Beware of Confidence

When you open social media, you are bombarded with information. It is astounding how many experts seem to exist, and how each one appears to be doing their absolute best to get you to click on their video, take their advice, buy their product, use their method, or follow their system.

They speak with smiles, ease, and most importantly: confidence. They are so sure. They insist that if you do this thing, use this device, follow this plan, or take this supplement, you will get this outcome. Click now. It won’t last. And if you miss the window, G-d help you.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people said all kinds of things with astonishing confidence. Heat your child’s respiratory tract with a blow dryer. Drink bleach. Take this. Avoid that. Do this one thing and you will be protected. It amazed me. If stopping a global pandemic were that simple, would the world have shut down? Would hospitals have filled? Would families have been destroyed?

We see the same thing everywhere. Everyone has the solution to health, birth, parenting, weight loss, hormones, trauma, anxiety, marriage, politics, war, peace, and the Middle East. Always with certainty. Always in a few simple steps. Always with the implication that everyone else is either too foolish, too corrupt, or too blind to see what they see so clearly.

But if the answer were truly that obvious, wouldn’t someone have solved it by now?

I am now entering the last semester of my PhD. During the final meeting with my PhD advisory committee, as we began to wrap up the process and look back at the work as a whole, they asked me: “What is one of the biggest things this PhD has taught you?”

The answer, I think, is humility.

In academia, research, and medicine, we speak in a very specific way. We write, “to the best of our knowledge.” We say, “these are the risks.” We explain, “these are the potential outcomes.” We discuss limitations, uncertainty, context, probability, evidence, and what still needs to be studied.

We do not, or at least we should not, tell you that if you do X, then Y will definitely happen.

The more you learn, the more you understand how much you don’t know. Years of training, research, clinical experience, and responsibility teach you that people are complex. Bodies are complex. Birth is complex. Health is complex. Life is complex.

Real knowledge does not usually make you more absolute. It makes you more humble.

It teaches you to say, “This is what we know,” and also, “This is what we have left to learn.” It teaches you to explain risk without creating panic. It teaches you to offer guidance without pretending you can guarantee the outcome. It teaches you that words carry weight, especially when people are afraid, vulnerable, pregnant, sick, overwhelmed, or simply trying to make the best decision they can with the information in front of them.

Confidence can be polished. It can be persuasive. It can be profitable. It can sound exactly like expertise. This is exactly why credentials matter. Degrees matter. Licenses matter. Clinical training matters. Peer review matters. Supervision matters. Not because a title makes someone automatically right. It most certainly does not. But serious training changes the way you think. It forces you to provide sources for every claim, examine what you assume, understand what can go wrong, and remain accountable for each word you say. A credential should never be used as a weapon or a performance of superiority. But it has meaning. It means someone has spent years learning not only what to say, but how carefully they must say it.

On social media, the incentive is often the exact opposite: certainty sells. Humility does not.

The person who says, “This will definitely work,” is much easier to listen to than the person who says, “It depends.” The person who promises a perfect birth, a healed body, zero tears, a calm baby, a thinner waist, better hormones, better sleep, or peace in the Middle East will almost always sound more appealing than the person who explains tradeoffs, uncertainty, limitations, and risk.

Part of the reason they can sound so confident is that, in many cases, they will never have to be accountable for what happens next.

They do not have to sit with the woman whose birth did not go as promised. They do not have to care for the patient whose symptoms were dismissed. They do not have to explain why the supplement did not work, why the device was unnecessary, why the advice was unsafe, or why the outcome was not as simple as the video made it seem.

They can move on to the next post. The next trend. The next product. The next promise.

Careful language is often mistaken for hesitation, but in medicine and research it is the language of people who understand the weight of what they are saying. Words can become decisions, and decisions can become consequences. And the person giving the advice is not the one who has to live with them.

So beware of confidence, especially when the issue is complex and the answer is simple. Beware of the person who is never unsure, never careful, never accountable, and never humbled by the possibility that they may be wrong.

Confidence can make someone sound trustworthy. Humility is what makes them worth trusting.

And the person who sounds the most sure may simply be the person who understands the least about what can go wrong.