[rsj_hn]

The problem with "listening to the experts" is that at some point people figure out that the experts are very easy to bribe/intimidate/silence. So if we hand over the reigns of the nation to experts, then that's basically ceding our decision making to whoever can best organize to control the most experts. Don't think that academia and the tenure process aren't rife with groupthink, forbidden thoughts and positions, etc. And it's hard to find a group of people with less integrity than researchers chasing grants or academics trying to get tenure. Today, universities are the places where freedom of thought and expression are most suppressed, and groupthink runs rampant. Academics are under the thumbs of administrators and terrified of angry student groups. Researchers are sometimes afraid of being physically attacked if they espouse the wrong opinion. This is not who you want to hand control of society over to.

So there is really no substitute for wisdom and intelligence. A foolish population is going to make foolish choices and a wise population will make wise choices. Both science and politics are downstream of culture.