I mean, some real-world perspective in case you're called upon to back up your statements.
Well, I'd trust a peer-reviewed journal article over, "Well, this guy I knew. . ."
I'd of course have to account for biases...I'd probably look to leftist/liberatory sociologies of deviance (like maybe Howard Becker) rather than criminology or counseling technique literature.
I am saying that non-addicts in all of my experience have never been able to truly comprehend the exact nature of addiction. Even the most open-minded people with second-hand experience of addiction still have trouble understanding the obsessive, never ending stream of thoughts and the compulsion and need to use at times for reasons unknown.
A couple points:
1. Why should we assume that addicts tend to share a common experience of their addictions?
2. I think that most humans, at some point, experience compulsive, fixated desire or acquired but deeply entrenched reliance on some thing or activity. Most any person could also think of markedly painful situations with known solutions that lie out of reach. At least by analogy, I think that non-users can empathize with addicts (just as is the case with all human exchanges lacking shared experience).
Even to your analogy I would say first hand experience in working with the financial system would make you better, just as most anything would.
I disagree. The financier and the economic researcher each acquire different sets of knowledge, but both validly link with world-finance. Sure, a savvy investor would likely have a good understanding of what kinds of trends, events, hunches, etc. tend to point toward stocks to sell and stocks to buy. But would this investor be in a good position to discover general laws and mechanisms which explain the dynamics of capitalism in relation to the last 100 years of world history (and in turn, present-day macro-level dynamics)? Well, perhaps if this investor acted like a researcher, learning 'indirectly' by reading up in historical archives, looking at longitudinal stats, etc.
Reading and learning is great, but it comes down to applying it in the field and having a working knowledge that actually benefits oneself and mankind IMO.
Okay. The content of these books comes from, at some point, direct observation of a phenomenon. The content of the knowledge of someone working in the 'field' comes from...observations, again. Your dichotomy is false...or at least 'blurry'.
Sterile, book-learnin' type knowledge has the certain advantage of shedding light on big-picture dynamics of the world as a system. Participant observation (or in every day terms, 'real-world' knowledge) highlights instead the possibilities for agents in such systems.
I've met many people who claim that they are open-minded and understand it in my field, but upon further conversations it becomes apparent, that although their intentions are good, and they DO help many people, that they just don't know what its like.
More precisely, I think that this reflects a condition of a lack of valid understanding of what it's like to feel as another does in any situation for any individual. Luckily, we are pretty good at building experiential bridges by interacting with each other.
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BUT...well, you're probably correct about most people encountered in your class, who apparently lack both types of knowledge.
