[machomaster]

The chose you are given is to either not listen to anybody and stay uninformed or listen to "experts" and become mis/disinformed.

It's incredible that in some cases people who know nothing about the topic have way less (in percentage) stupid and incorrect facts than people who try to actively educate themselves through "experts".

[muwtyhg]

There are other options besides those. You have two pieces of information: If you trust experts or "do your own research" and if you are correct or not. This leads to four choices:

- You trust experts, and the experts are right -> You are right

- You trust experts, and the experts are wrong -> You are wrong

- You do your own research and are right -> You are right

- You do your own research and you are wrong -> You are wrong

Now, if I had to guess, the people who are more knowledgeable on a subject would likely have a better idea on the truthiness of a statement regarding that subject. Your argument appears to be the opposite.

> It's incredible that in some cases people who know nothing about the topic have way less (in percentage) stupid and incorrect facts than people who try to actively educate themselves through "experts".

I assume this is just an anecdote but could you extrapolate on this point a bit?Is there a study you could show me where they tested "do your own research" people's knowledge vs domain experts? What topics do you think have the highest chance of the "experts" being stupid and incorrect?

[machomaster]

We miscommunicated past each other.

I did not mean that those 2 choices I mentioned are the only ones. I meant that the "deep legacy media"/"experts" are trying to convince you that only these two choices (listen to the "experts" or not to listen to anybody; "don't trust anybody else, trust me when I tell you that") exist. This leads to the 2 outcomes I painted: being not informed or being misinformed. Everything else that doesn't fit the current official narrative is branded with bad words.

Obviously, this is a false dichonomy and one should do the right thing (educating oneself with different sources, to form a full picture) despite the namecalling.

I don't have any study (I don't know if they exist) and was purely talking about the topic dear to my heart that I have following on for 25+ years: the Finnish expertise on Russia/Putin. It is horrendous. And I am not even talking about crazy expert opinions that one can disagree with, but core problems with logic and basic facts.

It is even sadder because Finland is trying to brand itself as The Russia expert in EU, is succeeding and this incompetence has real consequences.

The quality of expertise in this example is so terrible that we get the incredible situation when not informed people, using only their common sense, have a higher percentage of reasonable/truthful takes than people who are trying to be informed using "homegrown talent". This is an unbelievable consequence!

I am not saying that this is a general trend or that "experts bad". It's just in this particular case I know the topic and have the knowledge to access the correctness of people who are performing as experts on Russia. I have been having presentations on this topic.

Also, obviously, political "sciences" is different from actual sciences.

This reminds me of the Onion's expert panel on Nigeria, with the difference of journalists also being clueless (not their fault, they can't ask critical questions and challenge "experts", if their whole world view also comes from these "experts"). https://youtu.be/Pwom49awRKg