Can You Be An Expert?

[drop bear]

You would be an expert in exactly what you do. So a marksman is an expert marksman but not an expert killer. Who may find other ways to get bullets on target.

 

[drop bear]

So Steve, would it be accurate of me to say that you believe a person in any field no matter how knowledgeable or well trained should not be considered an expert because they have not performed their skills under real conditions?

in a field where you can perform the skills. I think a few endeavours are defined into theoretical experts and practical ones.

 

[Aiki Lee]

Yes, but not every expertly trained person is ever called to do what they were trained to do. So they have the skill but have not applied it. Are they experts because they have the skill or are they not experts because they have not performed the action under real world conditions?

 

[Steve]

So Steve, would it be accurate of me to say that you believe a person in any field no matter how knowledgeable or well trained should not be considered an expert because they have not performed their skills under real conditions?

Drop bear hit the nail on the head. If I'm learning krav maga, I may be gaining skills that will help me to defend myself from an attack. But I'm developing expertise in Krav Maga. That's my area of expertise. It's a fine distinction, but I think it's important, because there are guys who do Krav Maga who are bona fide experts in defense... and there are many who are not. The difference is that the former had (through profession or bad luck or whatever) opportunities to apply the skills in context. The latter did not.

Take a guy like Bas Rutten, who is well trained AND very experienced in all manner of violence from bouncing to bar fights to street brawls with multiple people to competitive violence in the form of combat sports. He is trained, and his training helped him to defend himself. But just as important, his experiences informed his training. He knows what he knows because he is well trained AND because he has applied his training in a variety of contexts. But even Bas Rutten should acknowledge that if he's training a LEO or a combat soldier, he can only teach him what he knows.

If you train in a system, you are becoming an expert in that system. You are developing skills and expertise in what you are doing. And no more.

 

[drop bear]

Yes, but not every expertly trained person is ever called to do what they were trained to do. So they have the skill but have not applied it. Are they experts because they have the skill or are they not experts because they have not performed the action under real world conditions?

is there an example of that?

 

[Steve]

Yes, but not every expertly trained person is ever called to do what they were trained to do. So they have the skill but have not applied it. Are they experts because they have the skill or are they not experts because they have not performed the action under real world conditions?

You're right. Earlier in this thread, the idea of a pilot was brought up, specifically Capt. Sullenburger's miraculous landing in the Hudson. Sulley is, I believe, an expert pilot. An expert even among experts, I'd say.

If Sulley opened a pilot school with no planes, but state of the art simulators, and started training pilots in his "system." Do you think that the pilots he trains would be competent to fly a plane? Maybe so. Honestly, their chances of being able to fly a plane would be pretty good, with Sulley teaching them. Would they be expert pilots? Would 20,000 hours in a simulator be able to replace 20,000 hours of actual flight time in a plane? I don't think so.

Now, what if Sulley retires and his students start opening schools and teaching others Sulley's flight system (flight school without planes, but with simulators). Are they competent to do this? I don't know. Certainly, they are competent to teach the system, but are they competent to teach students to pilot a real plane? I'd say the best answer is "maybe." You can't say for sure that any of these guys, even the instructors, can actually fly a plane. Why? Because none of them has ever done it.

So, even with that, sure, they might be able to fly a plane. But are they experts? I would say they are not. And as each generation of student becomes instructor, I'd wager the odds of gaining practical, comprehensive instruction would go down.

The model above is how almost every MA school is set up, regardless of style.

 

[Steve]

What's the main difference between the E-2 who just graduates from jump school, the E-4 who's been in the unit for a few years, and the E-5 or E-6 who runs the unit? I'd say it's experience. They have all had the same training. The difference is that the longer you do something in real life, the more tacit knowledge you gain that just cannot be effectively taught in training.

For what it's worth, the tacit knowledge is the biggest piece of this puzzle. It's everything that you learn by screwing things up and fixing them yourself. It's the lessons learned, the rules of thumb, the "that's what the book says, but this way works better." It's the reason you watch a home improvement show and think, 'That doesn't look hard," but make a giant mess when you try it yourself.

 

[Aiki Lee]

is there an example of that?

Supposed I'm trained in hostage negotiation. I undergo rigorous scenario training but never encounter a real hostage situation. Am I an expert because I have been trained to handle the situation if it arises or am I not an expert because it has not been done for real?

If the answer is the later, then how many times do I need to put my skills into practice in reality before I would be considered an expert? All crisis situations are different and what worked in one case may not work in another so the experiences obtained in one situation may not carry over ot the other.

 

[Blindside]

Supposed I'm trained in hostage negotiation. I undergo rigorous scenario training but never encounter a real hostage situation. Am I an expert because I have been trained to handle the situation if it arises or am I not an expert because it has not been done for real?

If the answer is the later, then how many times do I need to put my skills into practice in reality before I would be considered an expert? All crisis situations are different and what worked in one case may not work in another so the experiences obtained in one situation may not carry over ot the other.

I think that if you have been well trained but never put your stuff to the test, you would have a hard time calling yourself "competent." How do you know you are good at this if you have never had to face the fire once, what if you fall apart under stress? In the autobiography of Saburo Satai, one of the leading Japanese ace pilots of WWII, he talks about how during his first "kill" he would have been easy meat for his target because he got overly target fixated and did a number of stupid mistakes, what saved him was his more experienced wingmen who kept his target from turning on him. He was an expertly trained pilot, but he wasn't an expert at that stage.

One story I have heard (probably apocryphal) was that one of the reasons that the "ace" was set at 5 kills was because that is about the point where your training overcomes your instincts.

 

[Tgace]

Supposed I'm trained in hostage negotiation. I undergo rigorous scenario training but never encounter a real hostage situation. Am I an expert because I have been trained to handle the situation if it arises or am I not an expert because it has not been done for real?

If the answer is the later, then how many times do I need to put my skills into practice in reality before I would be considered an expert? All crisis situations are different and what worked in one case may not work in another so the experiences obtained in one situation may not carry over ot the other.

If you were that no Police Department would send officers to you for training...

 

[Buka]

"Expert" is a term of language, and kind of hard to pin down to one definition. In police work, if we were to bring in someone to teach, the word "expert" would not, has not, ever come up. You would bring in whoever it was you were bringing in, they would be known and accepted as a teacher by the profession you were part of.

They would have extensive experience in the field with a record that reflected it. Most important, they would know how to teach. There's a whole lot of tough guys in police work, but most can't teach worth a damn. They can handle most everything in dangerous and violent situations, and they can do it well within the confines of the law, but they really couldn't show you how..... Are they "experts"? Damned if I know.
(I'm well aware of the term "expert witness", but that's in court, not on the street. Besides, it's pretty much an occupation these days.)

And, we, the guys that teach officers the things that will or will not save their lives, take that very seriously and are the ones who pick specialists to come in, as guests, to teach. Never heard them called experts. I think it's always a good idea to ask teachers/instructors "I want the best there is on the subject, who do I want?" If a dozen of them point to one guy, it's a safe bet we'll be looking at that guy first. Expert? Yeah, probably so.

Same thing in Martial Arts. If I ask ten under-belts to give me the name of an expert fighter I'll probably get different answers than I'd get from ten black belts. Ask the same question of ten professional fighters, probably going to get some different answers there as well.

Personally, I'd rather listen to the fighters.

 

[Paul_D]

Did you actually read any of the thread? This discussion is about expertise, and what makes a person an expert. So yes, it is in point of fact exactly about how you define expert.

The point of the thread was to discuss the two differing opinions. One stated that you cannot be a self defence expert without practical experience.

My counter argument is that someone who has experienced lots of violence isn't an expert in self defence, as they clearly do not know how to avoid it, they are just an expert in violence.

My point is you need to define what is self defence before you can then define what an expert in it is. Is a self defence expert someone with practical experience of numerous violent street encounters, or someone who has never had anyone becasue they know how to avoid them?

But thank you for implying I am some sort of idiot who just comments on threads without knowing what they are about, and thank you for completely ignoring (or completely missing) my point. That was very helpful, and added greatly to the discussion.

 

[Paul_D]

When you look at a karate dojo or a krav maga school or a BJJ school and they advertise "Learn Self Defence," do you think they mean all of the things you mention above? I'd say probably not. They're probably advertising fighting skills with MAYBE an occasional lecture on not being a jerk and paying attention to what's going on around you.

They don't mean the those things no you're correct, but putting Self Defence on your website is more to do with getting people through the door through I would say.

 

[Steve]

Absolutely agree, Paul. Thing is, there are a lot of people around here, on these boards, and in martial arts in general who purport to be experts in "self defence" and are really experts in a system. They're students of a system and the system says that they're "self defence" experts.

If when asked about your experience, you can only reference your years of training and that's it, you are not an expert in self defence, in my opinion. This would go for pretty much any other thing as well. Violence. Can you be an expert on reality based violence if you have no actual experience with it? Can you be an expert on de-escalation if you are not routinely in a position to de-escalate potentially violent encounters?

 

[Jaeimseu]

My point is you need to define what is self defence before you can then define what an expert in it is. Is a self defence expert someone with practical experience of numerous violent street encounters, or someone who has never had anyone becasue they know how to .

The problem here is that it's impossible to know the reason that the "expert" has never had to defend him/herself. If that is the criteria, I am a self-defense expert. So is my younger sister who has received no training of any kind.

 

[Dirty Dog]

The point of the thread was to discuss the two differing opinions. One stated that you cannot be a self defence expert without practical experience.

My counter argument is that someone who has experienced lots of violence isn't an expert in self defence, as they clearly do not know how to avoid it, they are just an expert in violence.

My point is you need to define what is self defence before you can then define what an expert in it is. Is a self defence expert someone with practical experience of numerous violent street encounters, or someone who has never had anyone becasue they know how to avoid them?

But thank you for implying I am some sort of idiot who just comments on threads without knowing what they are about, and thank you for completely ignoring (or completely missing) my point. That was very helpful, and added greatly to the discussion.

OK, valid point. I'd still disagree. You can be an expert in self defense by any definition of self defense. But only if you define what an expert is.

Personally, I think both definitions are far too nebulous for there to ever be an answer.

 

[Steve]

The problem here is that it's impossible to know the reason that the "expert" has never had to defend him/herself. If that is the criteria, I am a self-defense expert. So is my younger sister who has received no training of any kind.

Very interesting point! My first thought was that training is often also critical to developing expertise. Once again, take Bas Rutten as an example. As I said before, Bas Rutten is both experienced AND well trained. I'm not suggesting that experience alone can supplant quality training. Rather, that the two are both important ingredients.

That said, of those two, I can envision an expert who has no formal training (however rare he or she might be), but I cannot envision an expert who has no practical experience.

 

[Steve]

OK, valid point. I'd still disagree. You can be an expert in self defense by any definition of self defense. But only if you define what an expert is.

Personally, I think both definitions are far too nebulous for there to ever be an answer.

Defining "expert" can be tricky. We know that an expert is an authority on something. They are a resource for others.

But learning is a spectrum upon which expertise falls. Earlier in the thread, I mentioned Bloom's Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation.

Training gets you somewhere in or around the gap between comprehension and application. Excellent training may get you into rudimentary application, but can't take you much further. But as you move past "application" you are in the stages of expertise.

The point is that we do know that there are some things that must be present in order for someone to be an expert. Experience is one of those thing. All experts are experienced, but not everyone with experience is an expert. how much experience really depends, and c an be relative. How many times must someone use the skills in context to be an expert? I'd say it depends, but certainly more than one.

Capt. Sullenburger is certainly an expert pilot. But is he an expert crash lander? Maybe. He's done it once with good results.

 

[Buka]

Read this and see if you can find any parallels:

The Death of Expertise The War Room

That was really good. And so germane to this thread. Thanks for posting that.

 

[Tez3]

That was really good. And so germane to this thread. Thanks for posting that.

A very good article indeed. Thanks from me too.