Understanding when to trust or not trust the experts is a matter of philosophy of science, so I try to trust the philosophical consensus when evaluating their expert consensus. It’s a complicated question. When experts are speaking in their specialty, there’s no outside influence, and the product they are applying to specific case has been extensively tested, then yes, trust the experts.
The issue is that experts frequently speak outside their area of expertise, are influenced by bias and money, and are applying products that have not yet been extensively tested and refined. It’s not a matter of experts are never wrong, and the unwashed masses just need to learn to trust them. The problem is that they are frequently overconfident, wrong, and bought by outside influence, which has eroded the public’s trust in their expertise. I agree that many very basic problems have been worked out and we’d be better of trusting the experts.
But what if the vibes, and the podcast I listen to regularly tells me otherwise? My uncle last thanksgiving made a very compelling case that the Fed is a tool of Soros and Schwab, thus I know exactly what macroeconomic policy they should pursue (abolish central banks, return to the gold standard and bitcoin). These “economists” who say otherwise are clearly being paid off/compromised by the global elite and/or billionaires and/or coastal liberals to inflate away my earnings anyways.
Understanding when to trust or not trust the experts is a matter of philosophy of science, so I try to trust the philosophical consensus when evaluating their expert consensus. It’s a complicated question. When experts are speaking in their specialty, there’s no outside influence, and the product they are applying to specific case has been extensively tested, then yes, trust the experts.
The issue is that experts frequently speak outside their area of expertise, are influenced by bias and money, and are applying products that have not yet been extensively tested and refined. It’s not a matter of experts are never wrong, and the unwashed masses just need to learn to trust them. The problem is that they are frequently overconfident, wrong, and bought by outside influence, which has eroded the public’s trust in their expertise. I agree that many very basic problems have been worked out and we’d be better of trusting the experts.
But what if the vibes, and the podcast I listen to regularly tells me otherwise? My uncle last thanksgiving made a very compelling case that the Fed is a tool of Soros and Schwab, thus I know exactly what macroeconomic policy they should pursue (abolish central banks, return to the gold standard and bitcoin). These “economists” who say otherwise are clearly being paid off/compromised by the global elite and/or billionaires and/or coastal liberals to inflate away my earnings anyways.
On balance my guess is that society would be immensely richer if policy reflected consensus economics.
Maybe not everyone would be better off, but the average person probably would be.