Although social media and other new things might be important, I wonder whether this is deeper, and older, than that.
In the USA, people vote on basically everything, as though it makes sense to poll the public on who should be a dog catcher, a sheriff, ... a judge, even. Ask people for their opinion often enough, and they may infer that their opinion is valuable, even if uninformed.
Perhaps it's not that Americans don't trust experts, so much as they think that they are the experts.
The independent spirit seems to be baked into the cake, for a nation that began as a tax revolt.
Experts are busy being experts, hence they are not great at public image.
You know who are the expert at public image? Politicians, influencers, musicians and actors. They are so great that they suck all the love and admiration out of the population to attribute it to themselves and so only hatred remains, which of course it's duly offloaded onto experts.
Nobody would doubt Fauci if he was as great at public image as Brad Pitt, much like nobody doubted Brad Pitt would beat the virus in World War Z...people did grab onto their theatre seat, but only to see how it would happen.
Can we focus on the general concept as opposed to partizanship? Thank you.
It's the same for Kavanaugh, he's an expert in the field of law. Nobody would have doubted his character if he was as great at public image as say George Clooney in one of his many lawyer movies that he made.
But unfortunately Kavanaugh is not Clooney and half of the country labels him as an untrustworthy drunk and a liar... much like you label Biden and Fauci idiots.
If you are an expert and all of a sudden you are catapulted into the public life the only sentiment you'll find there is hatred and distrust because love and admiration are already assigned to other people, and as every accountant knows the 2 entries must balance.
I took a look at Fauci's wikipedia page. I lack the imagination to think of any plausible scenario in which he simply has lucked out for the past 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
I think it boils down to "hard" vs "soft". Hard subjects, like sending a man to the moon, we're actually surprisingly good at. Soft subjects, mostly in the field of humanities, we're atrocious at. Economics is something we're particularly bad at.
The future is inherently unknowable, second-order effects (let's call it the Law of Unintended Consequences) are either difficult to predict, uncertain, or just plain glossed over simplistically. Additionally there are problems with simplistic thinking, adaptivity of the system (the world doesn't work around "asymptotic", "stable" states, but shifts according to current inputs, acting as positive or negative feedback), unconscious or conscious bias, cupidity, and mal-intent.
When a rocket blows up on the launch pad, on the other hand, that's unambiguously bad. Time to rethink the design.
You make a great example here. Many folks are not expert in economics or social scientists and they criticize them to no end with no actual understanding. Maybe that's the problem of the scientists/researchers not being able to communicate the statistics and real understanding of uncertainty... which is exactly what Michael Lewis discusses in the article. It's not just lay people, but even scientists in different domains, who should know better, will criticize fields outside their expertise often with no real understanding.
If you want to understand why Americans don't trust experts, look to weaponized disinformation campaigns started by the Soviets, continued on by Koch and big oil. The PBS Frontline special on Big Oil in illuminating. Many resources on the history of Soviet and Russian disinformation campaigns.
These things exploit our fear that politicians lie to us. And not wrongly because some do and that results in terrible things. But they also prevent us from making progress.
> ...Unintended Consequences) are either difficult to predict, uncertain, or just plain glossed over simplistically
This made me laugh a little out loud as I was thinking about how poorly early mask policies were being set. It was the overconfidence of many experts that recommended against wearing masks because we had no (strong) evidence that they'd work. Only ensuring that N95 masks aren't hoarded by consumers is important.
Masks are a terrible example to pick because at the start they were accurately summarizing the state of knowledge, and saying the same thing (that masks don't work) in private E-Mails too.
The idea that they are super important was made up later and then accompanied (in the USA) by this ridiculous lie that it was about stopping hoarding. Sure enough, actual real world data shows no impact of masking on COVID. Masks have become a byword for dishonest fake experts who say whatever is ideologically expedient rather than what is actually true.
An expert will, left to themself, set the stage by explaining the conditions under which their conclusions apply, and the assumptions made. That is completely antithetical to the sound-bite-oriented media environment.
Expertise doesn't work out of context, and as the amount of information one copes with increases so does the necessity of setting it forth. That is part of the problem of successive boiling-down of e.g. Powerpoints.
All comments so I have seen so far touch upon a subject with partial validity. If we allow ourselves a more wider-abstraction then I would opine that (not exclusively to "Americans") we distrust experts because of two limits within any information transmission, 1) compression of information required to summarize something in 5 minutes is lossy and 2) natural degeneracy of the inverse problem required at the receiver (or in other words non-uniquness of retrieved message due to incomplete portfolio of assumptions between transmitter/receiver). [This is compounded with our memory also being temporal and incomplete].
That is horrendously sounding academic/technical description (apologies). In simple terms, one cannot convey all assumptions and entirety of knowledge on a given topic in 5 minutes summary or a headline. 1) Experts speak only about a subset of a problem to make it short, taking for granted implied assumptions -- which many people find easy to "attack" and poke holes at for being non-inclusive. 2) Expert opinion does/cannot state assumptions and consider multi-dimensionality of the interpretation problem which differ among other people.
[I take the liberty to attach to this opinion a corollary; that is why freedom of speech is the one of the greatest idea of modern civilization (and lack of it makes life living hell -- just read any old soviet literature). And now, in US and EU, we are cheering governments to establish the very organizations, "truth ministries", and set into motions processes that will do away with one of the most noble of principles. We can allow provision of good intentions which does not change anything.]
I feel that you shouldn't "trust" the experts but "understand" them.
It brings you a tad bit closer to reality when compared when just blindly trusting experts.
This is an embarrassing question to be asking with the implication that the skeptical are at fault.
Our institutions and experts have been so incomprehensibly incompetent over the last half decade, that it is morally and intellectually irresponsible to not approach nearly everything they say or do as simply another data point at best. Gospel? Absolutely not.
I remember when American experts claimed that Iraq had masses of WMDs. After being lied to for so long and with such disastrous consequences, I'm not surprised people have (unfortunately often to kneejerk extremes) taken 'experts' with a grain of salt.
My personal pet hypothesis is that people see experts to advocate one point only to be it revealed later they had a conflict of interest.
Some scientists were paid by tabaco/fossil fuel industries to spread doubt about harmful effects, generals (retired?) advocating for war while being consultants for firms that would benefit from it happening, leaded petrol, etc.
People don't trust experts because it's hard to distinguish between paid shill and real one. Especially in hyper capitalistic America, where almost anything is on table where it comes to money.
There are way too many people willing to cash in on their reputation just to get few dollars more. Maybe because lying to people have little to no consequences in the land of free speech(eg. doctors selling miracle cures and still able to practice).
I blame the media more than the experts. Does it matter if <0.1% of doctors took money from the tobacco companies without the media to amplify their influence? There are always frauds and corruption,but it's only when they're promoted and treated seriously that it's an issue.
Media obsesion with providing both sides of the controversy is just a disgrace. Is earth flat? We will bring both sides of the argument, so audience will perceive it as equal arguments and think there is 50:50 split between scientists. And journalists will think of it as virtue. Let's provide both sides and let audience decide. We are so unbiased we can't distinguish reality from fiction. And also this is why journalism is on decline. People can't get answers from it, so why pay for it.
Also it seems all media at this point is partisan and agenda driven. So they might in some cases get experts on both sides when the issue is inconsequential, but they will never present both sides or even the story if it makes the side they push look bad. Or unless forced reveal their failures.
You might have good honest expert, but they try to make sure they present only one side of their data. Thus leading other side rightfully discredit the entire thing.
For the same reason we don't trust media, politicians, etc. Because they are bought and paid for. They are glorified grifters like everyone else. The elites have an agenda to push. They buy the experts, media, politicians they need to achieve their ends. Of course it's not all experts, media, politicians. But there is enough that it taints everyone.
“I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.”
I don't think the full quote changes the essence - after all, experts typically belong to organisations with acronyms, their job is to say what they know is best, and 'consistently wrong' is a matter of opinion likely not supported by any evidence.
Turns out everything the experts said about Brexit was in fact correct.
The latest news is that we are delaying import checks until at least 2023 - our farmers have to go through mountains of paperwork to sell a turnip in Turin, whereas Belgium beef sails straight through onto our plates. But we have also had enough of exports (and farming I suppose), so that is all ok.
> Turns out everything the experts said about Brexit was in fact correct
You're completely wrong.
The trigger for that quote was "experts" claiming that a vote to leave would immediately trigger a massive recession in which 800,000 jobs would be lost. Not actually leaving, just voting to leave.
This claim was hugely important because it was used to justify the threat of massive tax rises and pension cuts if Leave won. In turn that boosted the remain vote significantly, often by scaring pensioners who would otherwise have been supporting Leave.
In reality the economy grew after the vote. There was no change in the growth trend at all. The experts were humiliated. Not just wrong in scale but wrong in direction. Moreover, there was no post-mortem or explanation of why they were wrong. Instead they did what you're doing here: immediately try and erase their massive "error" from history.
The experts turned out to be idiots. The people who wanted to vote leave but chose remain because they were afraid of the expert predicted recession were taken for a ride. And whilst those who lost keep trying to memory hole this history, the rest of us won't forget.
> Thousands of Americans are alive because of Arthur A. Allen. And thousands of people are alive around the world because of the work he did here. No one knows who he is. No one pays any attention to him. They furloughed him as if he’s useless.
I’m a big fan of Michael Lewis, although I don’t agree with his politics. Here, I think Michael Lewis gets it completely wrong.
I’m one of those people who doesn’t trust the “experts”. I’m not against career experts. I certainly don’t agree with political games where politicians periodically shut down the government and create this public spectacle.
My problem is with the so called experts who are merely entertainers at best and truly political hacks who claim that they have science and data to back up their political leanings. In reality, we don’t know where their data came from, if it is correct, if it is misrepresented or deliberately fudged. But these people and their political backers have this arrogant quality of telling everyone else that they’re wrong, that even if they look outside and see the sky is blue, it’s actually orange because their favorite organization did a study and concluded their reality is the universal truth.
I don’t trust the experts because the so called experts are disconnected from reality on so many topics that impact me day to day, and they’re not open to a debate or civil discourse. If you disagree with then, they start shouting that we’re all stupid, that we’re racists, that we hate gay people, Jews, and Muslims.
Of course… so the way many people respond to this is simply dismissing these “experts” as political hacks and nothing more.
In this comment, it appears you took the word "expert" and defined it to mean "people who aren't actually experts" and then used that to dismiss them. I hope you can understand this isn't a useful way to approach the conversation.
If you're getting accused of being racist and bigoted towards gay people, Jews, and Muslims, it would help to make an honest and friendly effort to spend your time reaching out and helping those people, rather than getting distracted with what these "political hacks" are saying.
It seems pretty useful. A big reason trust in experts is falling is because the label is so often wrongly applied to people who have no concrete demonstrable expertise but merely work for the right sort of institutions or have the right sort of politics. The word expert has become nearly as useless as the word racist or fascist.
Example: Imagine you're reading an article about the tech industry and you read the phrase, "according to experts". Do you think the people about to be quoted will be actual tech industry workers, or, academics? Almost always it's going to be the latter and you can repeat that for almost any field.
It brings up a valid concern. If the media (acting as the experts' proxy to the public) continually fail to distinguish between actual experts and political hacks is it really reasonable to expect other non-experts to do better?
> In this comment, it appears you took the word "expert" and defined it to mean "people who aren't actually experts" and then used that to dismiss them. I hope you can understand this isn't a useful way to approach the conversation.
Who exactly did I dismiss? Can you provide an example?
I believe this is part of the broader pattern of inequality in the US, and a sentiment that this inequality is unjustified. Some of of the anti-expert sentiment probably reflects a believe that the expertise is unjustified or false. However, I believe that much of it isn't so much a belief that expertise is not valued at all, but that too much certainty is attached to expert versus nonexpert ideas or opinions. That is, it's not that the expertise isn't valuable, but that the fallibility of expertise is underacknowledged.
Some of what's played out over the last few years in this regard is more a matter of principle or rejection of the societal and institutional structures that allow expertise to grow too much in power, or suppress individual autonomy, rather than because of disagreement with a particular expert position.
If you take away competition, and encourage inflated credentials through a society that overemphasizes them, and minimize people's ability to assert choice, you're going to end up with resistance. I sincerely believe this plays out on the left as well as right in different ways.
33 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadIn the USA, people vote on basically everything, as though it makes sense to poll the public on who should be a dog catcher, a sheriff, ... a judge, even. Ask people for their opinion often enough, and they may infer that their opinion is valuable, even if uninformed.
Perhaps it's not that Americans don't trust experts, so much as they think that they are the experts.
The independent spirit seems to be baked into the cake, for a nation that began as a tax revolt.
You know who are the expert at public image? Politicians, influencers, musicians and actors. They are so great that they suck all the love and admiration out of the population to attribute it to themselves and so only hatred remains, which of course it's duly offloaded onto experts.
Nobody would doubt Fauci if he was as great at public image as Brad Pitt, much like nobody doubted Brad Pitt would beat the virus in World War Z...people did grab onto their theatre seat, but only to see how it would happen.
It's the same for Kavanaugh, he's an expert in the field of law. Nobody would have doubted his character if he was as great at public image as say George Clooney in one of his many lawyer movies that he made.
But unfortunately Kavanaugh is not Clooney and half of the country labels him as an untrustworthy drunk and a liar... much like you label Biden and Fauci idiots.
If you are an expert and all of a sudden you are catapulted into the public life the only sentiment you'll find there is hatred and distrust because love and admiration are already assigned to other people, and as every accountant knows the 2 entries must balance.
The possible exception would be Albert Einstein.
The future is inherently unknowable, second-order effects (let's call it the Law of Unintended Consequences) are either difficult to predict, uncertain, or just plain glossed over simplistically. Additionally there are problems with simplistic thinking, adaptivity of the system (the world doesn't work around "asymptotic", "stable" states, but shifts according to current inputs, acting as positive or negative feedback), unconscious or conscious bias, cupidity, and mal-intent.
When a rocket blows up on the launch pad, on the other hand, that's unambiguously bad. Time to rethink the design.
If you want to understand why Americans don't trust experts, look to weaponized disinformation campaigns started by the Soviets, continued on by Koch and big oil. The PBS Frontline special on Big Oil in illuminating. Many resources on the history of Soviet and Russian disinformation campaigns.
These things exploit our fear that politicians lie to us. And not wrongly because some do and that results in terrible things. But they also prevent us from making progress.
And pretending that they are a big part of the problem.
This made me laugh a little out loud as I was thinking about how poorly early mask policies were being set. It was the overconfidence of many experts that recommended against wearing masks because we had no (strong) evidence that they'd work. Only ensuring that N95 masks aren't hoarded by consumers is important.
The idea that they are super important was made up later and then accompanied (in the USA) by this ridiculous lie that it was about stopping hoarding. Sure enough, actual real world data shows no impact of masking on COVID. Masks have become a byword for dishonest fake experts who say whatever is ideologically expedient rather than what is actually true.
In fact they are so wrong sometimes that the consequences are quite serious.
Experts don't deserve to be silenced, but they also should not have the power to force someone to do something[1]
[1] if someone is in the process of attacking someone else physically, then of course the use of force is justified.
Expertise doesn't work out of context, and as the amount of information one copes with increases so does the necessity of setting it forth. That is part of the problem of successive boiling-down of e.g. Powerpoints.
That is horrendously sounding academic/technical description (apologies). In simple terms, one cannot convey all assumptions and entirety of knowledge on a given topic in 5 minutes summary or a headline. 1) Experts speak only about a subset of a problem to make it short, taking for granted implied assumptions -- which many people find easy to "attack" and poke holes at for being non-inclusive. 2) Expert opinion does/cannot state assumptions and consider multi-dimensionality of the interpretation problem which differ among other people.
[I take the liberty to attach to this opinion a corollary; that is why freedom of speech is the one of the greatest idea of modern civilization (and lack of it makes life living hell -- just read any old soviet literature). And now, in US and EU, we are cheering governments to establish the very organizations, "truth ministries", and set into motions processes that will do away with one of the most noble of principles. We can allow provision of good intentions which does not change anything.]
Our institutions and experts have been so incomprehensibly incompetent over the last half decade, that it is morally and intellectually irresponsible to not approach nearly everything they say or do as simply another data point at best. Gospel? Absolutely not.
In any case, I don't know how it's justifiable for anyone to say "Colin Powell fucked up, so now I don't trust experts"
Some scientists were paid by tabaco/fossil fuel industries to spread doubt about harmful effects, generals (retired?) advocating for war while being consultants for firms that would benefit from it happening, leaded petrol, etc.
People don't trust experts because it's hard to distinguish between paid shill and real one. Especially in hyper capitalistic America, where almost anything is on table where it comes to money.
There are way too many people willing to cash in on their reputation just to get few dollars more. Maybe because lying to people have little to no consequences in the land of free speech(eg. doctors selling miracle cures and still able to practice).
You might have good honest expert, but they try to make sure they present only one side of their data. Thus leading other side rightfully discredit the entire thing.
https://www.london.edu/think/who-needs-experts
Turns out the British People have had enough of exports as well
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/11/uk-exports-...
“I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.”
I don't think the full quote changes the essence - after all, experts typically belong to organisations with acronyms, their job is to say what they know is best, and 'consistently wrong' is a matter of opinion likely not supported by any evidence.
Turns out everything the experts said about Brexit was in fact correct.
The latest news is that we are delaying import checks until at least 2023 - our farmers have to go through mountains of paperwork to sell a turnip in Turin, whereas Belgium beef sails straight through onto our plates. But we have also had enough of exports (and farming I suppose), so that is all ok.
You're completely wrong.
The trigger for that quote was "experts" claiming that a vote to leave would immediately trigger a massive recession in which 800,000 jobs would be lost. Not actually leaving, just voting to leave.
This claim was hugely important because it was used to justify the threat of massive tax rises and pension cuts if Leave won. In turn that boosted the remain vote significantly, often by scaring pensioners who would otherwise have been supporting Leave.
In reality the economy grew after the vote. There was no change in the growth trend at all. The experts were humiliated. Not just wrong in scale but wrong in direction. Moreover, there was no post-mortem or explanation of why they were wrong. Instead they did what you're doing here: immediately try and erase their massive "error" from history.
The experts turned out to be idiots. The people who wanted to vote leave but chose remain because they were afraid of the expert predicted recession were taken for a ride. And whilst those who lost keep trying to memory hole this history, the rest of us won't forget.
Indeed, the rest of us won't forget.
I’m a big fan of Michael Lewis, although I don’t agree with his politics. Here, I think Michael Lewis gets it completely wrong.
I’m one of those people who doesn’t trust the “experts”. I’m not against career experts. I certainly don’t agree with political games where politicians periodically shut down the government and create this public spectacle.
My problem is with the so called experts who are merely entertainers at best and truly political hacks who claim that they have science and data to back up their political leanings. In reality, we don’t know where their data came from, if it is correct, if it is misrepresented or deliberately fudged. But these people and their political backers have this arrogant quality of telling everyone else that they’re wrong, that even if they look outside and see the sky is blue, it’s actually orange because their favorite organization did a study and concluded their reality is the universal truth.
I don’t trust the experts because the so called experts are disconnected from reality on so many topics that impact me day to day, and they’re not open to a debate or civil discourse. If you disagree with then, they start shouting that we’re all stupid, that we’re racists, that we hate gay people, Jews, and Muslims.
Of course… so the way many people respond to this is simply dismissing these “experts” as political hacks and nothing more.
If you're getting accused of being racist and bigoted towards gay people, Jews, and Muslims, it would help to make an honest and friendly effort to spend your time reaching out and helping those people, rather than getting distracted with what these "political hacks" are saying.
Example: Imagine you're reading an article about the tech industry and you read the phrase, "according to experts". Do you think the people about to be quoted will be actual tech industry workers, or, academics? Almost always it's going to be the latter and you can repeat that for almost any field.
Who exactly did I dismiss? Can you provide an example?
Some of what's played out over the last few years in this regard is more a matter of principle or rejection of the societal and institutional structures that allow expertise to grow too much in power, or suppress individual autonomy, rather than because of disagreement with a particular expert position.
If you take away competition, and encourage inflated credentials through a society that overemphasizes them, and minimize people's ability to assert choice, you're going to end up with resistance. I sincerely believe this plays out on the left as well as right in different ways.