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by nondeveloper
2023 days ago
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I was thinking of specialists within the same specialty disagreeing. Read that way it is a contradiction but it’s now clear that’s not what you meant. I feel the point still stands! When I read your first reply I hadn’t considered specialists in different specialties disagreeing on the same problem or issue. But that seems to further bolster my point, at least as it relates to the distance between common sense and specialized knowledge. |
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That's a thing too, which I was trying to get at with my comment about fringe specialists. But it's not like every specialty is homogeneous (especially true in something like economics), so decision makers may need to choose between one camp or another of some specialty.
The thing I was arguing against was the now prevalent behavior of dismissing any specialist view that contradicts what you would have done in the first place. Common people should have a say in a democracy, but if that democracy is going to function, those common people need to understand the limits of their knowledge and understanding, which means they need to respect the knowledge and understanding of specialists.
I want to go back to something I forgot to respond to earlier:
>>> A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from misinformation. It’s an imperfect response, but effective.
I used to think that too, but I think that's turning out to be far, far less true than anyone would have hoped. That's proven by how prevalent and influential misinformation and disinformation have shown to be. For instance, by the support of totally baseless claims of election fraud by an alarming fraction of Republican party officials [1], which in my view is substantially driven by the influence those claims have on the Republican party base. I say that as someone who's leaned to the right for the past 20 years.
[1] See: "17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit" (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/trump-texas-s...) "Two reasons the Texas election case is faulty: flawed legal theory and statistical fallacy." (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/technology/texas-election...)