A doctor friend working in a relatively remote part of the country confided that a large number of cases he gets to see are those where the patient had already seen a quack and things got worse instead of getting better. In almost all these cases the quack did something to the patient that should not have been done.
That illustrates a key difference between an expert and a fake/quack.
Experts know what to do and how to do it.
More importantly though, experts also know what NOT to do and how NOT to do it.
This is where quacks/fakes fail miserably. They learn a little and are too eager to apply it at the slightest opportunity. They are like hammers looking for a nail. Their shallow knowledge - often mixed with unjustified confidence - prevents them from seeing the limits of their knowledge.
It takes rigorous learning, apprenticeship, and a considerable amount of practice to become an expert, at anything.
It takes much less to become a quack.
Medicine is a special case. However, thanks to social media branding, many other fields - including business - are now also increasingly seeing a rising share of quacks claiming to be experts.
Two thoughts:
1. Watch out for whose advice you consume. Anything that sounds too good to be true is probably just that.
2. Guard against the temptation of taking shortcuts to achieve something. Anything worthwhile accomplishing does not come easy.
#learning #business #expertise #lifeadvice #socialmedia