A different aspect of this problem is the pseudo-expert, those posing as if they know when they actually don't, but are in some position of power and authority. The COVID pandemic gave us manifold examples of this large and small. Fauci and Birx themselves fit the mold: both are former laboratory research scientists who slithered up the greasy pole of power in DC to the higher reaches of the CDC and NIH, classic bureaucratic figures. Neither is a public health expert, contrary to what is told or implied. Those doctors who said critical things about these policies -- the Great Barrington doctors, Makary from Hopkins, and others -- were pilloried as quacks and dangerous extremists -- they are actual public health experts, with decades of direct, hands-on experience in the field.
(In the case of Fauci, we mustn't forget the debacle of AIDS vaccines in the early 90s, when Fauci pushed to ignore pretty much the most effective public health advice in favor of his obsession with vaccines that never materialized. Fortunately, intelligent people prevailed then -- real experts kept saying that an AIDS vaccine was unlikely because of the nature of retroviruses, and circa 1990, they were listened to. An obsession with vaccines over effective public health practices -- sound familiar?)
Not to mention the likes of Google and Facebook, where 23-year-olds "curate" search and feed results in areas -- COVID, climate, whatever -- where they haven't the slightest idea of what they're doing. You can see the results clearly if you compare search results from Google and Facebook with, say, DuckDuckGo or Bing.
An excellent point concerning pseudo-experts. Scientists and intellectuals are particularly prone to this vice, e.g. Bertrand Russell gassing about world peace, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, etc.
Very good comparisons. What we have now is the Internet, which has "disintermediated" the social nature of knowledge far beyond what the media had already demolished in the decades after the rise of television, reducing or eliminating the role of "gatekeepers."
A lot of petty, local authoritarianism as well, as I see it in our state and local region. Generally sensible advice from local and state public health authorities was and still is being overriden by self-appointed pseudo-experts in educational and religious institutions, in favor of more draconian restrictions that are ill-informed, ineffective, unnecessary, or superseded.
Another excellent brief, to-the-point post.
A different aspect of this problem is the pseudo-expert, those posing as if they know when they actually don't, but are in some position of power and authority. The COVID pandemic gave us manifold examples of this large and small. Fauci and Birx themselves fit the mold: both are former laboratory research scientists who slithered up the greasy pole of power in DC to the higher reaches of the CDC and NIH, classic bureaucratic figures. Neither is a public health expert, contrary to what is told or implied. Those doctors who said critical things about these policies -- the Great Barrington doctors, Makary from Hopkins, and others -- were pilloried as quacks and dangerous extremists -- they are actual public health experts, with decades of direct, hands-on experience in the field.
(In the case of Fauci, we mustn't forget the debacle of AIDS vaccines in the early 90s, when Fauci pushed to ignore pretty much the most effective public health advice in favor of his obsession with vaccines that never materialized. Fortunately, intelligent people prevailed then -- real experts kept saying that an AIDS vaccine was unlikely because of the nature of retroviruses, and circa 1990, they were listened to. An obsession with vaccines over effective public health practices -- sound familiar?)
Not to mention the likes of Google and Facebook, where 23-year-olds "curate" search and feed results in areas -- COVID, climate, whatever -- where they haven't the slightest idea of what they're doing. You can see the results clearly if you compare search results from Google and Facebook with, say, DuckDuckGo or Bing.
An excellent point concerning pseudo-experts. Scientists and intellectuals are particularly prone to this vice, e.g. Bertrand Russell gassing about world peace, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, etc.
Very good comparisons. What we have now is the Internet, which has "disintermediated" the social nature of knowledge far beyond what the media had already demolished in the decades after the rise of television, reducing or eliminating the role of "gatekeepers."
A lot of petty, local authoritarianism as well, as I see it in our state and local region. Generally sensible advice from local and state public health authorities was and still is being overriden by self-appointed pseudo-experts in educational and religious institutions, in favor of more draconian restrictions that are ill-informed, ineffective, unnecessary, or superseded.