Richard Feynman is my favorite physicist - quite a character - and not as widely recognized as the genius and giant that he is - at least among the general population - I love those anecdotal books of his: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
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Yes an interesting guy. The Feynman Lectures no Physics are a classic, reading the 3 vol set past about 3/4th of the way through vol 1 is still on my to-da list… Tuva or Bust was his last zany adventure.
He also had an interesting experience about how experts are more often wrong that right., (his speech on cargo-cult science points out the dangers therein) and to be creative you need to go your way, ignoring what the experts thoughts are, and trust your own. (its an odd thing, sometimes you advance quicker learning from the experts, yet sometimes it blocks a fresh point of view.
The Paradox of Expertise : the people who know more, see less. and the people who know less, see more.
Sometimes we can learn from the “Tenkara Experts” and sometimes developing your own Color is less complicated and more creative. And tenkara’s Spartan base leaves lots of room for new discoveries.
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I’m pretty wary of experts myself 
Experts.
Experience.
You reference experts all the time, and now you propose that they are wrong or propose the paradox of expertise.
Point, counterpoint.
I like the fish, they are the experts, that’s where I get my lessons.
The fish are experts at teaching you if you know what you are doing.
Yes, depends on who your experts are, how far you will get with that.
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I love these quotes from G.E.M. Skues in addressing and dealing with fly fishing experts “Authorities darken counsel. An authority is a person engaged in the invidious business of stereotyping and disseminating information, frequently incorrect. Angling literature teems with examples. I imagine that few anglers have devoted more time than I have to the study of authorities. From Dame Juliana to the latest issue of the press there is scarcely a book on trout-fly dressing and trout fishing which I have not studied and analyzed, and this conclusion seems to me inevitable. It was not until I realized this that my reading became any use to me. Up to that point I had been swallowing wholesale, with my facts, all sorts of fallacies and inaccuracies, alike in the matter of dressings and their use, and what they were intended to represent. From that point on an author became merely a suggester of experiment —a means of testing and checking my own observations by the water side, and no longer a small god to be believed in and trusted as infallible. And that is all an author, writing on any progressive art or science, ought to be”
“An authority who lays down a law and dogmatizes is a narcotic, a soporific, a stupefier, an opiate. The true function of an authority is to stimulate, not to paralyze, original thinking. But then, I suppose, he wouldn’t be an authority.”
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Sounds like a superiority complex.
You should just say what you want to say directly to the people who bother you or make you feel inferior.
People, in their struggle to gain a superior position will tilt at ideas never really or truly revealing their own struggle.
I say slay that dragon.
Free yourself from it.
Who are the expert you are wary of?
There are a lot of things that cannot be captured completely by academics. Theories can but understanding of things in the natural world are often wildly misrepresented. Considering the time period humans have inhabited the earth…it was not long ago we had the popular belief that the earth was flat. Even history is often distorted.
I do like the representation that academics are there to stimulate thought vs the final word.
any
not to say that I am stupid enough to believe that there are not plenty of legitimate experts in all fields - that would be just a silly thing to think - I want experts designing my bridges and doing my surgery
just that folks with expertise are vulnerable to the same foibles and flaws as the rest of us schmucks and ego and hubris can get in their way just as with anybody
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I’m glad you wrote that.
I consider you an expert. And you are not stupid, quite the opposite.
…I like diversity. I learn most from people with a different view.
All as well.
Ya got me, Another paradox indeed. .
It seems to be a fine line to sojourn on and keep your own vision.
If someone else has already discovered an efficient path to the summit of success by previous trial and error,
Why hack your way though the jungle or find a new route up the rock face again wasting time on trial an error, or completely missing the better way.
However otoh, what the experts say while valuable it is not sacred text. They haven’t made the last discovery.
The trick seems to be find a way to use what the experts say as shoulders to stand on to see farther, or a foundation to use to make logical choices about what new to try.
To find a why for the expert’s advice to show you what you might take a long time to discover on your own or never discover, BUT also not let the advice become blinders blocking you from discovering something new.
I guess the balance is to both not obsess about their advice, but also not ignore it.
Leave time for your own observations. A pause to allow your own mind to not keep locked onto the previous image and see the other possibilities…
Besides if we weren’t curious about other’s opinions we’d never look a tenkara forum, website or other social (anti-social) media…
(the old field service engineer joke was that an expert was anyone from more than 100 miles away. Sometimes their new perspective helped, other times their perspective locked onto the wrong fault, preventing them from seeing the rare but real fault)
Daniel Coyle’s book, “The Talent Code” , provides a different view about how to most quickly and efficiently advance your own skills to a higher level. At least one of his tips (discoveries) I call the Rocky Balboa effect, keep things Spartan, the simple basics to keep form being distracted from what the important objectives are. Tenkara is pretty much the basics.
But if I had ambition to become an expert, I would like to be an expert on fishing fun.
I also love catching-fish, but fish that I can not catch more than that is more loveable
Tenkara-rod is a my compass that makes it head to a deep mountain
For each one of the carefully selected tools I am selfish
I choose a tool according to the purpose, but that choice is my preference
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Me too, my wife calls me a fun hog. Soon I’ll enter a new realm and it includes a tenkara rod. I’m so happy but I’ll feel so small on my old but new directions.
Anyway.
I’ve always maintained that “tenkara is easy to learn, hard to master while fly fishing (western) is hard to learn and easy to master.”
That thought came to me a couple of years ago, can’t remember which interview, it doesn’t matter.
At first, back in 2009, all I wanted to do was become a tenkara master. I struggled with it, with people, it added a layer of difficulty that I couldn’t grasp. After a few years, I asked myself, “is that what you really want?” and I realized my want was stupid, immature.
After a few years of doing it, I realized what I want is to do what todoroki34 aspires to. I continually aspire to it and it’s what drives me now.
That compass needle.
I got it and it is comforting to see that run through all the people I have meet in tenkara.
Which brings me to the experts, they all do the same thing, every single one. They take different lines to the summit but they all end up in the same place, for different reasons.
You have a gem here in todoroki34, I really like his approach to tenkara.
It’s not hard, it’s fun.
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don’t spread any rumors 
Maybe some days what an expert is comes close to matching one of my favorite descriptions of a paradox.
“The only thing in life that is certain - is that nothing is certain, If that statement is true - then it must also be false.”
The know-it-alls don’t know it all. But they do know a lot that can help us see more if we don’t over do it and neglect our own power to observe something new. The great explorers may have already been to most of the places unknown, but there are still new things/places unknown to be discovered.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
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Good book and quote. Forgot about that one.
The results of my Fishing quest is tenkara
This is neither simple nor complex nor the result of minimalism
My car choice was the same
This car is simple but never cheap
but it gave me a lot of Pleasure
1962 Lotus 7 Sr2 cosworth
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Wow. I like it.
Thank you@Gressak
I am not an expert
But
I would like to be an expert to enjoy it