<p>While people obviously needn’t be experts in their individual fields - it certainly does annoy me that the vast majority of people are remarkably ignorant of nearly all the branches of social science (I mostly socialize with people in the top few percentiles of ability - but I’ve also been in regular classes with people far lower) - and I can extrapolate that most of them haven’t read a single book on social science on their own initiative. That being said, I did think I was special when I was still in school (I did go to online forums - but while the people on forums were intelligent - most of them weren’t as academically motivated as I was - and most of them were older than I was - so I didn’t have a group to compare myself to). Anyhow the Internet has made me realize how less special I am (a mere look at the people who write Amazon.com reviews is enough to persuade me as such - even though the number of people who actually read those books probably number less than 1% of the population)</p>