I attempted to explain to the journalist that the world we live in has never been more complex or filled with things that require work and patience to understand. Though democracy lovers may shiver at the idea, the penalty for living in the civilisation we currently walk through is that we must sometimes accept our ignorance and defer to others.
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We should not trust people just because they are experts, but if we are not prepared to put the time and effort in to understand something, to take a step beyond that column we read in The Guardian or “what my friend Phil told me”, then we are placed in a position where must defer and try and make the best decision we can as to who we should defer to.
This is some pretty good stuff. I’ve mentioned things like this before — science is a meritocracy of ideas, not a democracy; similar to something Isaac Asimov said
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
There is a reality that you have to accept: that there are things you don’t know and will never learn, so at some point you will have to trust an expert. Fortunately for people, weeding out the charlatans and lower tiers of self-proclaimed experts is not too difficult, if you have armed yourself with some basic knowledge and thinking skills — things that some basic science literacy can provide.
There has been a sad reminder of this here in the UK recently — a measles epidemic in Wales that has its roots in a misguided campaign a decade ago against the MMR vaccine. Last week the BBC interviewed one of the leaders of that campaign (someone with no apparent medical or scientific expertise) and it was appalling. The person was not asked if she felt partially responsible for the outbreak, and she was allowed to repeat her theory that MMR causes autism — something that has been emphatically disproven by real science.