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Notes -
I'm arguing against the expertise of stock market traders and programmers (the two fields I studied for a few days). I'm also arguing against expertise more generally, but programming especially is the field where just a few days' study was enough to be in, say, the 99th percentile of programmers in the (admittedly fairly obscure) language I was studying. Stock market trading too, but that can easily be ascribed to luck.
Sure, but I bet there are some doctors who consistently outperform the market too, even when doing technical analysis for companies in unrelated fields. I never claimed that the average person could outcompete experts, just that some people can and do, and that assuming that you can't is a great way to ignore $100 bills lying on the ground.
747's can generally land themselves, and I absolutely could design a bridge without reading about it at all--just perhaps not a very large or efficient one. I get your point though--there are certainly things experts are 10^10x better at than I will ever be. I just think that generally, if you are a fairly intelligent person, treating expert claims with skepticism will often yield great results.
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