expert advice and the conventional wisdom

Over the years I've noticed that whenever I develop an elevated level of knowledge in any subject, I am astounded by how laughably inaccurate popular beliefs tend to be. During my first of many college and graduate school geology classes, I repeated some information I heard in fifth grade science class. The instructor, accustomed to correcting misinformation, gently informed me that a particular rock formation predated the ice-age (my fifth grade teacher's explanation) by some 3 billion years. Through my minor embarrassment, I remember experiencing the unsettling feeling that everything I thought I knew may well be wrong. As I've become more worldly, I've learned that our daily lives are permeated by lies, most of which are innocent or even intended to be helpful. Based on this, I wouldn't be totally surprised to learn that the professor's correction will someday require correction, as better experts emerge.

Yesterday I had a customer in the shop who illustrated this concept. The fellow recently spent a lot of money (at another shop) chasing an ideal that he held in his mind (the perfect commuting bike). His ideal was based on diligent research on the internet, and on some earnest advice from bike shop personnel. Unfortunately, he's finding that the reality does not live up to the ideal, and in fact, some of his paradigms were completely wrong (my opinion). Of course, what I was telling him was based on my experience of 5 years of year-round cycling and roughly 4 years of full-time employment at a bicycle shop. His earlier paradigms were based on conventional wisdom, which was passed along by people who intended to be helpful. He is not alone in his desire for a definitive authority figure to come forward and give him The Right Answer, and he expressed his frustration at the mixed information that he's received.

The best answer, as Kent describes, is that there is no best answer. I have amassed some knowledge through my unique experience, but my preferences/priorities are not always suitable for others (and vice versa). Furthermore, what I think is The Truth today, I may reject based on something I learn tomorrow. And I continue to learn something new every day. Over the past few years I've happily ridden thousands of miles on bicycles that were configured in ways that I now consider to be suboptimal, if not stupid. But I rode my bicycles in blissful ignorance, lived to tell the tale, and gradually made refinements toward my particular perfection.

In general, there's a lot of hand-wringing about this stuff on the internet. Apparently, nothing motivates neurotic paralysis like the fear of making even the tiniest mistake. My motto in life is "what's the worst that could happen?" If I'm being realistic and discounting answers like "I could be killed in a horrible way," the answer to that question is usually fairly acceptable. If THE WORST that could happen is that some bike part isn't 100% of my ideal, I can usually endure the imperfection for one ride, if not for several years.