I
believe jazz and classical musicians when they say that certain pieces are towering masterworks, even when I don't understand them. I know enough about music theory to know how little I know, and I've seen my own tastes and appreciations evolve even in my own anemic musical growth. I kind of know what it might be like to have sophisticated harmonic and structural appreciation of music. Furthermore, when a fellow philistine implies that they think someone like Mozart or Bach is overrated, one of my key arguments is that they are deeply loved by experts in the field, who probably know more than you or me; and it would behoove us to give weight to their opinions, hoping that their tastes might form us and improve out own powers of discernment.
Then there are fields in which I have very little trust of experts, and openly call bullshit on their claims. Philosophy, contemporary art and architecture, A.I., and even psychology and neurology, all seem to be to be laboring under certain fundamental misconceptions that give me a strong tendency to dismiss anything they say that doesn't accord with my own conclusions. I'm not sure exactly how healthy this is, but some fields have earned my respect in ways that others haven't. It isn't that I think there are no smart people in these areas, that would obviously be false. It's more that I believe some elementary mistakes in direction mean that their intelligence is being consistently mis-applied. It doesn't matter how far you can throw if you're throwing at the wrong target.