When Experts are Afraid of Staying Silent

By Alexandros Sainidis

In my library resides a paradox – Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital” and on top of it a Morgan Stanley Investment Banking hat, gifted to me by a friend from Los Angeles. It represents one of my core views, adopted from Aristotle’s teachings, that an educated mind comes from entertaining a thought without necessarily accepting. The problem is that we simply don’t have the time to entertain all these thoughts, especially regarding constant information flows from all around the world. As a direct consequence, it is quite alarming when you see analysts having opinions about anything happening in the world, simply because understanding the matter in the first place is a prerequisite.

The International Relations or Studies field is one that covers an enormous space of knowledge due to its global scope, where history and data are both necessary for following and understanding international affairs. Consequently, most people are aware of this fact, even subconsciously, due to the sheer amount of news and books circulating. You need about an hour a day to get a full picture of what is happening in the world in some detail and most individuals will assume that they have the full picture of events happening around the world. 

The volume is misunderstood

So what makes the amount of all that info too much? The most obvious answer is geography. While true, answer is at the same time unidimensional. Geography obviously includes the type of events that may occur. An average Mediterranean is not exposed to the events taking place at the Amazon rainforest, so, consequently one can hear or observe only so often regarding such a distant topic. 

Bigger geography also includes more people. As the contemporary approach is now less euro-centric, there is a bigger amount of scholars coming from origins other than the “West” and Russia. 

At the same time bigger geography means more time – more history analyzed due to the link between time and space. An empty desert has the history of its occasional conflicts. Shanghai, on the other hand is brimmed with people, representing a non-Western perspective of what is a fresh superpower, while generating constant new thought and commercial ties. Nobody cared about Shanghai twenty years ago – but now one can dig and find interesting and exploitable information and knowledge all day long. 

Due to polyphony, geographic spaces also include varying opinions based on the interests of internal and intranational actors, such as political parties, investors, activist movements, organizations, scholars and everything in between. More often than not, the background of the author is also reflected in their writing, even if their work is considered a classic in the field. For example, “The International Law on Foreign Investment” by Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah is considered by some as more favorable towards developing countries.

To combat the conflicting voices of the opposite side and at the same time improve their visibility, people try to post as much as they can on social media and other digital platforms, such as websites and forums. This also pushes for the generation of new and more extreme opinions, because those who express their opinions follow the rules of marketing, targeting specific audiences (or customer segments, if you make a living from your writing) and therefore make the message clearer (or extreme). The message may also be more precise, rather than extreme, as in some societies individuals and groups are more centrist now than before – and being a centrist is hard because you need to define the mix of policies you support. Something similar applies to academia, with a clear need to produce intellectual work in order to move up the ladder.

If this was all not enough, the surrounding environment is gaining something comparable to sentience, achieved by smart systems, Internet of Things, and of course Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps Metaverse(s) should be added to this list also. These technologies are fearful to a new level due to the huge amount of information digitized. The contemporary papyrus, parchments and paper files are all those servers that store huge amounts of information from global networks – not an individual writer. Moreover, AI will be able to create even more knowledge based on processes similar to multivariate analyses (to oversimplify), and this is why servers and storage are a problem that requires a more serious solution than we think we have.

What forces us to know everything? 

Digital platforms and tools used for communication and sharing are generating a fear of missing out (FOMO). While this term is used mostly in social life, such as being worried or annoyed by not going out every single Friday and Saturday, it may also apply to the Analysts who are trying to be as visible as they can. They even worry that if they have not posted about a major international matter, that they may seem to be lacking the ability to comment on it. It’s a competition pushed for quantity even if it means echoing the same things somebody else has already said.

Should we seek specialization?

When our eyes cannot see everything in their field of view, they attempt to focus at least somewhere – one point over another. Consequently, what comes to mind as the best alternative is specialization. A specialization is more than a collection of knowledge about the history of relations between two states. It requires vigilance, collecting data and analyzing it daily for any developments, while also keeping an eye on the developing literature (literature review is a fancy term for competition). Analysts and experts who truly manage to generate new content on a frequent basis are the ones who apply the knowledge they possess – rather than echo knowledge of others – to new developments. By writing about these new developments, they also analyze and better memorize new elements, the developing body of knowledge regarding a topic. This is why our 📰💌 newsletter is also beneficial for the Pecunia et Bellum team.

In the book “Range”, the author, David Epstein mentions how specialization did not really help an expert on Russia to predict certain events. This does not, however, mean that the book condemns specialization. Rather, it suggests that people need to combine depth with breadth (and perhaps a “Blink” for the fans of Malcolm Gladwell).

The appropriate Breadth

In an old article I had mentioned how myriads of books and articles simply circulate thoughts from the same books all the time. The immediate solution for the problems of breadth is reading all the classics. It saves time, because if you know the theory well, you may skip 20-60 pages depending on the book, unless the author applies the theory to the object of writing in an interesting way. Then, you can start making correlations between old and contemporary. Old is classic body of knowledge and contemporary is related to specialized exploration and specialization. “Diplomacy” by Henry Kissinger is old and broad, but for its time, it was specialized. Therefore, the notion of specialization changes depending on when you are reading something. At the same time, however, it is timeless and can offer great tools for somebody specialized. This can happen for two reasons: either a) the reader is no familiar with the subject and needs a good introduction or b) the writing is brilliant and the author provides rare specialized insights and thought processes in a general context.

Creativity is the way to go

By going beyond conventional limits you are going further away from what you should study or write about and coming closer to what could you write. Follow the creative connections you make and it will create a rabbit hole of thoughts. Of course, correlation is not causation, but that should exactly lead you to study and confirm what your mind sees.

Perhaps intuition is linked to correlation and creativity, a sense of genuine curiosity that brings know and unknown rather than the competition of much and little. Let’s not compare size of thought – but rather quality of thought, especially at the age when a 20-something euro worth software can outperform any analyst creating a simple executive summary from 10 different articles. We can all do better than that and let our creativity be our guide – not our fear of missing out.