Did the lights stay on

When the power in a flat in Giza keeps tripping, everyone in the family has a theory. The uncle has rewired a room before. The neighbour blames the building. Someone has watched a video. All of them are sure.

Then the electrician arrives, opens the box by the door, and finds a loose wire nobody knew was there. The lights stay on. That is the whole difference. His knowledge can be tested, and the switch gives its answer.

Each of us is the final authority on one thing, which is how we feel. If the uncle says the new light fitting is ugly, nobody can argue. How it works is another question, and it has answers that were earned, by someone who did it many times and paid attention when it went wrong.

Marketing is full of people who confuse the two. Everyone has seen ads, so everyone has an opinion on ads. Everyone shops, so everyone knows what shoppers want. The opinion is real and worth hearing, as a feeling. It is not a forecast.

Expertise can fail too. A specialist who stops checking, who defends the old way because it is the way he learned, is no longer using expertise. He is just being stubborn with a title. The electrician is an expert only for as long as the power keeps holding.

What grandmothers and neighbours know about people is precious, and it is shared wisdom of a real kind. It is simply a different thing from knowing how a circuit works or why one pack sells and another does not.

So the useful question about anyone's confidence, my own included, stays plain. Did the lights stay on?