Originally Posted by
Letters
They don't. No-one considers politicians experts. The hope is that they engage with experts to get the advice they need do the right things. I would certainly agree that they often don't.
Your meaning wasn't obvious to me although looking back I should probably have picked it up. I was responding to the general trend these days to disregard expert opinion.
That might not have been what you were expressing in that post, but you have displayed that attitude on multiple issues previously.
No. I listed a few things which I think we agree on. I was clear that I wasn't certain. But your use of the word "pretended" is interesting, you can't help yourself thinking there is something underhand going on all the time.
That's how you ended up listening to a perfectly reasonable conversation between a USPS worker and some agents and ended up making all kinds of assertions about it which just aren't true if you listen to the audio.
It's how you ended up believing that the lockdowns would be escalated to curfews and checkpoints.
And when this is pointed out you don't seem to concede any ground. There seems to be no consideration that you were wrong - and it really couldn't be any clearer that you were about the Covid restrictions which have all been removed now, in the UK at least. There seems to be no introspection to consider why you were wrong.
We haven't. Hence me not being certain we agree. But in a previous conversation I suggested various ways that the rules of society could be defined. One is government, but there are others.
You didn't clearly disagree with that. And I didn't say government defines society, I said they defined the laws which govern society. Which they clearly do. Hence them being able to make laws which forbid people to meet up, and revoke those laws when they are no longer needed. You may think government is a bad way of defining laws, if so then I largely agree - particularly with the way we elect governments here. But for me it's the least bad way. In the previous conversation I outlined some alternatives and explained why in my view they weren't an improvement. I don't remember you suggesting a better alternative. In this conversation you've said we need to grow out of government, I asked what we should grow in to and you haven't answered. Saying that something is bad is all well and good, but it's more constructive to say what would be better and outline why it would be better.
And you say your something is better too - you regularly sneer at the sorts of things I read/watch. So I could ask you the same question.
But the point is your opinion on climate change isn't based on years of expertise and research in the field. You don't have a litany of published, peer reviewed papers in the relevant journals.
Your opinion is based on stuff you've read and watched, just like mine is. Yes, I favour more mainstream sources. And I don't think the mainstream is to be implicitly trusted but neither is everything they output wrong. When the BBC reported how bad the Covid situation was getting in India I checked with colleagues there who confirmed things were pretty grim. Stuff like that gives me confidence they're not just making stuff up.
Which experts were saying natural immunity didn't exist during the pandemic? They may have said that relying on that wasn't the best way of dealing with the pandemic, but who was saying it didn't exist?
Yes, this is reasonable. Although recognising that as situations change and more data is gathered opinions will change - that is what should happen, an "expert" who stays consistent in their views as the data shifts making their opinion increasingly invalid should also be distrusted. And it's also worth noting that there is unlikely to be complete consensus amongst any community of experts. And this is the trouble. The minority view isn't necessarily incorrect, but the smaller that minority gets the more likely I'd suggest it is to be incorrect. But with the wonders of the internet that minority voice can be made disproportionately loud.
Dealing with a pandemic is complicated, loads of data is coming in, people will interpret it different ways. And your interpretation is coloured by your deep distrust of the mainstream and government, the feeling you have that anyone in authority is "up to something". You might counter that mine is coloured by an implicit trust of authority. That would be fair up to a point, I don't think government exist solely to crush and oppress us and I don't think that everything in the mainstream media is bunk - a lot of it is true. But I don't implicitly trust them either. Your mistake is to believe that anyone who comes to different conclusions to you can't be thinking - you dismiss too many people on here, me included, as unintelligent when actually we just have a different world view.
Most people think, but a lot of people aren't that intelligent. Most people can't conceive of anything better - or less bad - than government. The fact is pretty much every Civilisation in history has had some form of ruler or rulers to make the rules which govern it. Only a few models have been tried - we've had a king, some countries still do (I mean one who makes the rules). Some countries have dictatorships. Those countries don't seem to function that well. Some form of democratic government is generally thought to be best. I'd suggest that the problems we have are because of the way we elect ours and the lack of accountability when they're in power. In most elections a government is elected by a minority of the population. And right now we have a PM who has no mandate to govern, other than 81,000 people and some change. 81,000 people voted for her to be PM and she's now free to do what the hell she likes because of the thumping majority Boris delivered. That isn't right and it isn't a failure of government, it's a failure of our system of it. So yeah, I'm all for reform of our system but I don't believe throwing out the concept of government is the right thing to do. But I'm open to other suggestions if you have any.
Reply With Quote
