Have people really had enough of experts?

From my observations of public discourse in the USA, partisan divisiveness and the need to champion “our” side of an argument while pouring scorn on “their” side has come to infect virtually any issue about which differing points of view exist. One could, for example, construct a complex flow chart to illustrate the way right-wing detestation of Al Gore led to dismissal of the reality of global warming along with countless subsidiary positions such as fossil fuels good, renewables bad; EVs are rubbish (even Elon’s); Greta Thunberg is a horrible person; climate scientists (sorry “scientists”) have engaged in a massive conspiracy in order to facilitate One World Government; and so on.

While I believe the MAGA movement has been largely responsible for this sorry state of affairs, we liberals have not been totally innocent. There has been a tendency to take very rigid positions about transgender issues, immigration and education, for example, simply because they stand in stark contrast to MAGA dogma. Nuance or admissions that MAGA people have points worth considering often attract a torrent of condemnation for letting the side down.

It’s hard to see how expert findings and opinions will do anything in this environment other than be used as tools in the broader fight. There’s an article in an academic journal that finds limited evidence Ivermectin reduced the average hospitalisation times of Covid patients? Science proves Fauci a fraud and a liar! But this article finding children of same sex parents suffer no significant disadvantages compared to others? Social science is nothing but woke drivel!

Consequently I believe it’s a lost cause trying to change the minds of committed MAGA cultists, and a waste of time trying. They are simply impervious to rational argument. They will and do seize on even the most idiotic talking points to dismiss hard evidence that does not conform to their predetermined narrative. And that really is the kernel of the issue: for zealots, the narrative comes first. Evidence and logic are selectively introduced afterwards to validate it, and dismissed if they don’t.

The challenge for the academy is to maintain the trust of the non-zealots. Unfortunately they also tend to be the people who have the least interest in conventional means of disseminating knowledge. I admire those who persist in looking for ways to meet this difficult challenge.

Haven’t we already answered this question? The US COVID response strongly supports pessimism.

I’ve seen attitudes towards expertise change a great deal since I finished college in 1987, not only (or even primarily) among less educated people, but among the college-educated and those with graduate degrees (not necessarily or even primarily doctorates). I’m personally interested in questions about whether or when it’s acceptable for some specialized subgroup to view the world differently from everybody else. What I’ve found, for the most part, is scholars saying of course it isn’t, really, because it’s arrogant, and scholars saying of course it is actually arrogant but if specialists behave well it’s necessary and people shouldn’t rebel against it. This, frankly, doesn’t change the basic political situation, which is that educated people who work in communicating to the general public (particularly those who graduated from college after 1993 or so) think roughly the latter, and “MAGA” think roughly the former, and both can claim scholarly support. Something like “erudite armies clashing by candlelight” is somewhat what it feels like, except that the battle appears to be here on the beach.

I think it’s past time, unfortunately, to assume people mean what they say. If Trump supporters and others say they think the whole modern, pluralist thing is a mistake, and they’re willing to die, and have their children die, and have other people’s children die, so that they can life in a way their grandparents would have recognized and approved, let’s not say “oh they don’t understand what the consequences are.” If they say “the one thing I ask is that you don’t expect me to be aware of what people unlike me do even if my life depends on those people” or “it’s mean of you to expect those people to be aware of you and what you believe” that’s maybe what they really believe.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to tell those who disagree with them that they have to get out of the way because the world actually does really revolve around MAGA types and always has. The path going forward is not going to be gently coddling Trump supporters while they rage, so in 100 years maybe we’ll have a society that both they and academics can approve.

This is a thought provoking post. But I’m so far behind it isn’t obvious to me that people have systematic belief systems. Not even sure that a truly systematic, coherent and comprehensive, belief system is even possible? And worse, it isn’t obvious to me which way razor “one does not want to be patronized by someone who (one thinks) looks down upon one’s own values and lifestyle…” cuts? The phrase “holier than thou” comes to mind unbidden.

one key factor that will never happen in your hypothetical is that staffers saying “there’s nothing we can do” to a suffering person will never blame DOGE, republican cuts, or any other political force. if the staffer does accidentally blurt out that a broccoli-haircut catamite from x, the everything app, replaced everyone in the office with a chatbot telling all callers to eat three rocks a day and put glue on their pizza, the person will not accept that statement as true. they will be screamed at by the person for being a democrat plant. the person will then say and believe that the cuts were not severe enough – after all, a DEMOCRAT refused to help me, a good american! the staffer will then be fired and their family will be targeted by the blue checks on x, the everything app, for torture and elimination

How far can a government go in harming its own people before it loses support? And what does it mean if this form of harm happens via an attack on public knowledge institutions […] in which expert knowledge is hosted?

Sounds like a description of the dissolution of the monasteries, doesn’t it? Or – on a much more modest scale – Bourguiba’s closing of al-Zaytouna University in Tunisia. Historically, such decisions have rarely been driven by resentful voters, even if appeals were made to the wider populations. It sufficed that there was a split among “experts” with different ideas about what kind of knowledge rightly conferred that status – providing, of course, welcome opportunities to plunder those institutions’ resources.

In a functioning democracy, voters are supposed to have the last word. But as you say, they need to trust experts – who accordingly get to shape much of their decision-making. What happens when a critical mass of them are not so much distrusting experts as trusting ones unworthy of their trust?

I think there are two aspects of the OP that need to be looked at. The first is about understanding the loss of hegemony experienced by professional expertise in various fields leading up to the DOGE assault on the public sector. The second is the expected effect of these attacks on future politics.

For the first, it helps to look at it from the perspective of the Silicon Valley crowd. They think we are in the midst of an epochal change in which AI will replace most professional labor. This can be managed efficiently by the private sector, since profitability is a reliable guide to how to accomplish this. (Yes, there will be lots of mistakes, but these can be corrected.) The public sector, lacking this metric, is clueless. That’s why an outside, profit-aware force is required to wipe the slate clean and build it back up again on an AI-centric basis. The Thiel-Andreessen-Musk etc. axis is quite explicit about all this. From there we can go on to examine why they believe these things, and also why most of the ownership class in this country seems willing to go along with them, for the time being at least.

As for the second, from my reading on the history of regulation in the English-speaking world (I am generally ignorant about everywhere else), the demand for expertise did not come from the population in general, but was part of the movement for rational management, public health and the like whose roots were in the professional class but also attracted sufficient support from the wealth owners. Specifically in occupational safety and health (my home field), yes, workers demanded regulation, but the expertise aspect was not a rank and file concern. Union leaders with professional class connections were active supporters of epidemiology, toxicology, etc., however.

The relevance of this is that I don’t see how the much-mediated effects of a destruction of public expertise will in itself alter its politics. The center-left can still muster a lot of support among its “brahmin” constituency, but in the political economy we currently live in, the crucial question is whether the notion of expertise-driven rational management still has a claim on the owners and managers of capital. If AI proves to be a bubble, which I think it will, I expect that claim to be renewed.

Incidentally, the anti-professional-management movement, while strongest on the right, is not confined to it. I see the “abundance” trope moving along a parallel line—not the denigration of expertise altogether, but an argument for significantly scaling back expertise-driven management in favor of the technological revolution that will supposedly replace it.

“People do not like being patronized and being told what’s good for them.”

Some people, sure. But I don’t think this is a culturally universal truth, even within the United States. Many people, not infected with a pugnacious and absurd sense of self-sufficiency and pride, would likely be thrilled to be told what is good for them, so as to better seek their own well-being. It is “patronizing” to give knowledge to the ignorant in the same way that it is “patronizing” to give food to the hungry. The fact that some recipients resent it is more a symptom of cultural pathology than an argument against “patronizing”.

Perhaps it’s useful to reflect on the value of appropriate intellectual humility for everyone, not just experts whose advanced education and aptitudes make them susceptible to delusions of grandeur. The un-experts should also be warned away from delusions of adequacy (in specific domains). The survival of democracy may depend on it; societies based on the popular election of leaders and representatives need electors to be humble enough to recognize and vote for their betters. If electing one’s peers (or anyone who can appear “relatable” for 30 seconds at a time) is good enough, why not just dispense with parties and campaigns, and just draw lots instead.

why plumbing is not something academic?

In few years it will be, and you will only be allowed to unblock toilets if you took the toilet unblocking module in your masters (fee £10000 for home students). Until it’s automated away a couple of years later.

Any analysis that treats “normal people” as a homogeneous group is too simplistic.

The reactions to harm caused by the Trump administration will differ depending on what subsection of “normal people” we are talking about. Two groups are the ‘problem’. First, about a third of the US population is in the grasp of a cult. If masked ICE goons comes into their house and literally take the food and medicine away from them while they watch, they will with either “I still support you, sir Mr President, of course, sir, I know you are doing what you need to do to protect our country, but could I perhaps have some of my food back?” or “this is exactly what I want to happen to other people, only I didn’t expect it to happen to me” or “I never wanted food and medicine anyway”. There are many stories like these going around in recent weeks; cult members who lost their government jobs or had their spouses deported who still cannot admit the cult leader may not be a nice person. The best case is always that they temporarily realise that what they experienced is unfair, but it is only unfair because it happened to them, they never see it as something that should not happen to anybody.

Second, about another third of the US population is so poorly informed and has such goldfish-like memories that it doesn’t matter how badly they are hurt, they will not understand what is going on and how they could vote to signal their displeasure. Most of them vaguely think that Trump just bought Norway and made Bitcoin legal tender, but they will not understand that his administration will have been responsible for Medicaid cuts, in the same way and for the same reason that my cat doesn’t understand how our air conditioning unit works. Some of them likely think Hillary Clinton is president. (Note that I make no claims that this phenomenon is unique to the USA. I sometimes randomly think back to an interview with a British voter who was convinced that Labour had been in government during the Cameron and May years because her local MP was Labour.)

The first group cannot be convinced, and “don’t you realise your mistake” is not going to work on them. Regardless of whether the USA becomes a totalitarian dictatorship for a generation or returns to something more resembling the status quo ante, these particular voters will keep hitting themselves in the face with a frying pan until they die. The only hope that the next generation will contain fewer of them.

The second group could be convinced, and I believe “don’t you realise your mistake” could work with them because voting Trump isn’t part of their identity. However, there is nobody sufficiently competent and prominent or influential who even tries to inform them. We do not have something like the labour movement of 100-150 years ago that systematically tried to educate themselves after having been failed by the school system. We have influencers with the incentive to say what gets the most clicks, and that structure reinforces ignorance and strong emotions.

Finally, even if you can convince enough people to organise a backlash against the dismantling of the USA in favour of a few oligarchs, what is the realistic best-case outcome? Four years of Democratic administration that stresses bipartisanship, that fails to jail Trump and the goons who illegally abducted innocent people, that fails to expropriate Musk and Murdoch, that tries some half-hearted improvements but then says “okay, I guess that’s that” when opposed by the supreme court or one filibustering senator, and in 2032 MAGA is back under its new leader because low-information swing voters are disillusioned.

I hesitate to comment on this here because I suspect this may be one of those “fish don’t realize they’re wet” scenarios, but my sense is that the deliberate, intentional (almost exclusively leftward) politicization of academia has lead those (roughly half of US voters — give or take depending on the year) who don’t share left wing politics to develop a deep-seated distrust of credentialed experts. This trend has been building for a gneration at least, but Trump and the pandemic really supercharged it. There was an important epistemological and practical wisdom to academia endeavoring to confine itself to an apolitical pursuit of truth (just as there was in the press and permanent bureaucracy from trying to do the same in their domains). Perhaps we’ll return to that someday, but I’m not yet optimistic.

To get a sense of how this looks to non-leftists, consider the libertarian-leaning economist Arnold Kling who has written a long series of ‘Road to Sociology Watch’ posts discussing his sense that Economics is well on it’s way to becoming as thoroughly left-wing as Sociology. For example:

The bad thing is that the profession is rapidly becoming as extreme left as sociology. (Johnny) Cochrane is 64. I think his is the last generation of economists to include a significant libertarian or conservative cohort. When they’re gone, there will be no one left in top tier economics departments to make the case for markets or for politically neutral research.

The point isn’t whether or not he’s right. The point is that this is how the world appears to him (and people like him). And keep in mind that he’s certainly not an anti-intellectual or a Trump fan. Not only that, but the problems have recently deepened in the US with the publication of Original Sin. Non-leftists are unlikely to believe that concealing Biden’s deterioration was carried out exclusively by a small cadre of White House insiders and that all of the hard-nosed expert journalists in the respectable press were universally bamboozled (‘shocked, shocked to discover …’). And now we find out that Biden has advanced prostate cancer that he allegedly did not have in November — a claim that is not quite impossible, but not very plausible.

But let me finish one on positive note — one of those swallows that does not make summer. Maybe, just maybe, Trump cornering the political market on protectionism (and lately even price controls) will lead the left back toward economic (and maybe even other forms?) of liberalism? Or at least an alliance of convenience with liberals. An old guy can hope anyway.

Following up Alex @22 and mw@21, there’s no doubt that support for free market economics has declined within the profession. That’s not because of some kind of plot (even the slightest acquaintance with the hiring process would make it clear that no such plot is possible) but because the resurgence of free market theory in the 1970s and 1980s (new classical macro, Chicago anti-antitrust, privatisation) mostly didn’t stand up to empirical testing. That’s one reason most of the big rightwing thinktanks, like Heritage, have switched to culture war.

And, as the tariff example shows, the free-market vs interventionist divide in econ is almost orthogonal to the left-right divide in US politics. The starting position in the 1970 was where most intervention favored workers and lower income groups, so the right supported free markets. But now that they have the whip hand, they are all in on Big Government, provided it helps (or harms) the right people.

I think there is a conflation in the common mind of professionals (broadly, people with considerable expertise) and managers. Managers claim expertise, and very often are credentialed. They convey the advice of professionals (selectively, edited …). Given their role as enforcers and their frequent incompetence, managers as a class are widely derided, even hated, feelings which transfer whenever they claim to be merely applying professional advice.

J-D @24. “If the way the world appears to me (and to people like me) is that we are the victims of diabolical forces manipulated by malevolent sorcerers, then whether we are right is very much to the point.”

Yes, and no. If half the electorate believe this, it would be highly consequential regardless of whether or not they were correct. And we would be well advised to ask how they all came to believe such a thing (and also whether ‘victims of diabolical forces manipulated by sorcerers’ is actually an accurate summary of their beliefs).

JohnQ @ 23 “That’s not because of some kind of plot”

No, not some kind of plot. It was just many tens of thousands of people pushing in the same direction over several decades trying to win … and who gradually, inexorably did win. No conspiracy, no organization, just an enormous number of like-minded people doing what they thought was right. This is essentially Noah Smith’s point in the piece I linked.

And it’s not just that academia became more thoroughly left wing. At the same time, it also became more politically active, with activism being ever more considered part of a scholar’s responsibility. Activism just not in the sense of, say, publicly speaking up on political issues, but rather activism incorporated into their academic work. DEI statements aren’t (or weren’t) just modern loyalty oaths — it wasn’t enough to sign on line. Job candidates have been expected to explain how they would incorporate the values of DEI into their scholarly work. And mean it. And actually do it.

In any event, we are at a point where Trump and his allies see academia, big tech, and the permanent federal bureaucracy as major sources of left-wing power, money, and influence, and certainly not without reason. From a Machiavellian perspective, it makes a lot of sense that bringing them to heel and cutting them down is a high priority. And being unprincipled, Trump is more than willing to use any tool at hand. To smite academia, a combination of repurposed civil rights complaints and major research funding cuts seems a potent combination. For the federal bureaucracy, DOGE has been the attack dog. And for big tech, continuing Lina Khan style antitrust enforcement that seeks to punish bigness for its own sake appears to be the preferred approach (though it’s quite possible that Trump will ease off once he has twisted arms hard enough and squeezed enough compliance out of Google, et al).

“The starting position in the 1970 was where most intervention favored workers and lower income groups”

It still does. Or at least workers (in the private sector anyway) and lower income groups certainly still favor intervention. And Trump captured them (he essentially executed a hostile takeover of the Republican party in part by bringing in these groups in much larger numbers).

I like Peter T’s distinction between managers and professionals, and in the context of the OP I think it’s worth pointing out that managers are the ones who speak the same language as the ordinary people and general culture. Professionals are the ones who speak specialized languages and languages of science. The right-wingers who pretend to be concerned about “viewpoint diversity” generally lump them all together, along with academics and artists, as “elites.”

The Streeck article Engels linked was interesting, if chronologically kind of confusing as to what happened after the book when to press vs. what was in WS’s book. It’s been interesting to try to find statements from well known leftists about details of some of the things happening in the US. It’s not surprising that Europeans like Streeck dont feel that bad about the deconstruction of US AID. It’s more surprising that people like Naomi Wolf don’t mention it at all. We all know about the CIA connections and yet HIV and famine prevention are tough to discount. I doubt Europeans like Streeck are naive about their own countries’ motivations in dealings with the rest of the world. How all the mental chaos plays out seems as unpredictable as how the material chaos will.

mw,

I can now see a bit better where you are coming from, but that is simply not my experience. Academia is not very politically active, certainly much less than, say, megachurches. Politics do not come up in lectures or hiring panels, they play no role in daily work. As a researcher, I may sometimes have a short conversation touching on politics over lunch, but to the effect of “did you hear the crazy thing politician xyz said yesterday?”, not “we should all get together and agitate for higher immigration, let’s coordinate how”. You know, normal people doing things like others at every other workplace. Politics would never be raised in work meetings, as that would be extremely inappropriate. To be more specific, I work in an area where conservation of biodiversity is a central issue, but we are not political about it, as our role is that of evidence-based expert advisors, not activists.

So, I have no idea what you are talking about, with three caveats.

First, as I argued in my previous comment, a researcher merely stating the evidence may appear political to a conservative who has politicised an issue that should not have been politicised. Today, I can write, “this species is threatened by habitat fragmentation”, and it is not political. In five years, writing that same statement could be Political, if a well-funded movement has in the meantime spread a biodiversity extinction denialist conspiracy campaign.

Second, there are some subfields of the humanities that are explicitly, unavoidably politicised, like gender studies. They all have in common that they are a minuscule part of academia and affect virtually nobody, kind of like the controversy around trans athletes in sport. It is a useful moral panic, nothing more.

Third, DEI statements. This is why I now say, I can see a bit better where you are coming from. But to my understanding, the point of DEI is to ensure that you don’t hire a white dude when a black woman would be the most qualified candidate. The conspiracy theory is that DEI is to ensure that you don’t hire a white dude despite him being the most qualified candidate. Well, I invite you first to look at academia under DEI and actually count how many white men are still in top positions. Then, I invite you to look at Trump’s and Musk’s approach to hiring and firing and decide for yourself what is going on once the anti-DEI crowd get their wish. Draw your conclusions about what DEI is, or was, and how the world will be without efforts to fight discrimination.

mw says “… left-wing power, money, and influence, and certainly not without reason.”

Liza H asks; “Have people really had enough of experts?”

Any chance mw you are able to connect the two concepts?

mw “left-wing power, money, and influence, and certainly not without reason” begs rhe quesrion mw…

Q for mw: (putting aside my loathing the left right binary) Who has the most money, influence, power, violence & religious dogma? Left or Right?

And +1 for JimV @28.

Back to “Have people really had enough of experts?”
Are any experts “right”.

In any event, we are at a point where Trump and his allies see academia, big tech, and the permanent federal bureaucracy as major sources of left-wing power, money, and influence, and certainly not without reason.

Certainly not with reason.
Certainly without reason.

@Alex, a topic like biodiversity seem inherently political to me?

A statement like “this species is threatened by habitat fragmentation” can indeed be factual statement, but it has a political context. It implies that biodiversity is something to care about, that losing species is a bad thing, that the risk of losing species should be studied int he first place, that measures might have to taken to prevent habitat fragmentation if the impact on some species is large enough, etc.

Many people do not agree on that! They might not actively want to destroy species, but it ranks very low for them. If there is any choice between habitat loss or hampering some economic project, they will always support the economic project.

From that political perspective, studying habitat loss is a waste of effort at the least. Possibly worse, it might complicate planning cycles or even provide ammunition to people who want costly measure to preserve species. When someone is willing to let a species go extinct, then a purely factual report describing that result is still a political barrier. It might convince some wishy-washy centrists to oppose the expansion of valuable industries.

And from that perspective

Another not-insignificant aspect to this is IT and now AI having a continuing impact on experts similar to moveable type’s impact on priests… buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Anyone who thinks academia (or DEI statements) are “left-wing” doesn’t understand what the word means.

The history of Cholera riots shows us a complicated public attitude toward experts. This article tries to explain why riots were not the universal response to anti-Cholera regulations. Our stimulus payments during COVID might have staved off an even more dramatic reaction to the pandemic rules.

“As a pandemic swept through Europe in 1831, a riot broke out in Königsberg. “Groups of people who did not agree with the cholera regulations assembled [on July 28] for the funeral of a journeyman carpenter,” the Prussian State Gazette reported. After refusing a request to disperse, the dissenters “invaded the Police building and threw files and papers into the street. The military fired on the crowd and eight people were killed.” The newspaper attributed the revolt to “a general misunderstanding of the interpretation of the measures against the cholera.”
https://reason.com/2020/04/15/from-the-cholera-riots-to-the-coronavirus-revolts/

I think some of the distrust of experts has been earned, because a lot of cases of experts being bought have come up over the years. John Quiggin’s “Zombie Economics” is an entire book devoted to experts holding on to long exploded ideas. We have had decades of “experts” claiming that Roundup is harmless to humans until it finally had to be admitted that it was not. We have had entire fields of forensic science falsely convict people until they were rebutted: fire science was proven unscientific nonsense, blood spatter, fiber matching, linguistic patterns as evidence of deception or even guilt. (I guess the last was an example of the even longer term unscientific field of lie detection – which to be fair G.K. Chesterton spotted as nonsense when it was first invented (in spite of his not being an expert on psychology.) (Though also to be fair, given the lies Chesterton uttered as part of his promotion of really vile Anti-Semiticism, maybe he was an expert of sorts on lying.) And of course most of the doubt of experts is aimed in the wrong direction – at genuine science. But the number of experts who have been willing to sell themselves to ignore truth for the sake of money or ideology probably is at least a secondary cause of the discrediting of expertise. (I remember a book that dealt with some of this, “Toxic Sludge is Good for You,” published back in the mid 90s.)

Alex, perhaps from the MW pole all directions are left but I still think being left-wing should involve opposing capital somehow rather than greasing its wheels.

In unrelated news: why does the Queen of Denmark have to study at Harvard?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/23/belgium-future-queen-caught-up-harvard-foreign-student-ban

Gar Lipow @45

You point to an interesting divergence between experts and expertise, or experts-as-such vs experts-as-grifters. Although it is disappointing how often people turn from experts-as-grifters to grifters-as-grifters, rather than to experts-as-experts. Something about the attraction of relatable authenticity, perhaps…

Wrong answer. Actually—

The coolest thing about Harvard is that it’s such a mixing pot,” Mr. Jasny said. “That’s a huge part of the college experience here, and it will be a really massive shame if that goes.” Prime Minister Mark Carney is a Harvard graduate, and according to the Harvard Crimson, his daughter, Cleo Carney, is a student at the university.

@27 mw

You’ve got the causation backward, at least as far as physical science is concerned. The right wing has gone all-in on denying scientific evidence since the 80s and this trend has only accelerated. So scientists face a choice: either pretend that 2+2 = 5 as the right wing would tell us, or preserve their sanity by breaking with the right.

Does anybody even on the right really think it would be a good idea to have no formal test of competence for professional drivers, surgeons, engineers, nurses, pharmacists, lawyers, etc.?

Now do software development. Increasingly, it’s the software that’s going to kill you. Over the decades, I have seen multiple efforts by state legislatures to require programmers be licensed, or at minimum, overseen directly by someone with a license. All the ones I followed failed miserably once a whole bunch of employers of programmers in those states said that they would relocate rather than conform.

Experts, any answers for;
Q1: “There must be ways for bringing the message that we all need the expertise of others across that avoid the perception of this being an arrogant attack on one’s dignity.”
Q2: “There must be ways of creating meaningful relations between experts and citizens that avoid this.”

#1 Trust. Concensus. Then influencers. Then family & friends. And a dose of epistemic humility. LH: “… but I am certain that it involves a great dose of epistemic humility on the part of”…
… everyone communicating, and,
“to the places where people can be met personally.”…
… at their personal mindset.

In the article below re the study, the last line is… “We have to speak smarter.”. This is a statement by an expert.

For some persons as “Maria Regina rightly pointed out, there might really be different logics” … “and it might require more thought what it actually means to translate between scientific expertise and the lived experiences of lay people.”, … bourne out and discussed in the study below.

Doubt you’ll learn too much new about climate skeptics, yet the methods, segmentation, and use of AI seems to be warranted (said I with caution!)… “leveraging AI in psychological research to analyze large datasets in a time- and cost-efficient manner offers significant opportunities to enhance our understanding of human behavior and develop strategies to mitigate this crisis.”

The Australian Labor Party at the recent election used “ai” (sans ai, I could have easily done the same in the early 1990’s) recently geolocated all social media adverts by postcode (still a shotgun, just a narrow choke) and customised with local details. So simple. And effective. I could not have segement, sentiment analysed and produced indiviually tatgeted “different logics” and “and the lived experiences of lay people” like big techbros massive personal datasets and ai is now able to accomplish. For good or ill.

“What would change your mind about climate change? We asked 5,000 Australians – here’s what they told us

Published: April 23, 2025
Kelly Kirkland, The University of Queensland, Abby Robinson, The University of Melbourne, Amy S G Lee, The University of Melbourne, Samantha Stanley, UNSW Sydney, Zoe Leviston, Australian National University
…
“In research out today, we asked more than 5,000 Australians a simple question: what would change your mind about climate change? Their answers reveal both a warning and an opportunity.
…
“If we want public support for meaningful climate action, we can’t just shout louder. We have to speak smarter.”
https://theconversation.com/what-would-change-your-mind-about-climate-change-we-asked-5-000-australians-heres-what-they-told-us-254329

“A thematic analysis of what Australians state would change their minds on climate change

Amy S. G. Lee +6.
Published: 22 April 2025

“What do Australians believe would change their current opinions about climate change? In this study, we used audience segmentation analysis through the Six Americas Short Survey to identify groups of climate opinion holders within a representative sample of Australians. We had 4857 participants tell us what it would take to change their current opinions about climate change and leveraged OpenAI’s Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) to identify the presence or absence of themes (Nothing, Evidence and Information, Trusted Sources, Action, and Unsure) and subthemes in their responses.

GPT performed at near-human levels, proving to be a highly useful tool for thematic analysis. Our analyses revealed that strong climate denialists and believers tended to display greater dogmatism, with increased likelihood of stating that nothing would change their mind and lower likelihood of being unsure. Results also highlighted the need for diverse forms of evidence and information and the importance of trusted sources of information across audience segments. These findings provide support for GPT’s utility in managing large datasets in the social sciences and offer participant-informed insights into climate opinion change.”

Keywords Climate change, Audience segmentation, Six Americas, Large language models, Chat GPT, Opinion change
…
“Conclusion
Climate change is thought to be the most catastrophic existential crisis facing the world75. Now more than ever, we must understand public views about the existence and causes of climate change and what might shift opinions towards both skeptical and accepting orientations. Our analyses revealed important insights about what it would take to change Australians’ current climate beliefs, including opinion-change resistance in extreme segments, the universal importance of evidence and information and trusted sources, and the value of framing climate action in a way that resonates with different audiences. We also demonstrated GPT API’s efficacy in identifying themes from qualitative text in a large, representative dataset. GPT exceeded minimum reliability standards, achieving “almost perfect” agreement with two human coders. Given climate change’s rapid progression, leveraging AI in psychological research to analyze large datasets in a time- and cost-efficient manner offers significant opportunities to enhance our understanding of human behavior and develop strategies to mitigate this crisis.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96714-z
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96714-z.pdf

@Alex Sl 52

IMHO the point isn’t even credentialism per se. It’s more that some groups see “people with academic credentials” as something like a class in itself, and therefore believe that this class is doing its own interests.

On whether there is really a “class” of people with high education this is a bit ambiguous: in some sense there is, but in other it’s too eterogeneous (does someone who has a degree but can’t find a good job count as a “brahmin” or part of the PMC? and how good should the good job be?), however the rethoric of the right insists on this point so many meople in the right totally see the PMC as a real class, that they believe is antagonist to them.

If instead the question is to what degree leftists should self-flagellate about this, personally I think that to the degree leftish parties are trying to reduce income inequality, whereas rightish parties are in practice increasing it, we are safe.

A quick, random thought.

While some of the points raised (both in the OP and the comments section) seem reasonable, I´m not entirely convinced they are the whole picture. For example, while I think there is truth to the notion of class-fragmentation resulting from (and please feel free to substitute your preferred phrasing here) the “expert-academic/non-expert-academic” divide [1], many on the US right [2] seem to be perfectly comfortable with “expert-academics” providing they are appropriately subordinated to ideology – and indeed they have made some effort to create academic-seeming institutions of their own [3]. As tempting as it may be to entertain the notion of anti-elite backlash [4], I do hope I shall be forgiven for expressing just a soupçon of scepticism that rejecting an overbearing exercise of power is a defining characteristic of Trump supporters. To engage in a degree of decidedly non-expert armchair speculation, my suspicion is this is a manifestation of the mechanisms of reproduction of power within a hierarchical-inclined social group with a well-funded political-media framework.

And this, I think, gets to the heart of the issue. While reform is long overdue and would likely be a net positive [5], and certainly better communication and respectful dialogue is important, I am doubtful as to potential impact – I don’t think it is particularly unreasonable to consider past examples where things have proven to be Somewhat Inconvenient, and this has resulted in considerable shenanigans (climate change and the health impact of smoking spring readily to mind). And fundamentally, when one compares the power of (for example) a few dozen scientists to an oligarchy backed multimedia one tends to come away with a feeling that, even with the best will in the world, it might be a somewhat lopsided disagreement. If one is concerned with whether or not decisions are being made on the basis of the best available data, this might represent a slight cause for concern – I would say it is an exaggeration to suggest that public opinion can be controlled, but far less so to suggest it can be (to an extent) shaped [6]. To cut a long ramble short, I doubt it is possible to convince a significant percentage of people (no matter how respectful, reasonable, gentle, etc. one may be) if they have a continual background noise generating a sense that you (or people like you) are not to be trusted. Again, this is not to suggest academia is fine as it is (I´d say definitely not), that academics and experts don´t need to find better ways to communicate (again, I´d say they/we certainly do), or that a little more humility is unnecessary – it is merely to suggest that these improvements would have little effect while there is a large platform devoting no little time and resources to perpetuating incredibly negative stereotypes [7].

My personal, non-expert, and completely subjective guess is that greater impact would be achieved by a more general liberatory framework for media – that is to say, one which counters disenfranchisement through providing a clear and honest message of unification while alerting to materials conditions which may be addressed through autonomous organisation and collective action [8]. This is just an opinion, and one I´m certainly open to changing, but something I simply throw out there for consideration.

[1] Not to sidetrack too much, or get dragged into going down a rabbit hole, but I do think there is value to analysing and contextualising the fragmentation of the proletariat into subaltern working classes, and to find appropriate ways to counter this (ideally through a recognition that the class interests of the working class, however divided, are more aligned than they will be with the interests of capital). Of course this is easier said than done, and I recognise that in the modern era the lines are rather blurry – though personally I think that in a practical sense movements which recognise their interests lie in a fundamental opposition to the replication of hierarchy (along both “economic” and “social” class markers, if you´ll excuse the clumsy phrasing) will fare better than those who don´t. Of course, YMMV on this one.

[2] As has been pointed out on CT over the years, “right” is necessarily by its nature a reductive descriptor, but in this instance I am using the term very loosely to refer to the hypothetical people highlighted in the OP (e.g. people who have an ideological conviction to their support of the Trump administrations).

[3] While marketed as serving as zones for free speech with no ideological purity tests (conservative safe spaces one might say, were one of a somewhat impish disposition), it seems that some of their proponents are beginning to admit that in practice the reality might be a little more complex.

[4] I confess to finding great reassurance in the implication that studying science has, apparently, conferred upon me immense social prestige, political power, and considerable wealth – presumably this will manifest any day now.

[5] In general I think it would greatly benefit civilisation were it accepted that some things (like education, healthcare, food, energy, etc.) are for the public good, and turning them into yet another form of rent extraction is just going to exacerbate the collapse of society (in the case of key infrastructure, perhaps literally!). With regard to academia, as I’ve previously mentioned I have found Wolff’s “The Ideal of the University” quite a thoughtful and thought-provoking take, though of course I do have some disagreements. However, I’m somewhat sceptical meaningful reform in any area can be achieved without meaningful reform of society itself – I realise it is rather cliché to say “the problem isn’t X, it is X under capitalism” but it does rather seem to be a sticking point.

[6] A somewhat valuable lesson might be drawn by examining the UK, where public opinion can be (and is) formed by things being noticed or not being noticed, things suddenly becoming very important to talk about before mysteriously vanishing from the discourse, ´creative editing´ (such as placing stories and captions next to each other with the implication they are related when, in fact, they are not), and – if all else fails – a non-stop barrage of furious screaming in order to sufficiently grease the bullshit machine to pump a high-pressure stream of fraud and fabrications into the public´s consciousness. This has limits – it seems to struggle to make unpopular things popular, regardless of how much effort is spent – but when it comes to destroying people and organisations it is difficult to see how it could be significantly improved. Given the not unreasonable assumption that a key purpose of power is to maintain itself, this would seem to have significant implications for anyone with the intent of going against the established order.

[7] Not to keep hammering on the same point, but dare I suggest that perhaps some on the left might also benefit from considering how likely it is that such mechanisms, having been successfully deployed, will then subsequently be packed away, or whether they will be similarly levied against any other potential threats to established order (such as, purely to take a hypothetical example at random, should a socialist geography teacher prove popular when seeking office).

[8] I appreciate that such pronouncements are easy to make in theory, far more difficult in practice, and even more so as soon as consideration needs to be given to fine details (things which I doubt I am particularly well suited to). But in brief, I think it worth considering that a large part of the media ecosystem is given over to what I might loosely call disinformation propaganda – that is to say, trying to make the general public feel disorganised and helpless, unable to discern fact or fiction, angry at some unidentifiable and shifting “other”, and desperate for an authority figure to take control. It seems to me that currently, in the US and UK (and perhaps others), there is a lack of a countermessage intended to provide people with the tools and understanding necessary to autonomsly effect change (that is, in brief, a unifying message with clear, actionable goals that further material interests; a framework of common language and imagery to help connect with the like minded in order to address problems; an alert to opportunities for intervention or to problems which would otherwise slip beneath notice; etc. etc.). Again, of course, resolving this is easier said than done.

Bruno Latour and Bachelard help show the empirical world is social not only in the reproducibility of observations and production of true expressions in normal science. The scientific mind is a form of imagination that exists as a kind of community within regimes of rational equality, where observations are replicable and compete based on the warrant of their instrumentation. Science will always compete as a source of truth with any totalitarianism. The Party knows science is a rival for truth, and it is the same with journalism, the law, and public councils and hearings. In a sociological or anthropological sense, I think a Dear Leader like Kim represents the genocidal animus of a tyrant extinguishing the truth in suicidal nihilism, so social institutions become the department of reality and not nature.

However, nature is nature, and reality is reality, so maybe you do not need to wait for the truth to come out in doctor-patient interactions where it is interfering with standard of care. If T-bill auctions continue badly, like last week, the Fed will not be able to lower interest rates even if it wants to. If that sticks the housing market is screwed and the fiscal picture will mean austerity forever. Trump has given us one hell of a never ending stagflation, and that is not propaganda, so I think the only upside will be that nobody wants to be broke and be a Nazi, so they will likely be their own scapegoats. How we can pick up the pieces will be anyone’s guess, but the thing about fascism is that to be successful requires a certain expertise, I think.

reading mw at 27 has allowed me to understand his problem with science, the hard sciences not just the social ones. science takes reality for its study. reality has a well-known leftist bias which mw is unwilling to accept so they arrive at conspiracies instead.

wetzel-rhymes-with,

I have seen several Bluesky posts just this week to the effect of, in the end, those fascists who ignore reality, will lose. There are two problems, though. The first is that, as the quote goes, there is a lot ruin in a nation. They can ignore the experts for quite some time before everything falls apart, and while they are actively working towards collapse, lots of well-meaning people in their own areas prop things up by still building stuff that works and still helping those who need help.

Second, what does losing or winning even mean in this context? The Nazis ultimately lost, and predictably so, because as every expert could have told them, the war they started was unwinnable, you don’t win wars by believing very hard that you are a superior race, and driving most of the nation’s smartest scientists into exile may not have helped if it turns out they may have wanted to invent the nuclear bomb before the USA. But they lost only after they had got tens of millions of people killed, murdered most of their imagined internal enemies, and stolen Jewish businesses and homes. If somebody is primarily interested in burning everything down in the short term, hurting their imagined enemies, and doing a grift with crypto, they would probably think that they won plenty even if Trump ultimately implodes.

Conversely, if expertise and basing decisions on evidence are ultimately again broadly recognised as important after a spectacular immolation of the right, in what sense has an expert standing between a mountain of corpses to their right and the burnt-out husk of research infrastructure to their left “won”?

Alex Sl, I am sorry if you are looking for me to defend a sanguinary outlook. I think continued free and fair with transitions of power continuing in the United States would be good. I think this is somewhat more likely two months ago than today because they are off plan and scapegoating themselves. I believe for its central rituals to work fascism needs the scapegoat to be some other. I am not interested so much in positive revolution as the negative conservative reaction or even market discipline that preserves rule of law and the constitutional order which all social institutions for the production of truth rely upon, but I don’t have a nuclear football following me around. I am not optimistic. My fear is catastrophic. Society supervenes over the individual and from inside the United States its like a healthy cell becoming apoptotic where the changes are like an irreversible signaling failure with the emergence of a new state.

I recently decided the experts were wrong about was the use-by dates on most food

That’s actually kind of an interesting one – sometimes I’d guess it’s about freshness or safety – I’d be hesitant to, say, use the ground chicken much after the date – but for lots of things it’s not a safety thing, at least for a long time, but an estimate on when something might be losing some taste. It’s then up to you. I worked in a hospital pharmacy for several years, and we used to send our “expired” drugs to hospitals in Africa. It was clear that they were not dangerous after the expiration date, but only that the company would not guarantee full potency after the date. No doubt the date was set in part for business reasons – not too short, but certainly not too long, either, and that they were still okay for some time after that, especially compaired to nothing. I expect this is the same for lots of foods, too, at least if they pass a smell test. (I’m not sure if I’d call this an “expert” thing, though, in most cases.)

Every registered prescription drug has a filed stability commitment, which is a period of time that the drug in its final packaging has been kept at a precise temperature/humidity and tested at regular intervals to ensure the strength is within the registration limit (typically +/- 10% of listed strength per unit dose, but can be tighter for some types of meds) and chemical impurities (all drugs have impurities from the manufacturing process of the active and inactive ingredients but some chemical reactions that occur as the drug ages can increase the impurity level).

While it is true that drugs that have a 36 month expiration date on the package are probably being tested to 48 months, and there can be a bit of a tug of war among Marketing, Sales, Quality, and Finance over whether to extend the shelf life when the data become available, at my last pharma client we had a drug with a listed shelf life of 18 months that consistently failed low potency/high impurity at 19 months after passing at 18 months. This is particularly a concern for several classes of stomach acid medications which have been shown to develop cancer-causing substances in the impurities as the drug ages.

@63 I think the reading instruction controversy isn’t a case of non-experts getting attention while the experts, who were right, were ignored. It was a controversy with a field (incidentally one less developed than say pharmacology). It’s easy for journalists to pick sides and call their side the only real experts which explains why they’re the correct side, but it’s misleading to suggest this is the same kind of thing as refusing to get a COVID vaccine.

My experience online with people who have crankish beliefs is that they’re less than normally able to look at a book and dismiss it because the author doesn’t have the background and/or evidence to know what they’re talking about. It’s in print and therefore it’s an authority and everything in its pages deserves deference.

The New York Times Sunday Styles section today has an article relevant to this topic, and reminds me of something that happened when I was expecting my own child, seventeen years ago. Canada and the EU had banned bispenol-A (BPA) for baby products but the US had not done it yet, and the most frequently encountered attitude was that worry about BPA was alarmist. It was pretty difficult to find BPA-free items in the stores or online.

(It was also the retail industry’s brief fling with the idea that they should offer maternity clothes only online, bad timing for me both ways.)

For that matter, I bet I could post on this topic online and a dozen people (mostly men obviously) would descend on me and tell me worrying about BPA is unscientific. It’s still banned, though (https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety-news-0/commission-adopts-ban-bisphenol-food-contact-materials-2024-12-19_en).

“I remember reading some expert articles about how you MUST not do this without the proper scientific training and, presumably, that it was better to catch Covid and die.”

Actually, they said use soap and water.

(e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/hand-sanitiser-or-hand-washing-which-more-effective-against-coronavirus-covid-19)

AFAIK this was because there were a lot of recipes floating around which were useless (suggesting stuff that wouldn’t work) or could be potentially bad (too little alcohol wouldn’t work, too much could damage your skin). So the experts recommended using soap and water because (a) the data was that it was just as good and (b) it is a lot easier to get the hand washing right.

Yeah, truly the monsters of our time.

Personally, I think I’m less inclined to be angry at the experts than I am at people making up bullshit about a pandemic that killed lots of people – i.e. people like you.