The Crash Course, Revised Edition

CHAPTER 4Trust Yourself

To enhance your use of the lens described in Chapter 2, I invite you to adopt the technique of trusting yourself. Somehow, in some countries, the idea of doing your own research has been demonized in some circles. Related to that would be the derivative of forming your own opinions or trusting yourself. I think you should do all of these things.

If the recent past has taught us anything, it's that many so‐called experts cannot be trusted. Far too many are blinded by their investment in a given school of thought, dogma or ideology, while others are compromised by conflicts of interest.

I now go through a process of vetting every expert and have them on probation from the get‐go, requiring them to prove themselves first before I will absorb their data or ideas.

Like many others, my faith in nearly all major public institutions has been eroded, and in some cases it's gone. The Federal Reserve lost it when its leaders kept talking about “price stability” and “full employment” but their actions only ever did one thing reliably: widen the wealth gap.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) proved during the Covid pandemic that its leaders made decisions about public health only after it had first aligned with political and pharmaceutical interests. Often this meant public health never really influenced the decisions and the United States suffered many more unnecessary deaths than in other countries, such as Sweden and India.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ...