this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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(Goddamn, are we still discussing this? Ok...)
... So? At least with the explanation the layperson can decide if he trusts the work of the specialist, not so much on whether or not he knows how to do what he does but on how what he does will affect them. Explaining is taking the specialist's field to the common ground, not the layperson to the specialist's field.
I'm not shifting the blame, I'm highlighting what I think is the real crux of the problem, of which I think you would also agree: there are far more ignorant people than wise ones. The point is that I advocate educating the ignorant, while others prefer not to allow the ignorant to do anything on their own or make decisions.
Why do you assume from the outset that there are people who "simply don't understand"? In what sense "don't understand"? Because they don't want to understand or because they are idiots? And if you say that bullshit that "They don't understand because they don't understand!" then I'm going to assume that you are one of those who just "Don't understand" things. I am sick and tired of such a reductionist response.
Ok, and what should be done about it? Leave that ignorant population and let others, supposedly more qualified, decide how they should live? Should we go back to feudalism? Let the king and the nobles decide for the commoners? Fortunately (or unfortunately) it seems that we are heading that way! with the nobles of Sillicon Valley taking control of the Technofeudos of the Internet, and the new totalitarian kings taking control in the United States, Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, El Salvador, etc, etc...
In any of the senses you've listed or haven't listed. My point was that the outcome of the situation doesn't change regardless of the cause of the ignorance. What it does affect is how you address the problem.
A start would be acknowledging the existence of a problem so that we can start looking for a solution. I've been thinking about this for a while and what I think would be nice is if we had something akin to a direct democracy where people could vote on the areas where they are experts. For most people, that would be their own lives and the problems they face, so they essentially vote on what problems to fix rather than how to fix them. Let the experts take care of figuring out how to do the fixing. There's still the problem of how to find good subject experts in domains where you're not an expert yourself and keeping them accountable. I don't have a good answer for those right now.
OK, now we're into something...
It is true that it is problematic for the whole population to intervene even in aspects they do not fully or partially master. It makes more sense for the experts to decide in a democratic way than for the expert to make all the decisions, the former is democratic, maybe limited, but democratic after all; the latter is pure and simple Authoritarianism.
Still, I advocate that the commons have at least a notion, however basic, that the experts are voting. Ignorance and lack of transparency are the points that make the population easily manipulated, because they think "Why pay attention to this supposed expert who tells me nothing or at best gives me a half-baked complicated explanation? I prefer to listen to the flatearther who does not take me for a fool and gives me easy to understand explanations".