Writer the Humbled

Ace, as he is want to do, makes an excellent point:

Any journalist who has ever written a short story about CERN thinks she's pretty much a high-energy physicist, only technically missing a credential here or there, but otherwise, yeah, a working high-energy physicist herself.
They really do believe this. "I wrote the word 'quarks' in an article one time! And now I can split atoms with my mind!!!"
Because they're stupid. The stupid do not know what they don't know.
Everything seems simple to the stupid, because they're simple-minded themselves.

We've played guitar for 15 years and still don't think we really know what we're doing. There's a reason why we don't post guitar vids each and every week. We just don't think we're that good and it takes a hell of a lot of work to get confident enough that the nerves don't bring us down during a recording.

Which is why when we write we try to stick with things we know.

We are an expert on somethings. History, military history, the American revolution. We are merely well informed on others, Israeli politics, etc. 

Which means we have no business telling governments how to fight wars or politicians how to run campaigns. All we can do is site similar examples from the past and hope we learn from them.

For as often as we are right, and we are often right, we are also sometimes very, very wrong.

Just ask President Romney.