Is it experts or "experts"?

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The question I am asking is this, what justification do you have for questioning/ignoring the opinion of people with a far greater knowledge of a subject than you do? And why?

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It's a very American thing to believe that you know better than someone with expertise, because we are taught that our opinions matter, and it is irrelevant that we don't know anything about a subject.We think that our opinions, though completely uninformed, should be taken just as seriously as someone who has studied a subject his or her whole life. We mistrust experts, because so many people who claim to be experts really aren't, too.For goodness sake, we have currently in office a second-term President who was a mediocre student, a rather useless drunken fratboy for the first 20 years of his adult life, and who was described by a journalist years ago as being "one of the least introspective people he had ever encountered".What do you expect?

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It's a very American thing to believe that you know better than someone with expertise, because we are taught that our opinions matter, and it is irrelevant that we don't know anything about a subject.

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I have a story to relate that is a perfect illustration of this.I was working behind the cheese counter years ago, and we had a little sample setup out in front that had a sample of two cheeses that had the same name, but one was the traditional, real version of the cheese that we sold, and the other was a non-traditional, watered-down (and kind of nasty-tasting) version of the cheese that I found at a local grocery store. They tasted wildly different, and were even made from different types of milk, so it was a good illustration of how going by the name of some cheeses didn't mean you were getting the real thing.I was waiting on a man who didn't read the signs by those samples and asked to buy some of the "other" cheese. I explained to him that the cheese wasn't actually a good example of this particular type of cheese and that we didn't sell it.He replied, "But I eat a lot of cheese, and I think that's good."He believes he is an expert on cheese because he eats it. AND, he's saying this to someone who is working behind one of the best cheese counters in the entire country.Following that logic, I am an expert on cars because I drive them, or an expert on clothing because I wear them.He thinks that his limited, completely non-in-depth experience of cheese as a consumer is equivalent to my 8 hours a day, extensive product training, and constant training to be a professional taster is irrelevant. In fact, I'm sure it never crossed his mind that he didn't know more than me, or any of us working there.It is an additional tendency to equate or elevate one's own experience, preferences, or opinion to be equal or superior to anyone else's (even an expert's), that is also quite American.We assume that everybody cares what we think, and that what we think actually matters, regardless of our expertise, or lack thereof.

I didn't write clearly, I realize.He was, actually trying to tell me that the cheese he liked WAS actually a good example of that particular cheese, and used as his justification his own preference, rather than any kind of knowledge of what that cheese is meant to be like.Sorry for the lack of clarity, than thanks for bringing it up so I could explain.

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I think questioning experts is a great thing for anybody to do. Without it, science would make no progress.

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An expert shouldn't be trusted because he or she is an expert. They should be trusted based on the soundness of their arguments.

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But if one is skeptical of an expert's conclusions, shouldn't one reserve judgements upon the validity of the arguments if one doesn't have the expertise to evaluate the arguments?