The Problem With Experts — Why You Can’t Trust Authority Without Proof | Tom Bilyeu Deep Dive

In this cutting-edge episode of Impact Theory, Tom Bilyeu takes center stage to confront one of the biggest questions of our era: can we actually trust the so-called "experts"? Drawing on riveting examples from history and his own journey as an entrepreneur, Tom dissects how expertise has been weaponized by elites, resulting in societal conformity—even when the experts turn out to be wrong. From the smoking doctors of the past to today's battles over pandemics, politics, and public policy, Tom lays out a provocative argument for why blind faith in authority is more hazardous than most realize. Tom invites listeners into a historical deep dive, exposing powerful stories like the persecution of Socrates and Galileo, the belittling of Linus Pauling, and the revolution started by Barry Marshall’s rogue experiment. Throughout, he constructs a compelling case for why challenging orthodoxy is not only healthy, but necessary for progress. Whether you consider yourself an expert or a lifelong learner, part 1 will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about authority, consensus, and truth. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Introduction: Who Do You Trust? 03:29 Paradigm Shifts and Scientific Dogma 04:05 Vitamin C, Ulcers, and Outsider Breakthroughs 05:17 The Wisdom of Knowing Nothing 08:43 The Illusion of Seeing All 09:57 The Scientific Method vs. Censorship 10:43 Maps, Narratives, and Oversimplification 14:42 Freedom of Speech, Control, and Tyranny 17:16 Experts Are Not Neutral—Protecting Status CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Monarch Money: Use code THEORY at https://monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year! Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Mint Mobile: If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/impact. https://mintmobile.com/impact DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte plan required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for detail Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

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• 1:38Tom Bilyeu?

  People tell us to trust the experts. But do they actually know what's best? Remember when doctors said that smoking was healthy? Or that we absolutely had to invade Iraq because for a fact they have weapons of mass destruction? How about COVID or Gaza? Vaccinations? What about the food pyramid? What would you do if you got diagnosed with cancer? Eat only apples? Go keto? Take chemo? In a world full of misinformation, who do you trust? That's what we're going to explore. This is what I call the problem with experts. And it's definitely not what most people think. Experts come in many flavors.

• 2:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Academics, PhDs, doctors, researchers, politicians, professionals, and the like. We all specialize. And most of us consider ourselves an expert in some area. Most of us have also had the hilarious, yet almost offensive experience of someone who knows absolutely nothing about our area of expertise, spouting nonsense as if it were fact. But by the end of this video, I hope to convince you that clutching your pearls and telling the know-nothing idiot to shut up is far more dangerous than the spreading of misinformation will ever be. Wish me luck. Despite having lived through COVID, history has proven that kind of blatant manipulation is the norm, not the anomaly. Once you see the pattern, you can't unsee it. Elites rule the world, and expertise is the weapon they use to enforce conformity.

• 3:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Use less water? Eat less meat? Social distance? Avoid fat? Too big to fail? Stay vaccinated? Stay woke? Stay at home? And the list goes on. We have to recognize that history proves that in times of crisis, experts don't just help remedy the situation, they use the crisis to consolidate power and enforce compliance. And yet, and yet, we have a crushing need for expertise. No one should want to live in a world without it. We should want more of it, not less. But it has a dangerous side effect we have to avoid, and a shocking cure we must use to inoculate ourselves from bullshit. To understand what's really going on, we've got to walk carefully through four big ideas. Now make sure you listen to them all, as I've definitely saved the best for last.

• 3:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Part one: The long history of mental slavery. History proves there's an immutable law of human nature. Most people hate change, and they will literally kill to stop it. Case in point: Socrates. He had the youth of his day questioning too many traditional beliefs. The elites of Athens wouldn't stand. for it, so they sentenced him to death for quote unquote corrupting the youth. His real crime, though, was making the experts look stupid in public. Galileo was the same. He had the balls to say that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. Now, that seems so ridiculous to our modern ears, that's obvious. But the man was sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life for noting the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way. But it was an inconvenient fact that the Catholic Church didn't like,

• 4:37Tom Bilyeu?

  and they were powerful enough to enforce scientific consensus. Seems impossible to imagine now, but there was a time the Catholic Church actually controlled science. What could go wrong, right? Thomas Kuhn was one of the first people to notice this pattern of the elite class crushing dissent with the use of experts. Kuhn noted that in science, progress doesn't happen linearly. It comes in big spasming paradigm shifts. And every time, the old guard resists with everything they've got. Not because they have superior experimental evidence. Nope, because their worldview is cemented in place by institutions, reputations, and their very identity. And that's the trap. Even two-time Nobel Prize winners aren't immune. Linus Pauling noticed that high doses of vitamin C seem to prevent

• 5:21Tom Bilyeu?

  or treat colds, flu, and possibly even cancer. The reaction from the medical establishment? Mockery, dismissal, attempts to discredit. Even openly biased studies were rushed out to try to silence him. But decades later, peer-reviewed research began confirming that vitamin C does indeed have therapeutic benefits, particularly in immune response, something most people take for granted today. But Pauling wasn't a crank. He was just too early for the comfort of the established orthodoxy. This one is a real banger. Barry Marshall claimed ulcers were caused by bacteria. In keeping with human nature, he was told to shut up and sit down. But instead, he drank the bacteria he believed caused ulcers, giving himself an ulcer, but then he cured the ulcer by killing the bacteria. Gangster move, but should it really be that hard to get people's attention?

• 6:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Actually, think about that for a second. Step outside of the narrative that I'm building ever so briefly and look back from the outside. I'm gonna answer that question directly at the end, but I want you to have your answer formulated as well. And while you think about that, let me tell you where this all began for me. I started thinking about the problem with experts when Sam Harris went viral for saying,

• 6:24Speaker 02

  "Real experts are much more reliable than frauds or people who are not experts."

• 6:30Tom Bilyeu?

  And the idea finally formalized in my mind when Douglas Murray and Dave Smith collided on the now infamous episode of Joe Rogan.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  "People have appointed themselves experts who are not experts."

• 6:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Sam and Douglas are both people that I respect tremendously, but in these moments, they fell prey to a dangerous cognitive error, one that Socrates warned about when he was on trial for his life. He said, "The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing." The continued paradox at the heart of the problem with experts is that Sam and Douglas know a tremendous amount. They are indeed experts. And yet, like virtually all experts before them, they have become so convinced by their rightness that they fall into the trap of wanting to enforce dogma rather than debating ideas. Sam is convinced he can so clearly see the outcome of electing a given political candidate that any amount of spin or manipulation to get the right answer is justified. And Douglas only wants to debate people who are qualified,

• 7:26Tom Bilyeu?

  but that's like a martial artist insisting that they only fight people of their same discipline when the reality of a real fight is that there are no rules, only the truth of combat. History shows us over and over is that knowledge progresses in only one way, by challenges to the orthodoxy, often presented by outsiders, soundly ridiculed by the establishment. So how is it that some experts don't pump their own brakes when they hear themselves saying some variant of, "I know I'm right because I'm the expert"? It is crazy to me, given how history has proven that this is a terrible strategy. But there actually is a reason for it, and honestly, virtually all of us fall for it at one point or another. So, welcome to part two. Experts gonna expert because that's how God made them.

• 8:10Tom Bilyeu?

  It's quite possible that outside of physics and math, truth itself may be impossible to pick. When you really look at it, virtually all of life comes down to perspective and interpretation, not objective facts. If you don't believe me, watch the podcast where Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris spend hours trying to define what's true and fail to come to full agreement. It really isn't as easy as it sounds. The problem isn't that experts don't know the truth. The problem isn't even that they lie to get us to conform. The problem is that they are incapable of doing anything else. Humans simply are not designed to see the truth. I mean that literally. Whenever I think I see something clearly, I remind myself that humans can only see

• 8:53Tom Bilyeu?

  0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. We are blind to virtually everything. We just don't have the receptors to perceive the truth. Yet, when I look out at the world, I see it. It's all right there, right? My brain tells me that what I see is all there is to see. I feel like an expert in viewing the world. The illusion that I'm seeing everything is so convincing that even in the face of knowing I can only see some tiny fraction of what's actually there does nothing to break the illusion. I still feel deep in my bones that I'm seeing the world the way that it actually is. But what I'm actually seeing is a gross oversimplification. My brain focuses my attention on what it deems most relevant, ignores much of what it does see,

• 9:38Tom Bilyeu?

  and simply can't see the vast majority of what's actually there. And despite that, my brain hands me back the signal that I understand the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth of the world. But the actual truth is that my brain is lying to me. Perhaps with good intentions, but the lie is nonetheless the truth of what's happening. It's lies as far as the eye can see. It is lies all the way down. This is exactly what I imagine is happening when someone believes they know who should be elected. It's what I imagine is happening when an expert rolls their eyes at someone who simply hasn't studied the subject enough. There is no doubt that I am literally an expert at seeing the world compared to somebody who's blind. But man, not by much. They only see 0.0035% less than I do.

• 10:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And so it is with experts. They act as if they see it all. They didn't even believe they see it. See it all, but in reality, we're all nearly blind, groping around in the dark, trying to make sense of things. And while if I were blind, I would gladly put my hand on the shoulder of someone with sight, because what a big difference that 0.0035% actually makes. But if I thought I understood something about the world that the person with sight didn't, I would speak up, and I sure as hell wouldn't let them lead me off a cliff, no matter how loudly they screamed. Trust me, I can see. It's important to remember that for the human mind, capital T truth has proven to be the pursuit of an approximate direction, not a precise destination. What we believe to be true evolves constantly.

• 11:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Even Newton, who many consider the smartest man to ever live, got physics wrong and required Einstein to move us forward. And we know that Einstein is only directionally correct because we still don't fully understand quantum physics. The hard truth is that feeling right is not the same as being right. And even if you are the single most right person of your generation, the odds of your ideas surviving the test of time are virtually zero. Maybe one day, AI will one-shot a theory of everything. But until then, we've got to focus on simply making progress. And the way to make progress isn't censorship, it's the scientific method. And the scientific method is the aggressive attempt to disprove something and not the authoritarian insistence on conforming to a narrative.

• 11:48Tom Bilyeu?

  I have no doubt that many, if not most, experts present their narratives in an effort to be helpful. They are offering a hand to all of our blind asses and offering to help us navigate complicated problems well, sure. Their narratives are simplified maps designed to help us navigate extremely complex terrain, but that's exactly what a map was prior to apps. It's a simplified version of reality that you can carry around to avoid getting lost. If a map contained all of reality, it would necessarily be the size of Earth. So the very value of the map lies in its ability to simplify the real world, right? We're all genetically programmed to only see a simplified version of reality, which means we are perpetually wrong to some degree.

• 12:28Tom Bilyeu?

  And more importantly, once you intentionally simplify the simplified things even further to fit a narrative, you're making decisions. You're choosing what to include and what to leave out. And the resulting narratives can be used to take believers and just generally uncritical people anywhere you want. And if you pair this reality with the next part of my argument, you are going to see that this goes awry very, very quickly. We'll be back in a moment.

• 12:53Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:38Tom Bilyeu?

  or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now also available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, make sure you tell them that it was on Impact Theory. That's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about something that genuinely keeps me awake at night. My team at Impact Theory gets hit with phishing scams from bad actors pretending to be me all the time. And they keep getting more sophisticated attacks with details specific enough to look legit. AI has made a lot of things possible, including scams like this. But AI still needs raw material. It gets it from data brokers who sell your name, address, phone number to anyone willing to pay.

• 14:23Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:09Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, let's pick up where we left off. Part three: Expertise is secretly, not so secretly, a game of control. For the most part, people honestly don't care that they're being lied to or even manipulated by the expert class. They just want to fall in love, make some money, raise their families, and enjoy life. And if the experts are lying to them, so what? Life is pretty awesome. The problem is, today? Life is getting harder. Something is wrong. Desperately wrong. And people can feel it. Housing is out of reach. Tuition has gotten outrageous. Deaths of despair are driving life expectancy down in the US. The global economy is shaky at best. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. And for the first time in a long time, kids are doing worse than their parents. Now, people are starting to care about the lies.

• 15:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, they're starting to ask questions. And now, experts are having to squeeze harder and harder to get people to comply. It is creating a dangerous feedback loop. The more questions people ask, the more they're reminded, they're not the experts. The more people point out the obvious agendas and blatant consequences of bad policies, the more they're told to shut up and stay in their lane. This is exactly why Joe Rogan is one of the most watched humans on the planet and one of the most attacked. He has too many questions. And he's not nearly expert enough for the experts. He's spreading misinformation. Or so people would have you believe. My own YouTube comments accuse me of the same thing. But it's not actually about spreading misinformation. People don't care about that. People can't even agree on what the facts are. So how would anyone know what's actually misinformation? The game here is control.

• 16:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoever controls the narrative in these turbulent times wins. Remember, people use a crisis to consolidate power. We have an evolutionary drive to do that. Every animal seeks control. Controlling your environment is exactly how you stay alive. Humans are the apex predator not because we're the strongest or the fastest. We're the apex predator because we are the most able to exert control on our environment. We are so pathologically obsessed with control, we'll enslave anything, including other humans. This impulse is so useful and grotesque, it must be checked or tyranny reigns. Despite the fact that the founders of our country made freedom of speech The very first enumerated right in the Constitution to specifically protect us

• 17:24Tom Bilyeu?

  against the tyranny of experts who think they know better. Over the last few decades, people have come out of the woodwork calling for censorship. Freedom of speech is the check on tyranny. And yet, former Senator John Kerry captured the sentiment of many in the expert class at the 2024 World Economic Forum when he described freedom of speech as a buzzsaw that acted as a major block to combating disinformation.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just hammer it out of existence.

• 17:54Tom Bilyeu?

  No matter how helpful an expert hopes to be, the second you let them gain control by warning against things like corrupting news or misinformation, you free them from having to prove their ideas work and you end up with tyranny. When Mao required every region in China to plant the same crops at the same time despite different climates, was it misinformation to argue that different crops grow better in different places? It was treated as such, and millions starved to death. Science isn't about consensus building, it's about the organic emergence of consensus due to repeated experimental proof. The second you were trying to cram agreement down people's throats, you're the bad guy. You are over-esteeming your sight.

• 18:37Tom Bilyeu?

  You're forgetting that you may not be blind, but life is extremely complicated and you can only see 0.0035% of what's there. Ironically, truth must emerge from the process of falsification, not be forced on people from the top down. The people that want control are almost always the last people that should get it. Who's going to determine what's misinformation? Is it going to be the same people that enraged the voting public by stealing their future and making everything impossibly expensive? That's certainly who's standing up and demanding to be listened to, and history cries out from the void. Let me tell you the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the guy who discovered germ theory. In the mid-1800s, Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor, made an observation so simple, so undeniable, it should have transformed medicine overnight.

• 19:22Tom Bilyeu?

  But it didn't. At the time, women were dying en masse from childbed fever in hospitals. Two clinics in the same building with the same conditions had drastically different death rates. One clinic had five times the death rate of the other. Semmelweis found out the reason. The doctors in the high death clinic were performing autopsies in the morning and delivering babies in the afternoon without washing their hands. He tested his theory. He made the doctors wash their hands with a special solution before touching the patients. The death rate plummeted, not dropped, plummeted from over 10% to under 2%. That should have been the moment that the world changed, but it wasn't. Instead, the other doctors, the real experts, destroyed him.

• 20:05Tom Bilyeu?

  They rejected his idea, mocked him, outright refused to believe that they, doctors, experts, men of science, could be the ones killing their own patients. It was offensive and far too disruptive to their sense of self. Semmelweis was forced out of medicine, blackballed. He lost his job, his reputation, eventually his sanity. This guy actually died alone in an insane asylum. It took 20 years, 20 years, for the data to become so overwhelming, so undeniable, that even the experts had to admit they were wrong and hand washing finally became standard practice. But after killing how many people? Needless to say, I could give you more examples, countless in fact. Covid, anyone? How about autism? I'm not saying I know the answer, or that anyone does yet,

• 20:49Tom Bilyeu?

  but I am saying we should want the answer, no matter what it is. Humans are prone to massive cognitive errors and the results can be dire. And we must remember that experts are not neutral arbiters of reality. They're humans, flawed humans like all of us. They have egos, careers, status to protect. And when new truths threaten those things, history shows us again and again that many will choose death over humility, yours of course, not theirs. Hopefully, all of this makes you say, yikes, why don't we just ditch the idea of experts altogether? You may not be expecting me to say this, but shockingly, that would both be dumb and impossible. Welcome to our final chapter, part four, The Iron Law of Oligarchy.

• 21:33Tom Bilyeu?

  James Burnham explains the presence and necessity of elites, primarily through the theory he outlines in his incredible must read book, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. While one can argue that the concept of elites sits slightly to the side of experts, I think it is the exact same phenomenon. Just at different levels of society. But from a human nature perspective, they are one and the same. Burnham's argument goes like this. One, oligarchy is inevitable. Every society will be run by a group of elites, namely, small groups of people who disproportionately hold power and influence. Burnham argues this isn't necessarily a result of corruption or even conspiracy. It's just a natural byproduct of organizational dynamics and the very architecture of the human mind. Why?

• 22:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Because of complexity and specialization. Modern society is amazing specifically because of specialization in both knowledge and skills. No one person can master every essential area, and few people would even want to. Thus, decision-making power and influence concentrate naturally into the hands of those best positioned by skill, ambition, or resources to handle this complexity. Two, the concept of the political class. Burnham expands on Mosca's idea of the ruling class, asserting that society always divides itself into two primary groups. One, the ruling elite, a minority that monopolizes control over key social resources, political power, economic capital, ideological institutions.

• 23:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And two, the ruled majority, the masses who lack direct power and largely just follow or are guided by the elite's leadership. This division isn't morally good or bad per se. It's simply descriptive of a social reality, according to Burnham. Three, human nature and power dynamics. Burnham emphasizes that humans inherently strive for power, influence, and security. Because resources are finite, societies naturally organize around competition for power. The result is a hierarchy where some inevitably rise above others in status, capability, and influence. We all have differing abilities and drives. People don't have equal ambition, skill, intelligence, or even the desire to engage in the decision-making process.

• 23:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Therefore, a small subset of driven, hyperambitious, connected, intelligent, and sometimes capable individuals inevitably rise to positions of leadership and governance. Four, elites are necessary for social stability. Now, this one hurts, as I fear, despite my protestations in this video, Burnham is probably right when he says the existence of an elite class isn't merely inevitable. It's actually necessary. He believes that without stable elites, societies fall into chaos. First off, they make decision-making way more efficient. Elites offer rapid cohesive decision-making in a crisis. Despite their temptation to consolidate power, mass participation in every political decision is quite literally impossible,

• 24:26Tom Bilyeu?

  if for no other reason than most people will ignore the request most of the time, even in a crisis. When was the last time you went to a community board meeting? Or even a local town hall? Yeah, me either. Like I said, most people just want to live their lives. Second, elites provide social cohesion and leadership. Societies need direction, guidance, vision, all of it. Elites offer this leadership, constructing coherent ideologies, and yes, narratives that guide broader societal action. Five, Burnham talks about realism over idealism. Burnham critiques idealistic or utopian visions like egalitarian democracy or communism as fundamentally unrealistic

• 25:05Tom Bilyeu?

  because they deny the unrelentingly persistent reality of this group of elites. You might be aiming for utopia, but because humans are a thousand times harder to herd than cats, instead of utopia, you get Mao, Stalin, and a whole lot of Gulags. Burnham pushes back against childish utopian fantasies of what ought to be, but never will be, and instead promotes a Machiavellian realism that I think is accurate. Societies should acknowledge the necessity of elites openly, understand how they function, and establish systems that constrain and manage their power rather than attempting to abolish it. He argues that the best protection for individual freedom isn't to try and eradicate the existence of elites, which is fundamentally impossible, but instead, society should endeavor to create

• 25:50Tom Bilyeu?

  a dynamic set of competing elites that are held accountable to results. Open competition among elites prevents any single group from monopolizing power and leads to greater liberty and transparency. In the age of social media, I think this idea has a lot of legs. This is why I absolutely loved seeing Eric Weinstein sit down with Terrence Howard. Terrence might be out of his mind. He might be an artist who has confused himself. For a scientist, but the reality is, his ideas had gained a lot of traction. They were dynamic and exciting and made a lot of people feel like we might be on the verge of something big. If Eric had told Terrence to sit down, shut up, and stick to acting, as so many people did, people would have gotten more and more interested in his ideas, not less.

• 26:35Tom Bilyeu?

  People know they're being spun and lied to constantly. They know they're being sold to all the time, and they no longer trust authorities. That's the moment we're living in. There's simply too many cameras, too much visibility, too many detailed records of historical lies for people to just hand their thinking over to experts once they're engaged in a topic. By walking us all through, point by point, why Terrence's ideas were almost entirely without merit, Eric helped countless people short-circuit the evaluation process with his credibility. But note that despite documenting his bona fides, he didn't say, "Just listen to me because I'm an expert." He said, "Expertise matters."

• 27:15Tom Bilyeu?

  But he was willing to show receipts and only ask that people pay attention to the receipts, regardless who has them, him or Terrence. That, to me, is the right move. Where do we go from here? Now, if you think all of this is much ado about nothing, I want to leave you with one of the most chilling conspiracy theories of just how far elites that go unchecked will go to manufacture consent, the sinking of the Lusitania. You might have heard the basic version. In 1915, a German U-boat torpedoes a British passenger ship. 1,200 dead, including 128 Americans. The world's horrified, and it edges America closer to World War I. But if you stop there, you've only seen the magician. You haven't noticed the sleight of hand.

• 27:57Tom Bilyeu?

  According to researcher and author G. Edward Griffin, the Lusitania wasn't just a civilian vessel. It was a baited trap meant to draw America into World War I. Despite being a passenger ship, the Lusitania was retrofitted to look and sound more like a military vessel to German U-boats. It was then secretly loaded with tons of war munitions, specifically 6 million rounds of rifle ammunition, which the Brits denied, by the way, until decades later, when divers went down to the wreck and Confirmed the munitions were on board and it made it impossible to keep the lie up anymore. There's only so much speculation needed here. The British Admiralty, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, put in writing that they wanted ships with US passengers to be put at risk.

• 28:40Tom Bilyeu?

  An internal memo revealed that Churchill saw an American tragedy as strategically useful. The memo said, and I quote, "It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany." Even the Germans knew that the British were likely attempting something like this and they took out ads in American newspapers warning potential passengers that any ship sailing into a declared war zone, especially one carrying munitions, could justifiably be sunk. According to Griffin, the US State Department, presumably because they had economic reasons to want the US to enter the war, stopped most newspapers from running the ads so that Americans would be none the wiser. But one ad managed to slip through

• 29:24Tom Bilyeu?

  and that one ad ran next to the Lusitania's departure schedule warning Americans not to take these ships. It gets even crazier. The Lusitania's escort ship was pulled back to shore at the last second, leaving the Lusitania alone in hostile waters. It could be coincidence or just bad luck, but the captain even received a last-minute course change moving the ship towards territory the British intelligence knew from intercepted German communications had U-boats in it. And despite all of that, the Lusitania was not only sent into the danger zone, the captain was given specific instructions to reduce his speed. Was the sinking of the Lusitania the result of terrible luck? Or a terrifying conspiracy motivated by the economic forces that Griffin outlines

• 30:07Tom Bilyeu?

  in the incredible book, "The Creature from Jekyll Island"? We may never know, but after the sinking, the propaganda machine went to work. And overnight, public opinion flipped. The American people previously hesitant about joining the war were now inflamed. And within two years, the US entered World War I. Much of Griffin's portrayal of events is considered controversial by the mainstream historians. I want to be very clear about that. But given the verified lies about munitions being on board and an internal memo from Churchill saying he wanted to use the ship as a way to embroil the US with Germany and the fact that the Lusitania was retrofitted. At a minimum, it's very nonproductive to call people with questions conspiracy theorists.

• 30:48Tom Bilyeu?

  It's important to note that being a contrarian or believing in conspiracies doesn't make you right. But if history is any indication, it also doesn't automatically make you wrong. The scientific method reminds us all not to get cocky. You may think you know, but how can you be sure? The scientific method doesn't say, "Check your credentials." It says, "Check your credentials at the door and run experiments." If you want to win in life, forget what you think you know and map cause and effect. What actions lead to the desired outcome? Do that. This is where two and a half decades as an entrepreneur has helped me. The market has slapped me around so many times. Whatever arrogance I had in the beginning was hammered out of me a long time ago.

• 31:33Tom Bilyeu?

  I quickly realized that if I actually wanted to succeed, I had to focus obsessively on cause and effect. I had to build a worldview with high predictive validity by trying things and always updating my thinking when something didn't work. I couldn't make payroll if I doubled down when I was wrong. Unlike experts who are often playing a political game, the market forces you to steer by results. Whether in academia or outright in politics, experts are best understood as being engaged in a Machiavellian pursuit of power and status instead of competing in the merit-based marketplace of ideas, where you have to demonstrate the ability to deliver predictable, desirable results.

• 32:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Knowing who has firsthand experience is always going to be incredibly useful. It certainly increases their odds of being right. Expertise is awesome. I am so glad that the world is full of experts. But they have to be checked. It's rarely safe to abdicate your responsibility for thinking for yourself. And when things aren't adding up and someone plays the expert card, pause. That means they're out of arguments. They might be right, and it might be wise to listen to them. But you should do so because their ideas are the most closely married to reality, as evidenced by the results they deliver. Do your best to follow a chain of logic. Seek out people that disagree with you and map out their assumptions. Everyone's ideas ride on the back of base assumptions.

• 33:00Tom Bilyeu?

  If you can figure those out, you'll have a much easier time thinking through their position. And if their base assumption is, "Because I'm the expert," run. Anyone who tells you to shut up and listen wants to control you. Maybe they think it's to your benefit, but nonetheless, control is their game. One final note, while appeals to authority have been used throughout the ages to march people down a road to how experts are a real thing. Odds are you're an expert in something and you know it matters. But hopefully your expertise has also taught you just how often smart people are wrong. And hopefully you'll be wary of people who are convinced they're right, especially when the stakes are high. Having shared facts and a shared reality is important to a well-functioning society,

• 33:42Tom Bilyeu?

  but we have to get there by battling our ideas out in the open. When leaders try to force consensus by decree, things go badly fast. When consensus organically emerges through the clash of titans, however, we all win. Experts can be as brash and arrogant as they want. That's not the problem. They can even call the heretics names, but when they conspire to silence the heretics, we're in danger of history repeating itself. Credibility is ultimately what matters, not expertise. Expertise is the finger pointing at the moon. Proven ability over time is the moon itself. But even the most capable will be wrong. If they hunger for people to challenge them, then we've got a real one. If they want everyone else to sit down and shut up, we've got a problem.

• 34:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Conformity of thought inevitably stifles innovation and innovation is exactly what makes the world a better place. Now, I know some people will say, "Experts are what we need and social media is the problem." They'll say, "We were never meant to live in an age where everyone has a global voice." But the mechanism of advancement remains the same. Guess, test, learn, repeat. The only thing that breaks that cycle of innovation is forced conformity and authoritarian rule. And that's why, in addition to everything I've just said, I'll simply say this. Don't judge a man by how strongly he defends his position. Judge him by how strongly he tries to deny you the ability to defend yours. All right, that's it. If you want to dive deeper into my thinking and join me in pushing these ideas forward,

• 35:08Tom Bilyeu?

  be sure to join me for my lives. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care, peace.

• 35:19Tom Bilyeu?

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• 36:04Tom Bilyeu?

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