On one hand, society needs desperate amateurs. They are the immune system of stagnation. Every profession ossifies over time. Doctors resist new treatments that threaten their authority. Academics punish colleagues who challenge orthodoxy. Corporations fire employees who suggest radical changes. Desperate amateurs — with nothing to lose — inject chaos into these closed systems. They are the reason we have anesthesia (a dentist, not a surgeon), the smallpox vaccine (a country doctor), and the theory of continental drift (a meteorologist, not a geologist).