Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - Printable Version +- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com) +-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html) +--- Forum: Alternative Theories (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-130.html) +--- Thread: Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy (/thread-3786.html) |
Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - C C - Jun 13, 2017 https://aeon.co/essays/its-time-to-reboot-the-relationship-between-expertise-and-democracy EXCERPT: [...] Experts get things wrong all the time. The effects of such errors range from mild embarrassment to wasted time and money; in rarer cases, they can result in death, and even lead to international catastrophe. And yet experts regularly ask citizens to trust expert judgment and to have confidence not only that mistakes will be rare, but that the experts will identify those mistakes and learn from them. Day to day, laypeople have no choice but to trust experts. We live our lives embedded in a web of social and governmental institutions meant to ensure that professionals are in fact who they say they are, and can in fact do what they say they do. Universities, accreditation organisations, licensing boards, certification authorities, state inspectors and other institutions exist to maintain those standards. This daily trust in professionals is a prosaic matter of necessity. It is in much the same way that we trust everyone else in our daily lives, including the bus driver we assume isn’t drunk or the restaurant worker we assume has washed her hands. This is not the same thing as trusting professionals when it comes to matters of public policy: to say that we trust our doctors to write us the correct prescription is not the same thing as saying that we trust all medical professionals about whether the US should have a system of national healthcare. To say that we trust a college professor to teach our sons and daughters the history of the Second World War is not the same as saying that we therefore trust all academic historians to advise the president of the US on matters of war and peace. For these larger decisions, there are no licences or certificates. There are no fines or suspensions if things go wrong. Indeed, there is very little direct accountability at all, which is why laypeople understandably fear the influence of experts. How do experts go wrong? There are several kinds of expert failure.... RE: Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - Secular Sanity - Jun 14, 2017 Quote:Chomsky is regarded as a pioneer, even a giant, in his own field, but he is no more an expert in foreign policy than, say, the late George Kennan was in the origins of human language. Nonetheless, he is more famous among the general public for his writings on politics than in his area of expertise; indeed, I have often encountered college students over the years who are familiar with Chomsky but who had no idea he was actually a linguistics professor. I didn’t know that. Wikipedia has him down as an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. How the Scientific Peer Review Process Works "We don’t embody science in experts. The concept of experts is an authoritarian concept. Priests, for example, are authority figures. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, it is held by Catholics to be infallible. Well, in science nobody is infallible, not Einstein, not Feynman, not Newton, not Darwin, not anyone. So, it’s not embodied in the people. It’s embodied in the methods." RE: Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - C C - Jun 17, 2017 (Jun 14, 2017 02:43 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:Quote:Chomsky is regarded as a pioneer, even a giant, in his own field, but he is no more an expert in foreign policy than, say, the late George Kennan was in the origins of human language. Nonetheless, he is more famous among the general public for his writings on politics than in his area of expertise; indeed, I have often encountered college students over the years who are familiar with Chomsky but who had no idea he was actually a linguistics professor. History once seemed kind to polymaths before the 20th century who after initial schooling often seemed to achieve that status via their own autodidactic efforts. But then again, they didn't have today's technology assisted micro-scrutiny poring over their works for errors and waywardness, either. How the Scientific Peer Review Process Works Quote:"We don’t embody science in experts. The concept of experts is an authoritarian concept. Priests, for example, are authority figures. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, it is held by Catholics to be infallible. Well, in science nobody is infallible, not Einstein, not Feynman, not Newton, not Darwin, not anyone. So, it’s not embodied in the people. It’s embodied in the methods." Thanks to "reckless iconoclasts" like Bem, even the procedures may have rust spots in their stainless steel. - - - RE: Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - Secular Sanity - Jun 17, 2017 (Jun 17, 2017 09:00 AM)C C Wrote:Quote:We don’t embody science in experts. The concept of experts is an authoritarian concept. Priests, for example, are authority figures. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, it is held by Catholics to be infallible. Well, in science nobody is infallible, not Einstein, not Feynman, not Newton, not Darwin, not anyone. So, it’s not embodied in the people. It’s embodied in the methods. True. So where does that leave us? I would say that quiet a few of the personality traits of the Commander fits you. Quote:Rather than finding this process taxing they are energized by it, genuinely enjoying leading their teams forward as they implement their plans and goals. I know why I come here. Although, I, too, may be chasing the dragon of those ah ha moments of certainty, I want the freedom to explore without social or moral constraints. To understand more—more about myself. I can understand why Stryder maintains SciVillage, but you, you have put in a lot of effort, as well. Tell me why, C C. What do you want from this place? RE: Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - C C - Jun 17, 2017 (Jun 17, 2017 03:30 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I guess I'm just an eclectic, in the end. It's tempting to identify with some supposedly "new" ripple like metamodernism (below), but it kind of resembles a revamping of Hegelian clichés. There's more than just the oscillation of opposites, there's the interplay of obtuse and acute dissimilarities which don't neatly contrast in straight and right angle relationships. Metamodernist Manifesto (this one actually seems crouched in the arts, but cut-off at the point where it begins specializing in that) Quote: know why I come here. Although, I, too, may be chasing the dragon of those ah ha moments of certainty, I want the freedom to explore without social or moral constraints. To understand more—more about myself. SciVillage reminds me somewhat of an online coffee shoppe slash "mindmill lounge" or two we'd hang-out at in bygone times. A place where somebody might drop an interesting tidbit or a topic to chat about. Degrees of relaxed freedom for exploring something without necessarily the accompanying loads of histrionics dumped over the cliffs at other old mattress pits.[*] Also an intermittent excuse to just look at what's going on in the pop-news, essay, and review world (which oddly enough, I'd usually not keep much track of). I got tired of philosophy forums, preferring a mix of sci-tech, philosophy, and "eccentric". SciForums is often either too constricted by the usual "only science is meaningful" tropes or has its spasmodic history of runaway binges in banning. Sometimes the countryside cafe has its slow-paced perks. - - - - - - - [*] Ogden Standard-Examiner, Saturday, September 20, 1969: It all started one Thanksgiving when folk singer Arlo Guthrie decided to dump Alice's garbage over a cliff and got arrested by officer "Obie" for littering. Guthrie turned it into an 18- minute blues ballad called "Alice's Restaurant" which chronicled his arrest and trial in Stockbridge, Mass., and subsequent rejection by the Army on moral grounds. - - - RE: Proposal: It's time to reboot the relationship between expertise & democracy - Secular Sanity - Jun 18, 2017 I know that you said before that the word "interesting," is a synonymous with entertaining, but I see it as thought provoking. My grandmother is a centenarian and a famous author on transactional analysis. We used to butt heads a lot. I would call and ask, "How are you?" She would say, "I hate when you ask me that. It’s just an extension of hello. It’s not a sincere question." It was a brief conversation because she pissed me off. I decide to call her back, tell her that she’s projecting, and that I am sincere when I ask her. I want to know more about her before she dies. I want to know what it's like to be her age. I hung up on her without saying goodbye. Bless her heart...(talk about bygone times), I get a three page hand written letter. Dearest (well, you know my name). She goes on to tell me what it’s like to be 100 years old. How difficult it is to even write this letter. It was precious—something that I will always treasure. When I visit her now, we don’t talk much. I kiss her on the check—tears roll down hers, and all she can say is, "Oh, honey." So, C C, that was an interesting answer! I sincerely enjoy following the little trails within your replies. I had never even heard of Alice’s Restaurant before, or Arlo Guthrie for that matter, and it’s based on a true event. Quote:The term "massacree," used by Guthrie in the title to describe the whole scenario, is a colloquialism originating in the Ozark Mountains that describes "an event so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe." It is a corruption of the word massacre (itself of French origin, possibly from the now nearly extinct Missouri French dialect) but carries a much lighter and more sarcastic connotation, never being used to describe anything involving actual death. I’m sure you know that his father wrote "This Land is Your Land", but did you know that even though his father supported the war, he tried in vain to avoid the draft by joining the Merchant Marines? Not really a smooth move, considering that they had a higher casualty rate with 1,554 of their ships being sunk, and he ended up getting drafted anyway. Quote:Guthrie sent a demo recording Alice’s Restaurant to his father Woody Guthrie on his deathbed; it was, according to a "family joke," the last thing Woody heard before he died. Thanks, C C! |