Experts Are Failing Us, So Trust Your Own Eyes—A Family Activity To Raise Free Thinkers

Who do you trust when the so-called experts keep lying?

I’ve had some time to think about things since wading into the fiery Joe Rogan debate between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray a few months back, along with the ongoing mess at Harvard.

If you didn’t catch that episode, it was a clash over expertise—Dave Smith says the expert class has irreparably destroyed its credibility, while Douglas Murray argues we still need real expertise in public discourse, past failures notwithstanding.

Spoiler: they both agree that our elite institutions, like Harvard, are fraudulent. So, where does that leave us as parents trying to guide our kids through a world of noise? Telling your kids to trust no one is not a great strategy,

The internet pulled back the curtain on so much. We see daily that the emperor’s got no clothes—whether it was Joe Biden’s cognitive decline (witnessed with our own eyes) or the “experts” saying that you couldn’t go to your grandparents’ funerals during the Covid lockdowns, but BLM protests were totally safe.

Harvard’s not exactly helping its case either. The institution has gone from producing upstanding free thinkers to silencing truth and embracing racially regressive DEI policies that divide students. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, a plagiarist paid over a million dollars annually to run the university, tried to ruin academic Roland Fryer for daring to study race, crime, and police brutality.

Fryer’s crime? Finding certain data that didn’t fit the politically permitted narratives painted over the decades to support race riots and leftist policy proposals like reparations.

That’s not expertise—that’s dogma.

The Battle for Truth

Dave Smith’s take was that the expert class is a scam and part of living in a free society is that anyone gets to weigh in on weighty subjects. Don’t trust historians or PhDs—trust your own reasoning.

Douglas Murray countered that we need expertise because the truth is harder to find in an AI-flooded digital ecosystem.

They’re both right.

Harvard’s “epistemic closure” stifles debate and inquiry, but dismissing all expertise leaves us drowning in confusion. The answer is and always will be open discourse.

Let ideas (and their champions) fight it out, like they did on Rogan’s show. It’s messier than a toddler’s tantrum, but it’s the only path to truth. Seeing these two men air their frustrations and wildly differing views over three hours was its own form of illumination.

The woke left hates this. They think that debate “platforms” “fascism,” two words that demand air quotes because it’s unclear in 2025 what they even mean. This group shuts it all down, all debate. It’s made them lazy and unskilled at defending their viewpoints. That’s the trouble with dogma. It should require defense, but adherents are never very keen on the necessary self-examination.

Radicals are easy to unravel. They’ve never considered alternatives.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is hitting Harvard hard by cutting its grant funding over anti-Semitism allegations and failure to enforce Title IX. But cherry-picking vices miss the point. The problem isn’t just identity-based prejudice—it’s a campus where you can’t ask “What is a woman?” without getting canceled.

Teach Your Kids To Question Things With This Activity

So, what’s a dad to do? Teach your kids to think, not obey. Don’t debate gender ideology with a five-year-old—that’s nuts—but as they grow, hit them with Socratic questions. Steel-man the other side and make them defend their views.

Kids think they’re experts at age 16, but a few “Why do you think that?” moments will expose their blindspots in short order. It’s not about dogma; it’s about using the free will God gave us to wrestle with life’s mysteries. Doubt is okay. It’s amazing the things you figure out need shoring up in your worldview when you can’t articulate them clearly.

There’s an interesting exercise explained on

Geeky Stoics

that came originally from

Parker Settecase

called “Worldview Journaling.” You journal things like “Is there a God?”, “What is truth?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “Are people naturally good?”, and as you journal these things, you start to hit brick walls in your thinking. That’s the point. You work it out on paper.

Revisit the journal a year later and write new answers. Have your kids do it too. Just so they can experience formulating their thoughts on foundational questions. You don’t want their first time doing that to be in a Harvard classroom. Be the model truth-seeker for your family.

Watch the Rogan debate and decide for yourself—Dave’s skepticism or Douglas’s call for better experts? Then talk to your kids. Question assumptions. Build a home where ideas slug it out. That’s how you raise kids who aren’t suckered by liars.