEY were experts and learned to spend most of my time doing field work. There is a certain expertise needed to avoid bureaucracy and BS. I came to believe my mental health survival depended on it.

There are a lot of people who know way more than me here about the military and history. Maybe "expert" is a relative term. You are expert in what you lived through? Opinions are entertaining and the back and forth here can be a chance to learn a lot. About human nature as well as history and the hobby.

35 years ago I was an expert on the nobility of England under Edward the Confessor. Sadly, no longer, though I could refer you to my book on the subject.

I like what piper909 wrote above – perhaps he's expressing a philosophy on learning well, and perhaps then living well.

IMO – high-ego prevents self-criticism, piper909 is expressing the opposite – a process for continual analysis, and centered self-analysis, of the place his thinking has him at a particular moment in time.

We're on a journey, mine is one to constantly learn, and to attempt to 'perfect' (or "correct") myself along that journey…….how can be experts if we constantly need to refine our evolving knowledge then?

This is why I have no religious beliefs either, as how can imperfect men understand such perfection, let alone act on it (and often in the name of such perfection)?

Again, piper909 has expressed a life philosophy eloquently I think, and it's one I feel akin too. I don't think such way of thinking requires outside validation either, but it is something that's constantly being evaluated, and tested nonetheless.

I'm only opinionated on things I know well, and I still defer to those who know more, or can at least demonstrate a clearer ability to use knowledge.

I am sometimes accidentally the expert in the room on a given topic. I've never felt like an expert in anything, so it took me years to become comfortable with assuming that mantle, and I try to wear it very lightly. The world is full of people who know more and learn faster.

Like advocate, I'm saddened by all that I've forgotten. I've been a computer techie my whole career, so in addition to my hobby obsessing about historical military trivia, I've also left my own writings on arcane technical topics all over Internet forums and social media. A couple decades ago I started to have the disturbing experience of reading some fascinating post or essay about a topic that really interests me, only to realize halfway through that I wrote it. Separated by enough years, one's own past self becomes a stranger.

- Ix

FlyXwire, thank you for your kind words! Non sum dignus.

Something I have noted in myself with sadness is that I have *forgotten* much I once knew, on topics that I haven't read up on in years to refresh the memory . Details slip away, and it's frustrating to have to re-immerse yourself just to get back to what you once knew by heart. So learning is an ongoing process and can be like the tide -- you ride a wave in and gain something, but then you might get swept out again and must start over.

Dad always said you had to cross a state line to be an expert, and have a briefcase. I suppose today a laptop?