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[An expert is] someone who knows more and more about less and less.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

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The question of democracy is often discussed on the assumption that we are obliged to choose between the rule of the modern beneficent despot, the expert, and a muddled, befogged 'people'. If the question were as simple as that, most of our troubles would be over; we should only have to get enough Intelligence Bureaus in Washington, enough scientific management into our factories, enough specialists (on hygiene, transportation, etc.) into the cities, enough formulae from the agricultural colleges into the country, and all life would become fair and beautiful. For all the people, it is assumed, will gladly agree to become automata when we show them all the things - nice solid, objective things - they can have in abandoning their own experience in favor of a superior race of men called experts.

Because knowledge generation is guided by the same basic philosophy that guides the development of expertise, there is littler opportunity to escape its straitjacket: if we wield the logic of specialization and simplification, every phenomenon looks simple and easily decomposable.

Once someone is good at something, they tend to spend all their time doing that. This kind of focus is very valuable, actually. Much of the skill of experts is the ability to ignore false trails. But focus has drawbacks: you don't learn from other fields, and when a new approach arrives, you may be the last to notice.

An expert's job is to be right — to solve the client's problems through the application of technical and professional skill. The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor's job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counseling to the client's own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times; the advisor's role is subordinate to this, not that of a prime mover.

Through study and practice, experts in any field learn to simplify, categorize, and prioritize information, and to recognize patterns. This allows them to create order out of seeming chaos.