Reply #63: "Are you saying that you don't trust any expert?" [View All]

You are not a structural engineer, so you will let the FEMA experts tell you the
truss clips failed and the perimeter columns bowed out, and you'll let the NIST
experts tell you the truss clips were so freaking strong that saggy floors bowed
the perimeter columns in. And it won't bother you one bit that the blueprints
remain a secret, and that neither NIST nor FEMA will show you a picture of the
truss clips or release the blueprints of them. And it won't bother you that
the hat truss failed with no conceivable cause.

Wiring, basic medical diagostics, and car repairs are well within my own
competence, and I don't need experts to do these things for me. I don't call
a plumber when my sink won't drain, and I can't understand why any intelligent
person would.

And I certainly don't need "experts" to do my thinking for me. I have had bad
luck with experts. The world is full of people who have worked very hard to
achieve their very limited level of incompetence. They are also highly motivated
to exaggerate the complexity of the issues. An example: my ex-wife's tax
preparer, who gleefully presents her with a four-page computer-generated worksheet
on the foreign taxes paid on her investments as evidence of his indispensibility,
while failing to point out that if she had simply failed to complete this section,
she would have forfeited $3.00.