Back to the Beginning, We all bring something to the table

My Town McKinney, TX

 My original theme for this blog and as the title indicates is deciding if it was safe to go into town.  Unless one has been under a rock for the last 3 years this has been a question we have all asked ourselves.  Today I am going to discuss how to understand scientific information when one is not a scientist.  More and more we are forced to make decisions based on technologies that none of us a trained in.  Even if we are not making life or death decisions we are constantly assessing information and generating thoughts and conclusions.  Just watching the national news we are exposed to physics (Ukraine and weapon systems), microbiology (covid and Monkey Pox), and climatology (hurricanes/tornadoes/heat waves etc.).  These examples are more to the definitive side of the technology spectrum.  They can be tested and the data used to support or deny a claim.  What about economic data?  Anyone got that figured out?  Are we in a recession or not?  Recently there have been news items about how the unemployment rate is too low and that the Federal reserve is enacting policies to raise the unemployment rate.  In other words policies to cause people to lose their jobs!

So how do I make sense of all the information coming at me.  How do I separate information from misinformation?  To begin with let me disclose my background.  I have a degree in Chemistry and an MBA.  So I do have some scientific and business background.  I know what benzene is and what the price elasticity of demand is.  I was never a practicing chemist or economist.  This does not mean I am incapable of understanding technologies outside these fields.  This leads to my first tip in understanding information.  To begin; Use what you got.

We all bring different skill sets to the table.  Our understanding of a particular event or policy will always be influenced by these sets.  However that does not mean that our backgrounds should be discounted.  In fact sometimes a deeper understanding of a particular topic may impede our understanding of it.  The "I know this already syndrome" my lead us to ignore subtle facets of a particular situation.  A fresh unbiased set of eyes may provide needed insight.

Just because we are not formally trained in a field does not mean we cannot understand its application to a specific issue.  Go to youtube.com and search a random topic.  You will find a number of clips, podcasts and items produced by a number of people.  Some of them formally trained in the field some of them not.  You may enjoy and learn from both the formally and the non formally trained.  Your search will reveal that anyone can say anything about a particular topic. Formal training or even basic understanding is not a prerequisite for a verbal barrage.  We will discuss how to filter these in a subsequent blog.

More specifically think of economics.  Terms like supply and demand,  tight or lose money supply, and leading and lagging indicators are used.  These are opposing forces working against each other.  Who understands opposing forces,  a welder or structural engineer might.  An artist probably understands the human condition better than I would.  This may lead them to understand the crazy and awful things humans do to each other.  If your hobby is history you may be able to better articulate factors that lead to a decision or policy. How about infectious diseases, most of use would trust a caregiver who has dealt with multiple wards and several infections.  We call them mothers.

We all have inherent value and our experiences lead us to understand far more than we give ourselves credit for.  Use what you got.

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