Compare it to your own job - if I had the same tools as you, could I walk in and do the same job you do?
Should access to a compiler be gated just because amateur programmers probably don't know as much as people with a degree?
The fact that you need to go to a doctor, to get referred to a facility which will run a test, which will then send that test data back to the doctor, and at the second appointment the doctor will go over the data with you to see if you needed to go to the doctor in the first place...is just an absurd waste. It shouldn't be so hard to get a few measurements done on your own body.
If I go get myself an EKG and mess up the reading, well.. death is somewhere in the list of possibilities.
(To be fair, I fall into the group of people who believe in very strong government regulation to protect people from themselves, because the world is too complicated to make well-informed decisions. Easy example is seatbelts - if Ford could sells cars for $1500 cheaper if they didn't have seatbelts then some people would buy them and they'd die. Not everyone will do the proper research, so everyone needs protecting.)
Counterpoint: Doctors have an average IQ of 115, and train across a huge variety of disciplines; mostly while sleep-deprived. Many doctors' training was decades ago.
Anyone with a somewhat abnormal condition, access to Google Scholar, and able to learn how to follow citations and simultaneously weigh competing models can outdo anybody except a dedicated specialist.
The relevant job comparison isn't to a painter, it's to a programmer with a hundred clients, each of whom he talks with for 30 minutes, once a year. Sure, the programmer has much more knowledge and skill--but is he really going to be able to adequately replace the every client's home-brewed solution spread across 4 excel sheets, 3 batch files, and an archived website?
Should the client really be restricted from downloading Python or Visual Studio for their own use, unless a real programmer signs off on the requirement and supervises them?
The real training is objectivity, which is very difficult for even doctors to maintain, despite knowing just how misleading research results can be and so how they must be wary, how to rationally follow the literature, etc.
I seriously doubt more than single-digit percentages of people googling things, even intelligently, are going to be following citations and weighing competing models. Likely less than a fraction of one percent. And, unless they have personally done similar research and so can understand the data and potential pitfalls more clearly, even that enlightened fraction is highly likely to make some biased misinterpretation.
How can they not, when it is their own health they are investigating? Even a genius layperson examining the literature flawlessly would benefit from an interpretation provided by a neutral third party.
If you have a difficult to diagnose problem that’s the time to take control over your health. You have to put in the time to trust but verify your own care.
Same thing with a difficult to debug code problem. It’s typically a function of time.