I've run a non-trivial business that depended on secrecy, and I recognize some of the ideas from the guy above. I wouldn't say "just let the government run this hedge fund", but there's some truth to what he's saying.

I think it's also important that people can make comments on large social issues such as corporate transparency without feeling like they need to be experts. In fact, nobody can be an expert on these sweeping issues, because these laws affect such a wide variety of entities.

I don't think the doctor comparison holds water. With a lot of work, someone can be recognized as a medical expert, but it's still a specific field that one can be qualified in.

> I don't think the doctor comparison holds water.

C'mon.

On the other hand, sometimes your Google search can help a doctor in their analysis. An informed patient will get better treatment than an uninformed one; you must be your own healthcare advocate. And for anything nontrivial, this is why second opinions are a must. It would also be interesting if we lived in a world where case complexity and outcomes for doctors and various diagnoses/operations were published as well, so we can see how everyone really holds up competitively.

> An informed patient will get better treatment than an uninformed one

Absolutely true. Yet that does not turn them into a doctor. The statement I made is very specific.

Personal note: My mother is going through pancreatic cancer at the moment. She is reading everything in sight. Good. Bad. Ugly. She is not intellectually equipped to understand and evaluate it. She is not a doctor.

Well, she is driving her doctors insane. She is refusing certain treatments and asking for bullshit treatments. One doctor has already refused to work with her and asked her to switch to a different doctor. Her current doctor is pretty tired of burning valuable time with this google nonsense.

So, yeah, in general terms, informed individuals --in any field-- are better than the uninformed. The twist, however, is in the meaning of the term "informed".

The internet has created this paradox where millions of people believe they are "informed" or know something, when, in reality, they live in deeper ignorance of facts than before they became "informed" by google and social media.

It's the difference between "Practice makes perfect" (which is a lie) and "Practicing correctly makes perfect".

> Your Google search isn't equivalent to my medical degree, residency and decades of experience afterwards.

Agreed, though I see the value of expertise partly in how it allows those with it to explain why they see things differently, rather than simply point out that they know more.