What insight have you gained from you profession/education that the layman doesn't understand?

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Kuvasz raises an important point about levels of discourse. To a large extent the phrase "history is bunk" may be valid when historians anthropomorphise the actions of countries with phrases like "Russia wanted..." etc. Such insight came for me from contrasting psychological and sociological approaches to human behaviour.

Another point with which kuvasz might concur is about simplistic lay concepts of "facts" . Science degrees tend to stress the constant restructuring of theories rather than the seeking of "truth". For example the "layman" might assume that the heliocentric solar system is "a fact" or "the reality" when in essence its adoption was based on the elegance of the model relative to convoluted alternatives. Ironically, the layman still uses a geocentric model for everyday purposes when he talks of the sun "rising and setting". This point leads to many others regarding "elegance" and "mathematical symmetry" with which the layman is ill-equipped to deal("negative time" in electrodynamics being one that springs to mind).

Where a layman sees pretty scenery and colored soils, I see clues. It can get to be like a constant hum or a symphony note in your head however. Having ideas about how an earth system works can get in the way of enjoying the pretty scenery.

I once was standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and people ere all oohing and aahing. I was following a single bed around the horizon and trying to recontruct some tectonic feature.

Bummer.

One bit of advice here: When your computer breaks (and it WILL), and you call for help, do NOT supply any theories on why it broke or what is wrong with it, ever (such as, "I think it must be X.")

You will be made fun of (for weeks, possibly) behind your back by the Help Desk folks ("OMG, he thought it was X! Hahaha!")

From landscape architecture - a surprising number of people never seem to notice their environment, urban or countryside. I got "new eyes" myself learning about what I've been looking at all my life, and "more eyes" learning about designing for people moving through spaces.

From art - creating art yourself, however pleased you are or are not with a given piece, is very engaging, and also promotes "new eyes" as does landscape architecture and med research. Seeing/hearing other people's art obviously does, at least some of the time.

The world's biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate. At least 15 species have gone extinct in the past 20 years and another 12 survive only in captivity. Current extinction rates are at least 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural rates found in the fossil record. Humans are the main reason for most species' declines. Habitat destruction and degradation are the leading threats, but other significant pressures include over-exploitation (for food, pets, and medicine), introduced species, pollution, and disease. Climate change is increasingly recognized as a serious threat..." - paraphrased from a recent report by the World Conservation Union.

I think humans are heading towards the end of their existence by destroying the web of life they depend on to sustain their own survival, and the majority are clueless by circumstance or choice.

I studied Physics in college, and worked in Physics and engineering for many years. Learning any one of the hard science or engineering disciplines has a profound effect on one's ability to analyze situations. One's first such course has a much more profound effect on one's consciousness than the subsequent dozens of courses one may take in scientific fields. Studying science teaches you a way of thinking that it took the human race until about the 17th century to discover, and which enables you to analyze situations in such a way that you have some hope of getting the correct answer. When anyone thus trained hears people without such training try to opine about science, it is very, very apparent how profoundly they don't get it. In principle, an untrained person could come up with a correct answer to a scientific question, but the chances of someone recapituating millenia of human scientific development in his thinking are actually negligible. Formally learning science makes a tremendous change to your thinking and capacity for analysis.

The question was...

What insight have you gained from you profession/education that the layman doesn't understand?

How about a quote from Winston Churchill ...

Quote:

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

I don't get fazed much by the horrible things people are capable of doing to each other, and to children......(but I do sometimes) and I don't tend to do that thing I notice happens a lot where people protect themselves from the humanness of the horrible things and those and those who do them by calling them monsters and denying them humanity.....(but sometimes they make my flesh crawl to deal with ...especially the organised and highly intelligent abusers who have a lot of money and power, and know how to work the system)...and I usually know more or less the right things to do to help people deal with awful stuff, but I still make big mistakes.


And I guess I know heaps of stuff about criminals, the justice system, various illnesses and such, because I have worked in corrections and a hospital....