How America Lost Faith in Expertise

[viper37]

The American left has its problems with pseudoscience and other similar things, but I haven't seen the glorification of ignorance you get from the right these days.

there's these diet movements and anti-medicine movementsfrom Hollywood that shouldn't be discarded so easily.
If you believe an actress is better suited to give health advice than a doctor or a nutriotionist, isn't that a glorification of ignorance as described in the article?

[Berkut]

as mentioned above there are lots of anti-intellectual liberals. Anti-vaxxers are predominantly Liberal, as are anti medical science people in general (homeopaths and the like). "Doctors and pharma companies are lying to us/poisoning us to make a buck" etc.


Liberals are also more likely to be anti GMO and the like.

That is not the same as being anti-intellectual.

Being anti-GMO is stupid, to be sure. Being anti-vax is stupid as well. But that is not the same thing as the disdain for thinking you see on the right.

And anti-GMO dumbass, or people who protest pipelines, or whatever other idiotic left wing bullshit you want to use as an example, is not, from what I can tell, really motivated by a claim that the experts are just not experts at all. It is motivated by a claim that the experts ARE experts, but are using their expertise to fuck over the common man.

The anti-intellectualism/anti-elitism/Know Nothing crowd is hanging their hat on the climate scientists simple being wrong. That evolution is wrong. It isn't enough for them to say that the experts are right, but using their expertise against them, they have to actually claim that the experts are not experts at all.

[HVC]

maybe i'm just misunderstanding the term anti-intellectuals. For the anti-vaxxers, they take all the scientific studies and disregard them because they just know that vaccines cause autism. I mean it happened to my neighbors cousins wife's nephew, so it must be true. that seem anti-intellectual to me. They're disregarding science because it doesn't match their preconceived notion. They balance this mentally by saying the experts are putting out bad information to make a buck. the experts are not only wrong, but purposefully wrong to trick them, which seems worse that anti-evolution hicks just saying that scientists are wrong, they're not adding an extra level of malice.

[Berkut]

maybe i'm just misunderstanding the term anti-intellectuals. For the anti-vaxxers, they take all the scientific studies and disregard them because they just know that vaccines cause autism. I mean it happened to my neighbors cousins wife's nephew, so it must be true. that seem anti-intellectual to me. They're disregarding science because it doesn't match their preconceived notion. They balance this mentally by saying the experts are putting out bad information to make a buck. the experts are not only wrong, but purposefully wrong to trick them, which seems worse that anti-evolution hicks just saying that scientists are wrong, they're not adding an extra level of malice.

Well, of course it isn't binary, right?

Its not like they either are anti-intellectual or not, and I am open to the idea that the right wing anti-intellectualism that was rooted in the evolution debate, developed through climate change, and is now spreading outside that area is likely to infect others as well, and sure - why not - if we can deny the evidence of the entire scientific community because we want to believe in a young earth, then why can't some other team do the same in regards to vaccines?

But I see the primary driver of the anti-vax stupidity being not that the medical community is wrong, but that they are the tools of Big Pharma.

Perhaps I am making too fine a distinction though...

[Grey Fox]

But I see the primary driver of the anti-vax stupidity being not that the medical community is wrong, but that they are the tools of Big Pharma.

I think this is right.

[Kleves]

Perhaps I am making too fine a distinction though...

I don't see a lot of difference between thinking experts are wrong, and therefore lying and thinking that experts are lying, and therefore wrong.

[Valmy]

Perhaps I am making too fine a distinction though...

Yeah. In fact you see the exact same conspiracy theories (the sickness industrial complex! Your doctor can easily cure cancer but he refuses to do so to help BIG PHARMA...for some reason) among some Trump supporters as you do looney leftists. They have much in common.

[grumbler]

Perhaps I am making too fine a distinction though...

I don't see a lot of difference between thinking experts are wrong, and therefore lying and thinking that experts are lying, and therefore wrong.

Since there is no difference between two identical statements, there is no difference between two identical statements.

But that's not the issue.  Identical is identical to identical.  In the cases that Berkut is talking about, the right believes that the experts are not lying; they are just people who cannot know the truth, because they rely on reason and not God's Wisdom As Revealed In His Book. no training or information can make up for that mistake.  Ditto for experts that are too ivory-tower to know what Everybody Knows.

The left, on the other hand, believes that the experts know the truth, but refuse to admit it because they get rich from pretending that vaccines don't cause autism.

The former is anti-intellectualism; the second is anti-corporatism.

[dps]

I'd say left or right isn't really the point, and isn't where the article goes wrong.  What's wrong is the assumption that Americans, as a whole, ever had a lot of faith in or respect for experts in the first place.

[Oexmelin]

I'd say left or right isn't really the point, and isn't where the article goes wrong.  What's wrong is the assumption that Americans, as a whole, ever had a lot of faith in or respect for experts in the first place.

Why is it wrong?

[viper37]

And anti-GMO dumbass, or people who protest pipelines, or whatever other idiotic left wing bullshit you want to use as an example, is not, from what I can tell, really motivated by a claim that the experts are just not experts at all. It is motivated by a claim that the experts ARE experts, but are using their expertise to fuck over the common man.

they reject science when it does not suit their need.  Just as the idiots who claim to be rightwingers often do.

[viper37]

The left, on the other hand, believes that the experts know the truth, but refuse to admit it because they get rich from pretending that vaccines don't cause autism.

no, they believe they are brainwashed into thinking like this.  Just like economists and financial analysts who do sorcery tricks.

[Valmy]

I'd say left or right isn't really the point, and isn't where the article goes wrong.  What's wrong is the assumption that Americans, as a whole, ever had a lot of faith in or respect for experts in the first place.

Everybody thought it was cool when we shot people into space.

[HVC]

I'd say left or right isn't really the point, and isn't where the article goes wrong.  What's wrong is the assumption that Americans, as a whole, ever had a lot of faith in or respect for experts in the first place.

Everybody thought it was cool when we shot people into space.

That wasn't for science, that was for anti-commie points, back in the good old days when liberals loved Russia and republicans didn't.

[CountDeMoney]

That wasn't for science

I disagree; this nation was positively enamored with science and science fiction and its possibilities back then.