Well, the piece is a thoughtful meditation on the vagaries of expertise and problematic judgments of deference. I’d have been more impressed if all the examples of highly questionable claims of expertise weren’t coded politically left. We seem to have traded out heavily credentialed DEI experts for the heavily uncredentialed populist authenticity of Pete Hegseth, Bobby Kennedy, Kash Patel, and an astonishing cast of other disastrous know-nothings. Mr. Traldi doesn’t seem to notice here that reactionary, performative anti-expertise might generate even worse outcomes than establishment group think. The problem here is more complicated than at first appears - just sayin’.
It's more a case of the most recent examples the audience would be familiar with. I have an even better example of an expert trying to use his expertise in one area to claim expertise in the another. It was Eric Schmidt from Google. He fired off an op-ed in the biggest news papers in the country painting all of our politicians and the CEOs of the energy companies as cowards and dullards. Then claimed Google would solve global warming by investing it's own money in alternative energies that would revolutionize the energy industry.
Well, turns out suppling reliable power 24/7 on the scale needed for even a midsize city is a very complicated and you can't just make apologies if big parts of the system fail. People die and businesses go bankrupt. He did at least publicly put out a press release more or less accepting and admitting he was wrong to disparage all those other men.
But obviously, there has been enough time that even most of the people who watched that go down between 08 and 2011, will have largely forgotten it. Beyond that, two of the biggest failures amongst the experts is free trade and mass immigration. Tying to use either one of those runs into complications with just how big the subjects are and the diffuse nature of the experts along the way.
With immigration, here in America you've got over thirty years of various right wing and left wing experts making claims that have largely failed, but it's complicated. On the right, they have often used "experts" to claim we needed the immigrants to pick our fruit. Yet by allowing illegal immigrants, we've been rewarding those who exploit the lack of immigration status to abuse their workers, which in turn suppresses wages. Higher wages for fruit pickers is what creates the rewards for those that invest in innovation to increase productivity. And all that before you get into the way the expensive externalities has passed on to the average working class American. Which means we are paying much more for those strawberries then what you see at the cash register.
So plenty of great examples on the right, if you were writing a book that was going to be read by open minded people. Plenty on the left for that matter. But if you're trying to fire off an article, most of the relevant, blatant and recent examples of experts getting things really wrong, would be from things like covid or the BLM protests and riots. A similar article written in 2010 might have focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the housing/financial crisis. Go back a bit further an plenty of articles were written about the "smartest guys in the room", which was the Enron accounting scandal.
But those people, along with the others going around recently (both her and abroad) aren't really lower case "p" populist in a lower case "d" democratic sense. Historically, the most actually in real terms populist parties and governing blocs' biggest selling point was their far greater access to expertise. For example, in the mid 19th century America some of the midst actually populist in history (and they were also some of then most radical populists history), the group of several groups referred to as the Jacksonian, well, in the NE, Mid West, and West (just some of the South) their big selling point was expertise. They were a bottom up, widely and deeply federated mass member party that diffused analytical, deliberative, and decision making functions redundantly across a large and dense network of thousands of nodes
These nodes contained, collectively, most all scientists within most all fields, most business managers, most all skilled tradesman, most all law enforcement officers, most all poets and artists, most all of every profession, and they set the USA's system, both governmental, corporate, academe, and financial to be one with legal/regulatory variability and policy variability, locally based financially (local govs being the biggest tax taker and spender with wide fiscal autonomies and banking and finance locally anchored and deeply pluralized), etc. so as to tailor projects and solutions with precision
Actual populist parties contain active participation from wide swaths of every profession and therefore, almost by definition, have far more expertise than deeply centralized exclusionary membership parties...
An useful discussion. There is too much general bashing of expertise. We do need it and we need to insure experts stay in their lane. Any attempt to suppress dissent should be viewed with extreme suspicion so we don't repeat the COVID lunacy.
As I slogged through this lengthy piece, my attention turned to the non-experts in charge of our current government, and whether they can be trusted. Can we trust the former Fox weekend talk show co-host, our SecDef, the non-expert prosecuting MAGA’s disastrous Middle East war? Can we trust the non-expert vaccine denier in charge of public health as measles outbreaks proliferate? Can we trust our new AG, Don’s non-expert/personal lawyer, given his agreement with Don on how January 6th insurrectionists should be “compensated”? Can we trust the non-expert in charge of the FBI, when he seems more concerned with his make-a-wish travels than apprehending criminals? Can we trust Jared and Steve, the real estate moguls/non-experts “negotiating” on our behalf, while they’re also pocketing billions in corrupt loot from those we’re “negotiating” with?
You just confirmed the premise of the article. I've never voted for Trump and don't have any particular affinity for his administration. With that said, did you trust the abundantly credentialed and supposedly qualified Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken, or Jake Sullivan who oversaw an utterly disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan? Can you trust the abundantly credentialed and supposedly qualified Anthony Fauci, who has been caught lying over and over again about the pandemic? Can you trust the former "expert" in charge of the FBI, when he contradicted himself regarding his agency's investigations, improperly leaked information, and allowed politicized agents to run key investigations? Can you trust the "experts" at Biden's DoJ who tried to suppress an investigation into Hunter Biden? Can you trust the "experts" who ran CDC and changed the definition of vaccination when it became a political liability? An earlier commenter claimed "reactionary, performative anti-expertise might generate even worse outcomes than establishment group think." That's absolutely true, but the reality is that establishment group think has set a very low floor and has deservedly earned the deep skepticism of many people.
I do disagree with the author on one point. I don't think it's always difficult to "assess the validity of expertise on a case-by-case basis." In addition to the heuristics mentioned in the article, I would add two more. First, apply critical thinking to their advice and claims - sometimes it's obvious when their logic simply doesn't hold up very well. Second, track the expert's statements and predictions over time to gauge their relatively accuracy. That's when I quickly realized that some of these supposed experts were either untrustworthy and/or incompetent. All you had to do was track what they said at one point in time vs. another.
Ah yes, the “I’m not for him, but…the other side is even worse” rationalization. Unfortunately, I’m a lifelong Republican, so I recognize capitulation. JD, Little Marco, Mitch McConnell, many have preceded you. It’s ok, I get it, you like what Don’s sellin. It’s either that, or it’s party over country, cuz he’s an aging, incoherent loon who still publicly brags about “acing” the test meant to detect dementia, a test he's repeatedly given:). Or, perhaps, you’ve not actually read his daily bleats?
Ah yes, the strawman fallacy. Please identify where exactly I said "the other side is even worse".
Unfortunately, I'm a lifelong independent, precisely because I am repelled that people become obsessed with seeing politics in black and white. It's ok, I get it, you believe Trump is some unique modern evil as opposed to more of the same, just a different flavor.
It's fascinating that you somehow try to paint me as a Trump supporter, when I've explicitly stated that I've never voted for the man. The whole reason I state that upfront is that I've found that people immediately jump to ad hominem attacks on any critique of their positions as support for Trump, which you've just amusingly confirmed.
The entire article (and my post, if you had actually understood my comment) is not about Trump, it's the danger of falling for supposed experts that are either incompetent and/or politically compromised. Instead of addressing any of my points, you then go on a rant to accuse me of being a Trump supporter (btw, even if that was true, that wouldn't invalidate the argument - that's called the ad hominem _fallacy_ for a reason) and complain about a bunch of politicians whom I could care less about. Try more reading comprehension, less knee jerk reactions next time.
Ah, no more Tony conspiracies? Now the nihilism rationalization-they're all the same. Clever of you to ferret this truth out:). Don is "more of the same, just a different flavor". I mean, what President hasn't incited an armed insurrection and pardoned felons convicted of seditious conspiracy, then proposed "compensation" for the criminals? And Don soaking in a few billion in corrupt crypto loot with the fam? Just like Hunter selling bad art...
The Afghanistan Withdrawal wasn’t “disastrous”…Trump withdrew from Syria and more soldiers died after Trump’s order than before. And Lloyd Austin oversaw the fewest hostile action deaths since Carter so how can fewer deaths be worse than more deaths unless you are Osama Bin Laden??
Well, this is a first. You are the first person I've ever seen attempt to claim the Afghanistan withdrawal was not disastrous. Congratulations!
Your defense of Afghanistan is to claim that Trump managed Syria worse? Hint: They aren't mutually exclusive. Both things can be bad. And "fewest hostile action deaths" is your cherrypicked stat to claim that Austin was a good SecDef? By that metric, Chamberlain was a far better PM than Churchill.
I would say that the history of US foreign policy makes it clear that incompetence cuts across all party lines and supposed levels of expertise. Just look at the phenomenal track record of Iraq 2, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Iran across multiple presidencies and parties.
What’s hilarious is you are inadvertently admitting ignorance with your comment because you clearly never listened to Zalmay Khalizad’s testimony before Congress. So Trump’s point man for Afghanistan (that Biden kept on) was satisfied with the Afghanistan Withdrawal and so I’m satisfied. Trump made the correct decision to surrender to the Taliban and the biggest mistake was Khalizad believing Ghani when he told him he would stay until the end. Ghani fleeing is what exacerbated the panic which was an overreaction in the first place. General McMaster advised Trump to escalate in Afghanistan in 2017 and he believes Afghanistan went wrong in 2003…so why was he still advising to escalate in 2017???
Btw, once Trump chose to escalate with Iran we would have had to abandon any military bases in Afghanistan because shaheds can reach those bases…so in 2026 Trump’s decision to surrender is even more correct than it was in February 2020.
What's hilarious is that you are jumping to conclusions. Before calling me "ignorant", are you under the impression that I thought the US should stay in Afghanistan? I have no problems with the DECISION to withdraw from Afghanistan. If anything, the US should have left Afghanistan after overthrowing the Taliban in 2002. What I do have a problem with is the EXECUTION of the withdrawal - that was a total mess.
The withdrawal was satisfactory according to Trump’s point man on Afghanistan that also served at high level in the Bush administration…you are ignorant because you weren’t aware of the most important official’s opinion on the withdrawal.
I believe you may be falling foul of the "cult of personality" bias. The people you mention are merely the figureheads/mouthpieces. I'd be more interested in the people feeding them the information. That's the alleged expertise. For example, it's the generals and admirals making the actual decisions on prosecuting the "war" with Iran (its actually more of a police action at this point)
Well of course, Don and Pete have no agency for the war they chose to start. So when things go horribly wrong, blame the underlings, always the sign of a strong and effective leader of high character.
Don enumerated several goals at the start of MAGA’s war, I’m sure you remember the speech. He was quite specific. To me, it looks like he's unable to even claw his way back to the status quo that prevailed prior to his war. You clearly disagree. Which of his stated goals would you say he’s achieved through the "police action" that was foisted on him by errant admirals and generals?
I must question the proposition that if enough people vote, they will come up with the right answer. It is entirely possible for the majority to be wrong, especially if their opinions have been formed by leftist teachers, professors, media, etc.
There is a contradiction at play. I once read a very good argument that to a certain extent, you can't really start fixing major problems until a lot of voters give up out of despair. Those that remain invested in voting tend to be the ones that want to find a solution rather then to push an ideology.
So we tend to oscillate between things going pretty well and low voter turnout because many choose not to bother voting. Things getting kind of bad and high voter turnout because people are frustrated but haven't really taken the time to learn the issues, which in turn just paralyzes the system. And finally, things being reformed as voter turnout remains a little elevated after receding from recent highs, because those still paying attention are more interested in solutions than slogans.
The current crisis gripping the expert class, and making them think we can no longer self govern is no different from the crisis that once gripped the experts back in the 1980s. Back then it was that decades of listening to the experts had created stagflation, high crime, and hollowed out our inner cities with their preferred policies. Turns out our governments trying micromanage industries, printing money to subsidize unemployment and welfare, blaming society rather then the criminals and ignoring everything from class to existing community structures while pushing forced integration was just bad policies.
Fast forward and turns out, free trade, mass migration, and the dogmatic views around the concept of free markets aren't working. Disconnecting trade from national/mutual defense and shared values creates some pretty nasty commons problems. Ignoring illegal immigration and corrupting the asylum process recreates the economics of segregation. Failing to meaningfully regulate the internet for things like keeping porn and gambling away from minors makes it that much harder to protect the young and vulnerable from folks in big tech that just want to make as much money as they can regardless of the consequences.
The populists aren't winning because the people are too gullible, they are winning because the expert class refuses to self correct their failing ideologies.
Experts are like everyone else - "They talk/sell their book". Key is the oversight. Judges supporting anarcho-tyranny without any consequences is a current example. Until there are real consequences for failures of expertise we are staying in the existing doom loop.
The real consequences in this case is getting chucked out of their positions of power. It's happening on both the left and the right. It's just a bit messy as it always is. Be glad we're a high functioning democracy. Otherwise it's violent repression and revolution.
A couple of things, first, it’s clear the author doesn’t understand the use of absurdity in satire. The analogy works precisely because it’s absurd, refuting the idea that populism always works out. Which brings us to the second thing. The author cites a theory that, given enough voters, the collective decision gets close a certainty that the decision is the right one. Let’s test that. We all know it takes only one counter-example to completely refute an hypothesis. I will give you two: the Internet and the sum total of content we’ve generated, and the last few elections.
It is a well-known phenomenon that the larger the group of people, the worse the decisions and behaviors become. They call “mob behavior” for a reason. There is also a rational explanation, but we’ll save that for later. The point is, reality seems to be exactly the opposite of what the author claims.
Biden knew not to mess with the DOJ directly. He also knew they had to use kid gloves after J6, which is why he nominated Garland as AG. He was wiley, but he also knew how to go by the book to make it stick. Trouble was, Garland was too slow to pull the trigger.
As to him being a vegetable, he had cancer at the debate, but didn’t know it. He wasn’t senile. Not like Trump has become.
I was never sure about globalization. I always wondered what would happen if war broke out or two allies got a divorce. There were certain things we needed to remember how to do, even if that meant propping them up. Plus, the numbers for outsourcing never worked, and neither did the working relationships. I remember dealing with offshore developers; it was painful.
Free trade, on the other hand, I favored.
As for disrespecting Biden, the only thing I objected to was a comment that you knew wasn’t true. You couldn’t have worded it otherwise, but you chose the radical right wing way of saying it.
The authors example stands. Populism doesn't always work out but has a much better record the expertism. Marxism and Fascism being examples of those. Assuming you don't lose your democracy in the process, the majority of common men, do get back to good policies faster then relying on experts.
Take Sweden and the way they went really far down the socialist path, then pulled back to being one of the most capitalist of nations. Even going so far as to have over twenty percent of their public schools being managed by private for profit companies. Then look at Venezuela.
That actually point to something most of the experts get wrong. The ability for a society to self correct stems more from a well functioning justice system then any education or economic system. Only then can you protect we the people's ability to speak freely and challenge the supposed experts. So Venezuela should have gone for jury trials rather then government grocery stores.
So the author's argument is basically sound. The first and foremost problem with experts is that it's a largely self selecting club who doesn't want people that disagree with their conclusion into their club. That true today, if you don't consider race as one of the most important factors and as such think we need to intentionally hire and promote along racial lines, or in the 1930s when that same underlying opinion about race meant that you had to support segregation to be part of the club.
Hence why well function democracies where we the common man can force a change in the experts we listen too, beat the pants off dictatorships where you can't change your experts. Because I'm pretty sure the people on that imaginary plane would have voted to have the co-pilot take over from the obviously failing pilot, whereas the experts would have insisted the chain of command must be preserved even as the pilot flew the plane into the ground and killed most of the passengers.
Dan it looks like we're testing your theory. Don has assembled a stellar cast of non-experts. My fave is the former Fox weekend talk show co-host leading MAGA's disastrous, never-ending Middle East war. But there are so many to choose from-Bobby's bringin back measles, Russ is recording record deficits, Nutlick is leading the taco tariff debacle, Kash is on his make-a-wish tour. Who's your fave?
No, it doesn’t. Populism doesn’t always work better. Sweden worked because it’s a small, relatively uniform country. Venezuela didn’t because the rulers were after power, not governance. As for the plane, you assume facts not in evidence.
I didn't say populism always works better. That was the point of bringing up Venezuela. The politicians in Sweden would have been just a likely to start jailing their critics and opponents if they could have gotten away with it. Just look at what Biden tried to do with Trump. Or Trump seems to be trying to do to his opponents.
Human nature is somewhat predictable in this regard. Hence why I made the point about how Venezuela would have been better off if they pried open their justice system rather then fall for populist rhetoric around socialism.
Yet it was populism that drove the Whig party out, replaced it with the upstart Republicans and ended slavery. To a very real extent, it was populism that had LBJ championing the civil rights laws that failed to get support from the majority of the Democrats(opposition from the southern Dixiecrats) in the house and senate.
Populism is what propelled the Reagan revolution that finely swept out the experts that had created "stagflation". Something those same expert swore couldn't exist. So quit letting a bunch of self appointing experts tell you populism is the problem. It is that the current crop of experts refuse to admit or accept that their policies and ideologies are failing, that is driving the rise in populism.
Really step back and look around. If the mass migration the expert have been pushing was working, then income inequality in western nations should be going down not up. If it was working then western governments should be having a much easier time balancing their budgets and not having to struggle so much to fund their pension programs.
If disconnecting trade from mutual defense and shared values was working then, then our NATO allies would have been so strong that Russia never would have tried to invade Ukraine for fear of Germany and France retaliating. But that not how it worked out is it?
Same in Asia, China wouldn't be stealing the territorial waters from the Philippines and Vietnam if our trade and defense policies didn't reward China's lack of environmental and worker protections with more trade, even while they have been freeriding off they way we and our allies have kept the oil flowing out of the middle east. They would have been too afraid that the far more wealthy and powerful Japanese and South Koreans would have objected.
So stop blaming the populists. Do "worry" about the attacks on our justice system from the populists and the experts, as well as all the mainstream politicians who would rather not have to admit they were wrong and their policies are failing. It won't be a straight line but in the end, we the average people will find a better combination of policies and expert to follow.
True, you didn’t say that. The original article did. Biden never tried to jail Trump. Ever. He was indicted by grand juries for crimes we all knew he committed, but Biden wasn’t involved. The criminal convictions were a state matter. You just lost all credibility.
Well, I had come to give you my respect and click the like button. Not because you concede to my points, but just because I respect anyone willing to admit a mistake in public. Even if it was simply confusing what I wrote with the what the author wrote. But then you had to add the edit. So you don't get the "like".
You're also wrong and letting either partisan tribalism or Trump hatred cloud your judgement. Biden was very much involved with trying to get Trump chucked in prison. None of what went on could have happened without his okay. Unless of course he was the vegetable his critics like to claim he was.
Trying to claim it was just a state matter ignores the attempts by attorney general Merrick and his hand picked prosecutors to get Trump for possessing classified materials, by the very same men and women that were more than ready to excuse Biden and even Hilary for doing the same.
Which is how we all loose in the end. If Hugo Chavez's supporters weren't willing to look the other way and make excuses as the Chavistas imprisoned their critics and opponents, maybe it wouldn't have gotten to the point the young Venezuelans were dying of measles while Maduro refused to let the WHO into the country to help vaccinate his own people.
So you might want to re-think the narrative about how things have been going, and what all has been happening. I got a lot of issues with Trump but can still admit that from Biden on down to the state representative in Colorado, there have plenty of attempts by Democrats to have Trump thrown off the ballot as well as thrown in prison. If anything, it a sign of just how desperate some of them are getting to prop up the corruption of illegal immigration and free trade.
Might be worth reminding yourself that Democrats were the party who started a civil war to protect slavery. They were the party that openly declared "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and built a terrorist organ, the KKK, to try and keep the blacks, Republicans and Yankees from changing things here in the south.
Doesn't mean there weren't the "Free Democrats" up north, or how I prefer using the term Dixiecrat when talking about the civil rights era, to sperate the different ideological viewpoints around at that time, but you should keep things like that in mind. Humans are humans. Political parties are human constructs. You don't have to like I man to agree with him, at least some of time, and just because you like a man doesn't mean his ideas and policies are working.
To be fair, you made some good points. But that dig at Biden left me wondering what else was buried in your post. If you stick to facts, even if you only think they might be facts, we can talk. But that comment doesn’t fit.
1. The damage done by the knowledge-that claims of neoliberal economists to the public’s trust in the knowledge-how claims of science has been catastrophic.
2. Amongst our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton explicitly rejected the idea that knowledge claims were independent from human motivation and emotion.
3. Amongst the Founding Fathers of the 1st democracy in Western civilization, the one in Athens, the prevailing view was that contradictory knowledge claims were to be expected and possibly both true.
4. Plato subsequently criticized the fundamental epistemology of democracy by claiming that the truth was lost to history, a version of The Fall. But, he introduced the idea that through a process of rational logical discussion one could aspire to discovering the truth - herein being Plato’s “dialectical method” which Hagel and then Marx inverted to establish their dialectical method.
5. Aristotle subsequently criticized both the epistemology of democracy and Plato by establishing the principle of non-contradiction, which would eventually underwrite the knowledge claims of our neoliberal economists and remains the knowledge standard employed in most of academia.
6. At present the objective evidence established through rigorous scientific research supports the epistemological assumption of democracy.
I have seen dozens of tweets by individuals sharing views based on comments by influencers that contradict research published by the National Institutes of Health.
Unfortunately, though, some of the research by the NIH is itself biased and carries a strong political or "defending the status quo" bias. This article has highlighted a very difficult problem, and the comments so far have also indicated a strong political bias from most respondents. That alone indicates just how hard of a problem it is. Who do you actually trust and is that trust really just confirmation bias?
Well, the piece is a thoughtful meditation on the vagaries of expertise and problematic judgments of deference. I’d have been more impressed if all the examples of highly questionable claims of expertise weren’t coded politically left. We seem to have traded out heavily credentialed DEI experts for the heavily uncredentialed populist authenticity of Pete Hegseth, Bobby Kennedy, Kash Patel, and an astonishing cast of other disastrous know-nothings. Mr. Traldi doesn’t seem to notice here that reactionary, performative anti-expertise might generate even worse outcomes than establishment group think. The problem here is more complicated than at first appears - just sayin’.
It's more a case of the most recent examples the audience would be familiar with. I have an even better example of an expert trying to use his expertise in one area to claim expertise in the another. It was Eric Schmidt from Google. He fired off an op-ed in the biggest news papers in the country painting all of our politicians and the CEOs of the energy companies as cowards and dullards. Then claimed Google would solve global warming by investing it's own money in alternative energies that would revolutionize the energy industry.
Well, turns out suppling reliable power 24/7 on the scale needed for even a midsize city is a very complicated and you can't just make apologies if big parts of the system fail. People die and businesses go bankrupt. He did at least publicly put out a press release more or less accepting and admitting he was wrong to disparage all those other men.
But obviously, there has been enough time that even most of the people who watched that go down between 08 and 2011, will have largely forgotten it. Beyond that, two of the biggest failures amongst the experts is free trade and mass immigration. Tying to use either one of those runs into complications with just how big the subjects are and the diffuse nature of the experts along the way.
With immigration, here in America you've got over thirty years of various right wing and left wing experts making claims that have largely failed, but it's complicated. On the right, they have often used "experts" to claim we needed the immigrants to pick our fruit. Yet by allowing illegal immigrants, we've been rewarding those who exploit the lack of immigration status to abuse their workers, which in turn suppresses wages. Higher wages for fruit pickers is what creates the rewards for those that invest in innovation to increase productivity. And all that before you get into the way the expensive externalities has passed on to the average working class American. Which means we are paying much more for those strawberries then what you see at the cash register.
So plenty of great examples on the right, if you were writing a book that was going to be read by open minded people. Plenty on the left for that matter. But if you're trying to fire off an article, most of the relevant, blatant and recent examples of experts getting things really wrong, would be from things like covid or the BLM protests and riots. A similar article written in 2010 might have focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the housing/financial crisis. Go back a bit further an plenty of articles were written about the "smartest guys in the room", which was the Enron accounting scandal.
But those people, along with the others going around recently (both her and abroad) aren't really lower case "p" populist in a lower case "d" democratic sense. Historically, the most actually in real terms populist parties and governing blocs' biggest selling point was their far greater access to expertise. For example, in the mid 19th century America some of the midst actually populist in history (and they were also some of then most radical populists history), the group of several groups referred to as the Jacksonian, well, in the NE, Mid West, and West (just some of the South) their big selling point was expertise. They were a bottom up, widely and deeply federated mass member party that diffused analytical, deliberative, and decision making functions redundantly across a large and dense network of thousands of nodes
These nodes contained, collectively, most all scientists within most all fields, most business managers, most all skilled tradesman, most all law enforcement officers, most all poets and artists, most all of every profession, and they set the USA's system, both governmental, corporate, academe, and financial to be one with legal/regulatory variability and policy variability, locally based financially (local govs being the biggest tax taker and spender with wide fiscal autonomies and banking and finance locally anchored and deeply pluralized), etc. so as to tailor projects and solutions with precision
Actual populist parties contain active participation from wide swaths of every profession and therefore, almost by definition, have far more expertise than deeply centralized exclusionary membership parties...
An useful discussion. There is too much general bashing of expertise. We do need it and we need to insure experts stay in their lane. Any attempt to suppress dissent should be viewed with extreme suspicion so we don't repeat the COVID lunacy.
As I slogged through this lengthy piece, my attention turned to the non-experts in charge of our current government, and whether they can be trusted. Can we trust the former Fox weekend talk show co-host, our SecDef, the non-expert prosecuting MAGA’s disastrous Middle East war? Can we trust the non-expert vaccine denier in charge of public health as measles outbreaks proliferate? Can we trust our new AG, Don’s non-expert/personal lawyer, given his agreement with Don on how January 6th insurrectionists should be “compensated”? Can we trust the non-expert in charge of the FBI, when he seems more concerned with his make-a-wish travels than apprehending criminals? Can we trust Jared and Steve, the real estate moguls/non-experts “negotiating” on our behalf, while they’re also pocketing billions in corrupt loot from those we’re “negotiating” with?
I think I understand Oliver’s defensiveness…
You just confirmed the premise of the article. I've never voted for Trump and don't have any particular affinity for his administration. With that said, did you trust the abundantly credentialed and supposedly qualified Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken, or Jake Sullivan who oversaw an utterly disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan? Can you trust the abundantly credentialed and supposedly qualified Anthony Fauci, who has been caught lying over and over again about the pandemic? Can you trust the former "expert" in charge of the FBI, when he contradicted himself regarding his agency's investigations, improperly leaked information, and allowed politicized agents to run key investigations? Can you trust the "experts" at Biden's DoJ who tried to suppress an investigation into Hunter Biden? Can you trust the "experts" who ran CDC and changed the definition of vaccination when it became a political liability? An earlier commenter claimed "reactionary, performative anti-expertise might generate even worse outcomes than establishment group think." That's absolutely true, but the reality is that establishment group think has set a very low floor and has deservedly earned the deep skepticism of many people.
I do disagree with the author on one point. I don't think it's always difficult to "assess the validity of expertise on a case-by-case basis." In addition to the heuristics mentioned in the article, I would add two more. First, apply critical thinking to their advice and claims - sometimes it's obvious when their logic simply doesn't hold up very well. Second, track the expert's statements and predictions over time to gauge their relatively accuracy. That's when I quickly realized that some of these supposed experts were either untrustworthy and/or incompetent. All you had to do was track what they said at one point in time vs. another.
Ah yes, the “I’m not for him, but…the other side is even worse” rationalization. Unfortunately, I’m a lifelong Republican, so I recognize capitulation. JD, Little Marco, Mitch McConnell, many have preceded you. It’s ok, I get it, you like what Don’s sellin. It’s either that, or it’s party over country, cuz he’s an aging, incoherent loon who still publicly brags about “acing” the test meant to detect dementia, a test he's repeatedly given:). Or, perhaps, you’ve not actually read his daily bleats?
Ah yes, the strawman fallacy. Please identify where exactly I said "the other side is even worse".
Unfortunately, I'm a lifelong independent, precisely because I am repelled that people become obsessed with seeing politics in black and white. It's ok, I get it, you believe Trump is some unique modern evil as opposed to more of the same, just a different flavor.
It's fascinating that you somehow try to paint me as a Trump supporter, when I've explicitly stated that I've never voted for the man. The whole reason I state that upfront is that I've found that people immediately jump to ad hominem attacks on any critique of their positions as support for Trump, which you've just amusingly confirmed.
The entire article (and my post, if you had actually understood my comment) is not about Trump, it's the danger of falling for supposed experts that are either incompetent and/or politically compromised. Instead of addressing any of my points, you then go on a rant to accuse me of being a Trump supporter (btw, even if that was true, that wouldn't invalidate the argument - that's called the ad hominem _fallacy_ for a reason) and complain about a bunch of politicians whom I could care less about. Try more reading comprehension, less knee jerk reactions next time.
Ah, no more Tony conspiracies? Now the nihilism rationalization-they're all the same. Clever of you to ferret this truth out:). Don is "more of the same, just a different flavor". I mean, what President hasn't incited an armed insurrection and pardoned felons convicted of seditious conspiracy, then proposed "compensation" for the criminals? And Don soaking in a few billion in corrupt crypto loot with the fam? Just like Hunter selling bad art...
A dead giveaway-thanks for clarifying:)
If that's how you interpreted what I wrote, then there's no point in further communication. Muted.
Good to know you're a Hillary, Joepa, Kamala voter. That's interesting.
The Afghanistan Withdrawal wasn’t “disastrous”…Trump withdrew from Syria and more soldiers died after Trump’s order than before. And Lloyd Austin oversaw the fewest hostile action deaths since Carter so how can fewer deaths be worse than more deaths unless you are Osama Bin Laden??
Well, this is a first. You are the first person I've ever seen attempt to claim the Afghanistan withdrawal was not disastrous. Congratulations!
Your defense of Afghanistan is to claim that Trump managed Syria worse? Hint: They aren't mutually exclusive. Both things can be bad. And "fewest hostile action deaths" is your cherrypicked stat to claim that Austin was a good SecDef? By that metric, Chamberlain was a far better PM than Churchill.
I would say that the history of US foreign policy makes it clear that incompetence cuts across all party lines and supposed levels of expertise. Just look at the phenomenal track record of Iraq 2, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Iran across multiple presidencies and parties.
What’s hilarious is you are inadvertently admitting ignorance with your comment because you clearly never listened to Zalmay Khalizad’s testimony before Congress. So Trump’s point man for Afghanistan (that Biden kept on) was satisfied with the Afghanistan Withdrawal and so I’m satisfied. Trump made the correct decision to surrender to the Taliban and the biggest mistake was Khalizad believing Ghani when he told him he would stay until the end. Ghani fleeing is what exacerbated the panic which was an overreaction in the first place. General McMaster advised Trump to escalate in Afghanistan in 2017 and he believes Afghanistan went wrong in 2003…so why was he still advising to escalate in 2017???
Btw, once Trump chose to escalate with Iran we would have had to abandon any military bases in Afghanistan because shaheds can reach those bases…so in 2026 Trump’s decision to surrender is even more correct than it was in February 2020.
What's hilarious is that you are jumping to conclusions. Before calling me "ignorant", are you under the impression that I thought the US should stay in Afghanistan? I have no problems with the DECISION to withdraw from Afghanistan. If anything, the US should have left Afghanistan after overthrowing the Taliban in 2002. What I do have a problem with is the EXECUTION of the withdrawal - that was a total mess.
The withdrawal was satisfactory according to Trump’s point man on Afghanistan that also served at high level in the Bush administration…you are ignorant because you weren’t aware of the most important official’s opinion on the withdrawal.
I believe you may be falling foul of the "cult of personality" bias. The people you mention are merely the figureheads/mouthpieces. I'd be more interested in the people feeding them the information. That's the alleged expertise. For example, it's the generals and admirals making the actual decisions on prosecuting the "war" with Iran (its actually more of a police action at this point)
Well of course, Don and Pete have no agency for the war they chose to start. So when things go horribly wrong, blame the underlings, always the sign of a strong and effective leader of high character.
Don enumerated several goals at the start of MAGA’s war, I’m sure you remember the speech. He was quite specific. To me, it looks like he's unable to even claw his way back to the status quo that prevailed prior to his war. You clearly disagree. Which of his stated goals would you say he’s achieved through the "police action" that was foisted on him by errant admirals and generals?
I must question the proposition that if enough people vote, they will come up with the right answer. It is entirely possible for the majority to be wrong, especially if their opinions have been formed by leftist teachers, professors, media, etc.
There is a contradiction at play. I once read a very good argument that to a certain extent, you can't really start fixing major problems until a lot of voters give up out of despair. Those that remain invested in voting tend to be the ones that want to find a solution rather then to push an ideology.
So we tend to oscillate between things going pretty well and low voter turnout because many choose not to bother voting. Things getting kind of bad and high voter turnout because people are frustrated but haven't really taken the time to learn the issues, which in turn just paralyzes the system. And finally, things being reformed as voter turnout remains a little elevated after receding from recent highs, because those still paying attention are more interested in solutions than slogans.
The current crisis gripping the expert class, and making them think we can no longer self govern is no different from the crisis that once gripped the experts back in the 1980s. Back then it was that decades of listening to the experts had created stagflation, high crime, and hollowed out our inner cities with their preferred policies. Turns out our governments trying micromanage industries, printing money to subsidize unemployment and welfare, blaming society rather then the criminals and ignoring everything from class to existing community structures while pushing forced integration was just bad policies.
Fast forward and turns out, free trade, mass migration, and the dogmatic views around the concept of free markets aren't working. Disconnecting trade from national/mutual defense and shared values creates some pretty nasty commons problems. Ignoring illegal immigration and corrupting the asylum process recreates the economics of segregation. Failing to meaningfully regulate the internet for things like keeping porn and gambling away from minors makes it that much harder to protect the young and vulnerable from folks in big tech that just want to make as much money as they can regardless of the consequences.
The populists aren't winning because the people are too gullible, they are winning because the expert class refuses to self correct their failing ideologies.
Experts are like everyone else - "They talk/sell their book". Key is the oversight. Judges supporting anarcho-tyranny without any consequences is a current example. Until there are real consequences for failures of expertise we are staying in the existing doom loop.
The real consequences in this case is getting chucked out of their positions of power. It's happening on both the left and the right. It's just a bit messy as it always is. Be glad we're a high functioning democracy. Otherwise it's violent repression and revolution.
A couple of things, first, it’s clear the author doesn’t understand the use of absurdity in satire. The analogy works precisely because it’s absurd, refuting the idea that populism always works out. Which brings us to the second thing. The author cites a theory that, given enough voters, the collective decision gets close a certainty that the decision is the right one. Let’s test that. We all know it takes only one counter-example to completely refute an hypothesis. I will give you two: the Internet and the sum total of content we’ve generated, and the last few elections.
It is a well-known phenomenon that the larger the group of people, the worse the decisions and behaviors become. They call “mob behavior” for a reason. There is also a rational explanation, but we’ll save that for later. The point is, reality seems to be exactly the opposite of what the author claims.
Biden knew not to mess with the DOJ directly. He also knew they had to use kid gloves after J6, which is why he nominated Garland as AG. He was wiley, but he also knew how to go by the book to make it stick. Trouble was, Garland was too slow to pull the trigger.
As to him being a vegetable, he had cancer at the debate, but didn’t know it. He wasn’t senile. Not like Trump has become.
I was never sure about globalization. I always wondered what would happen if war broke out or two allies got a divorce. There were certain things we needed to remember how to do, even if that meant propping them up. Plus, the numbers for outsourcing never worked, and neither did the working relationships. I remember dealing with offshore developers; it was painful.
Free trade, on the other hand, I favored.
As for disrespecting Biden, the only thing I objected to was a comment that you knew wasn’t true. You couldn’t have worded it otherwise, but you chose the radical right wing way of saying it.
The authors example stands. Populism doesn't always work out but has a much better record the expertism. Marxism and Fascism being examples of those. Assuming you don't lose your democracy in the process, the majority of common men, do get back to good policies faster then relying on experts.
Take Sweden and the way they went really far down the socialist path, then pulled back to being one of the most capitalist of nations. Even going so far as to have over twenty percent of their public schools being managed by private for profit companies. Then look at Venezuela.
That actually point to something most of the experts get wrong. The ability for a society to self correct stems more from a well functioning justice system then any education or economic system. Only then can you protect we the people's ability to speak freely and challenge the supposed experts. So Venezuela should have gone for jury trials rather then government grocery stores.
So the author's argument is basically sound. The first and foremost problem with experts is that it's a largely self selecting club who doesn't want people that disagree with their conclusion into their club. That true today, if you don't consider race as one of the most important factors and as such think we need to intentionally hire and promote along racial lines, or in the 1930s when that same underlying opinion about race meant that you had to support segregation to be part of the club.
Hence why well function democracies where we the common man can force a change in the experts we listen too, beat the pants off dictatorships where you can't change your experts. Because I'm pretty sure the people on that imaginary plane would have voted to have the co-pilot take over from the obviously failing pilot, whereas the experts would have insisted the chain of command must be preserved even as the pilot flew the plane into the ground and killed most of the passengers.
Dan it looks like we're testing your theory. Don has assembled a stellar cast of non-experts. My fave is the former Fox weekend talk show co-host leading MAGA's disastrous, never-ending Middle East war. But there are so many to choose from-Bobby's bringin back measles, Russ is recording record deficits, Nutlick is leading the taco tariff debacle, Kash is on his make-a-wish tour. Who's your fave?
No, it doesn’t. Populism doesn’t always work better. Sweden worked because it’s a small, relatively uniform country. Venezuela didn’t because the rulers were after power, not governance. As for the plane, you assume facts not in evidence.
I didn't say populism always works better. That was the point of bringing up Venezuela. The politicians in Sweden would have been just a likely to start jailing their critics and opponents if they could have gotten away with it. Just look at what Biden tried to do with Trump. Or Trump seems to be trying to do to his opponents.
Human nature is somewhat predictable in this regard. Hence why I made the point about how Venezuela would have been better off if they pried open their justice system rather then fall for populist rhetoric around socialism.
Yet it was populism that drove the Whig party out, replaced it with the upstart Republicans and ended slavery. To a very real extent, it was populism that had LBJ championing the civil rights laws that failed to get support from the majority of the Democrats(opposition from the southern Dixiecrats) in the house and senate.
Populism is what propelled the Reagan revolution that finely swept out the experts that had created "stagflation". Something those same expert swore couldn't exist. So quit letting a bunch of self appointing experts tell you populism is the problem. It is that the current crop of experts refuse to admit or accept that their policies and ideologies are failing, that is driving the rise in populism.
Really step back and look around. If the mass migration the expert have been pushing was working, then income inequality in western nations should be going down not up. If it was working then western governments should be having a much easier time balancing their budgets and not having to struggle so much to fund their pension programs.
If disconnecting trade from mutual defense and shared values was working then, then our NATO allies would have been so strong that Russia never would have tried to invade Ukraine for fear of Germany and France retaliating. But that not how it worked out is it?
Same in Asia, China wouldn't be stealing the territorial waters from the Philippines and Vietnam if our trade and defense policies didn't reward China's lack of environmental and worker protections with more trade, even while they have been freeriding off they way we and our allies have kept the oil flowing out of the middle east. They would have been too afraid that the far more wealthy and powerful Japanese and South Koreans would have objected.
So stop blaming the populists. Do "worry" about the attacks on our justice system from the populists and the experts, as well as all the mainstream politicians who would rather not have to admit they were wrong and their policies are failing. It won't be a straight line but in the end, we the average people will find a better combination of policies and expert to follow.
True, you didn’t say that. The original article did. Biden never tried to jail Trump. Ever. He was indicted by grand juries for crimes we all knew he committed, but Biden wasn’t involved. The criminal convictions were a state matter. You just lost all credibility.
Well, I had come to give you my respect and click the like button. Not because you concede to my points, but just because I respect anyone willing to admit a mistake in public. Even if it was simply confusing what I wrote with the what the author wrote. But then you had to add the edit. So you don't get the "like".
You're also wrong and letting either partisan tribalism or Trump hatred cloud your judgement. Biden was very much involved with trying to get Trump chucked in prison. None of what went on could have happened without his okay. Unless of course he was the vegetable his critics like to claim he was.
Trying to claim it was just a state matter ignores the attempts by attorney general Merrick and his hand picked prosecutors to get Trump for possessing classified materials, by the very same men and women that were more than ready to excuse Biden and even Hilary for doing the same.
Which is how we all loose in the end. If Hugo Chavez's supporters weren't willing to look the other way and make excuses as the Chavistas imprisoned their critics and opponents, maybe it wouldn't have gotten to the point the young Venezuelans were dying of measles while Maduro refused to let the WHO into the country to help vaccinate his own people.
So you might want to re-think the narrative about how things have been going, and what all has been happening. I got a lot of issues with Trump but can still admit that from Biden on down to the state representative in Colorado, there have plenty of attempts by Democrats to have Trump thrown off the ballot as well as thrown in prison. If anything, it a sign of just how desperate some of them are getting to prop up the corruption of illegal immigration and free trade.
Might be worth reminding yourself that Democrats were the party who started a civil war to protect slavery. They were the party that openly declared "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and built a terrorist organ, the KKK, to try and keep the blacks, Republicans and Yankees from changing things here in the south.
Doesn't mean there weren't the "Free Democrats" up north, or how I prefer using the term Dixiecrat when talking about the civil rights era, to sperate the different ideological viewpoints around at that time, but you should keep things like that in mind. Humans are humans. Political parties are human constructs. You don't have to like I man to agree with him, at least some of time, and just because you like a man doesn't mean his ideas and policies are working.
To be fair, you made some good points. But that dig at Biden left me wondering what else was buried in your post. If you stick to facts, even if you only think they might be facts, we can talk. But that comment doesn’t fit.
You didn’t need to make that comment about Biden. It wasn’t true and you know it.
A Few Thoughts on Epistemology:
1. The damage done by the knowledge-that claims of neoliberal economists to the public’s trust in the knowledge-how claims of science has been catastrophic.
2. Amongst our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton explicitly rejected the idea that knowledge claims were independent from human motivation and emotion.
3. Amongst the Founding Fathers of the 1st democracy in Western civilization, the one in Athens, the prevailing view was that contradictory knowledge claims were to be expected and possibly both true.
4. Plato subsequently criticized the fundamental epistemology of democracy by claiming that the truth was lost to history, a version of The Fall. But, he introduced the idea that through a process of rational logical discussion one could aspire to discovering the truth - herein being Plato’s “dialectical method” which Hagel and then Marx inverted to establish their dialectical method.
5. Aristotle subsequently criticized both the epistemology of democracy and Plato by establishing the principle of non-contradiction, which would eventually underwrite the knowledge claims of our neoliberal economists and remains the knowledge standard employed in most of academia.
6. At present the objective evidence established through rigorous scientific research supports the epistemological assumption of democracy.
A few thoughts on epistemology:
1. The damage done by the Knowledge-that neoliberal economists
I have seen dozens of tweets by individuals sharing views based on comments by influencers that contradict research published by the National Institutes of Health.
Unfortunately, though, some of the research by the NIH is itself biased and carries a strong political or "defending the status quo" bias. This article has highlighted a very difficult problem, and the comments so far have also indicated a strong political bias from most respondents. That alone indicates just how hard of a problem it is. Who do you actually trust and is that trust really just confirmation bias?