It’s really important to approach information with a little skepticism and a critical mind. Just because someone did XYZ job doesn’t necessarily mean they have the expertise to comment on a given subject. Over the last 6 months or so, I’ve seen an uptick of folks with impressive resumes putting out bad information on several subjects related to the defensive world. It’s troubling because a lot of folks will take their commentary as an endorsement, without doing any deeper research of their own. In most of these instances, I choose to chalk it up to knowledge bias: They’re so accomplished that stuff seems easy or obvious to them that might be more difficult for us “regular earth people”. You spend enough time around enough highly capable people, and it’s easy to get an inflated view of what base-level abilities are. Defensive driving & correcting a skid are probably a lot easier for Mario Andretti than it is for you or me. Unfortunately, there are those out there that appear to be trying to capitalize on their backgrounds for their own gain, and aren’t interested in the quality of the info they’re putting out as long as it turns into more sales. Thankfully, they’re easy to spot. Regardless of who your chosen experts are, it still bears asking “why do they have this opinion?”. If their explanation stops at “Because I was X”, that’s just a fancy way of saying “because I said so”, which is an unacceptable answer in my opinion. If someone takes exception to being challenged (provided you’re not being a dick about it), that is probably a clue. Please be selective about who gets your money, as well as your intellectual and emotional resources. We are in the golden age of good information that’s readily accessible. We owe it to ourselves to create a non-permissive environment for derp and myth.
