[fatcat500]

The people who are currently successfully utilizing science to legitimize knowledge are doing so off of the moral, social, and cultural capital accrued by previous generations of scientists.

The assumption that the general public will always perceive science with a reverent and trusting eye is wrong: once the capital runs out, science will be perceived as just another tentacle of the establishment. Politicizing scientific language is a surefire way of accelerating this process.

This is what has already happened with the MSM, of course.

[KSteffensen]

> are currently successfully utilizing science to legitimize knowledge

I don't understand the problem here. Isn't science - as in Poppers falsifiability - the only way to legitimize knowledge?

[zefool]

I expect GP to have thought along the lines of "established journals, academic titles, and prestigious universities", aka "the institutions of organized academia". And other signals that one belongs to these groups, like the aforementioned "scientific language".

Which is what most people use as the actual heuristics of competence, including journalists and politicians. GP seems to believe that this heuristic will cease to be accepted if things continue, just like "being a religious authority" ceased to be an accepted heuristic for moral authority in many communities.

I agree that this is a problem, since going back to the substrate of hypothesis and experiment is just not very efficient. We need institutions like those.