[parineum]

> The world is too large, too complex, and too nuanced for the layman's opinion to be worth much.

This has a very, "Trust us, we're with the government." feel to it.

I enjoy Asimov's writing immensely but if you think quotations are some kind of mic drop, I'll leave you with this one.

"The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched" ― Isaac Asimov

[mapontosevenths]

I am right and I suspect you know it... you just don't like the way it makes you feel. Hence your focus on vibes and ad hominums rather than reason.

It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.

[parineum]

> It is self evident that moderm science is too complex for the average person to understand, and fifty percent of us are less intelligent than even that.

I think you're grossly overestimating the complexity of most modern science outside of physics and mathematics (and computing, as an intersection of the two).

Good science is actually pretty easy to explain most of the time. It may take a long time to become a domain expert thst can perform novel research in a field but it it's well within the understanding of most people to have a single topic explained to them by an expert.

In fact, that very thing happens in courtrooms all the time.

Your condescending attitude is why people don't trust authorities and with good reason. If you can't help people understand science, it's you that doesn't understand it.

Furthermore, I hope you realize how close your "self-evident" logic is to a lot of extremely gross and genocidal ideologies of the past and present.

[mapontosevenths]

I originally wrote a long winded response to this, but I deleted it. The more I think about your perspective the more I realize that though I disagree, it is also very reasonable of you to believe the way you do and I can respect that.

The truth is that we're both likely right to some extent, and wrong to some extent.

I now think that maybe there is no hard and fast rule one can apply to every situation to decide when one should decide for themself or just trust the experts. The optimal solution likely varies greatly depending on the specifics of the given situation, and it's very reasonable that we would have two very different takes about it.