Day 46: Trust the experts

So a friend on Facebook shared this op-ed from the New York Times, which contained this blisteringly stupid message in the subhead: "The solution isn’t to try to think more carefully. It’s to trust the experts." That's right, after months of hearing that we should stop thinking for ourselves and just "trust the experts," someone is saying it outright.

But it gets worse. Oh, it gets so much worse. I couldn't believe someone actually put this in a New York Times column, so I went to look it up. Guess when it was written? February 11, 2020. Yes, this column telling us to "trust the experts" was written back when these "experts" were telling us things like: "For most of us, the seasonal flu, which has killed as many as 25,000 people in the United States in just a few months, presents a much greater threat than does the coronavirus" or "Throughout the United States, there’s been a rush on face masks (most of which won’t help against the virus)."

That's right, everybody — don't think for yourself and go out and wear a mask. Trust the experts! Naturally, it's easy to dump on someone being this wrong, but consider for a moment that we're still being told to "trust the experts" on everything from the coronavirus to climate change over and over, neglecting to consider that the experts have often been wrong. And when it's your job, your business, and your livelihood that's relying on these "experts," who suffer no meaningful consequences for being wrong, maybe it's better to just go with your "gut."

Full article here: https://archive.is/z7ZcY