Do you know what you’re doing, or do you just know what to say? Do you just know the right answer because you’ve memorized information, or do you know because you understand the concepts and you’ve applied that knowledge and training under operational conditions. Therefore you actually know what works, how it works, or why it doesn’t.
Is your frame of reference your application of knowledge within operational context of the job, or is it based solely on what someone told you? Or worse, what you’ve seen on social media.
You’ve heard it, but you haven’t used it. Or you’ve heard it in training or in conversation and you are parroting what you’ve heard/seen without any real understanding of the material.
This is how people will know the truth:
“They” said…
“ I heard”
“This is what I was told”
“This is what the protocol says..”
“The literature says…”
“I’m going to just x…”
The dudes that actually know what they are doing will relate what they are doing in training to something they have done out on the streets. “When I saw this last time, I did this and it worked.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are correct, but at least they aren’t guessing.
The information being presented may be factually correct or supported by a research paper. The problem is that, sometimes, NONE of it is rooted in an operational reality. It is one of the worst logical fallacies we can commit, and it is committed every single day. Using the opinion of a purported authority as evidence to support an argument or action is one of the weakest arguments a one can make in the defense of their actions or position. People use this because they know they don’t know what they are talking about and think that if they can reference some authority on the topic that it gets them off the hook for being responsible for knowing what the hell they are doing or talking about.
I want to know what your experience is with the knowledge. I do not care what your opinion is on what somebody else says about a topic. Neither should you. Just because you know what the protocol says or what the evidence says, does not mean that you know what you are talking about… unless you have used it in the real world (IG comments don’t count as real world use of knowledge). Another frame for this would be a person who is a good shot can only teach you how to be a good shot. They can’t teach gunfighting if they’ve never been in a gunfight.
I have a lot more respect for someone who says “in my experience, it has been this way…” than the person that says “well that is what I was told” “that’s what I have read” “my research says XYZ.” If that is the answer to a question, you probably only know what to say… you know the right answer. But do you know what you are talking about? Do you know what you are doing?
