What I mean is to say by this is keep to what you are you educated in/on. Stay in your lane, don’t diverge. As an example I’m a psychologist I tell everyone including a friend of mine who asked about a drug…I said in response to the question ask your friend who is a psychiatric nurse practitioner about the drug. I have no idea about drugs I said. I’m not saying that facetiously. I’m saying that very factually that I do not know what these drugs do, it’s not my education. Actually I tell people that the average person on the street knows more about psychotropics than I do. I am not in this discussion trying to act like I’m some guy trying to be humble. I’m saying I have have had one biology course in my undergrad freshman year and that’s it. One course. I should have taken much more biology.

In particularly the reason “sticking to your lane” is important is because this bothers when it comes to psychology. I did a major in psychology (enough credits for  a double major), then a masters in psychology which is two years full-time. Then another four years of a PhD program. So what happens all the time I will hear people question, contradict me or try to beat me regarding psychological topics when they have no education. People will read a pop psychology book or an article in a magazine on a given topic area and then think they have actual knowledge in the area. I have had people questioning me on certain psychological concepts and constructs that have been in the books and well researched for over 100 years. People will sit and question things that if they would’ve taken an introductory psychology course they would understand their question in the discussion is ridiculous and laughable. If you are asking to genuinely find out the answer to the question I will very respectfully hold your hand and walk your way through the answer to your question. However many times people are doing it in a very controversial way questioning why I’m saying what I’m saying. Many times saying “that is your opinion”. Again back a few sentences I’m literally telling them something that has been researched since before 1900. Most of you reading this have heard the saying “you have enough knowledge to be dangerous”. This happens all the time with psychology with me.

Also many times when a person does not have the educational basis to refute a position they rely on personal experience. This is why my third post in this blog series was entitled and I wrote about it “Personal Experience=Invalid, Useless”. In a certain way I can understand if you have absolutely no education in a topic all you can do is rely on personal experience. However if you were talking to someone who actually is educated on the topic you may want to defer to them regarding the answer. Not try and have your personal experience supersede their knowledge base. This is what I do not like about humans. If personal experience were to be the gold standard and having years of experience with something, most jobs that you go into would literally still be in the apprenticeship state. Hundreds of years ago people would become a physician or blacksmith etc. by just following the physician around. The reason why we have evolved to people going to school and actually having to get licenses, is because we understand that actually having the same educational basis between professionals in a given field is important. Plus it absolutely streamlines the entire process. You can learn more in a four year education on a topic than you can in 20 years of personal experience. This is for a separate blog. Of which I will start now.

As an example outside of psychology. You may like to collect rocks, and do the grinding of them and polishing of them and all of that stuff to make them look pretty. However a geologist can explains the chemical composition, hardness, utility for certain building functions and so on.

The main point is have intellectual academic integrity and respect people who are well educated in a given subject area when all you have done is read some article in Newsweek.