> "In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts..." i'd contend the word 'defer' is too str

> "In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts..." i'd contend the word 'defer' is too strong. one should accept that SMEs have made reasonable arguments based on information you don't have (like the many wrong lines of reasoning they've already attempted). "epistemic learned helplessness" would then lead you to defer to the expert, but that's not the only rational response in every case. there's a different skill, discussed secondarily in the essay, for sniffing out bs. that's probably best termed 'wisdom', or informed meta-pattern-matching. so another rational response is to use your wisdom to decide how much to trust the expert. trusting the expert is not necessarily an either-or thing.