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Even the idea of experts is being rightly criticized. Look at the flip-flopping recommendations of the US health dietary guidelines. What's true to the experts

Even the idea of experts is being rightly criticized. Look at the flip-flopping recommendations of the US health dietary guidelines. What's true to the experts this year will be rejected some point later. Not only that, but when you have centralized power it becomes much easier to corrupt and politicize. There's wisdom to decentralization.

ComradeTaco 10y ago
I agree that sometimes experts can make massive erroneous assumptions. Nutrition is a field that has suffered greatly from this. However, many of the predictions like currency devaluation and market loss, that were dismissed as expert scaremongering tactics, did occur. 1. The pound dropped 22% in value after the referendum [1] 2. A 13% drop in the FTSE from referendnum to present [2] [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-15/pound-drops-to-3-month-low-as-may-reported-to-seek- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-15/pound-dro... hard-brexit [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-13/what-can-the-u-k-stock-market-tell-you-about-brexit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-13/what-can-...
judahmeek 10y ago
No, it's not right to declare expert opinion to be the same as simple opinion, fad, or partisan propaganda. It is right to expect experts to change their guidance as they gain greater understanding of the objective truth of their fields. Nor is it right to equivalate different fields of study, such as nutrition and economics. Some fields of study are much more stable than others due to the ease of proper sampling, hypothesis testing, and experiment replication. If you want to try to discredit economic experts, then focus on their failures, not the failures of other fields. Last but not least, your claim that it is easier to corrupt and politicize centralized power is meaningless. Power only exists when it is centralized. Decentralization simply means creating multiple smaller groups of centralized power. I think that the benefits of centralization, such as standardization of norms and forced unity, have proven far more beneficial to society as a whole than any increased chance of corruption.
BerislavLopac 10y ago
Actually, the US dietary guidelines had very little to do with the "experts" and had everything to do with the government structures who based their recommendations on an incomplete set of research. [0] [0] From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...: "In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same."

ComradeTaco 10y ago

I agree that sometimes experts can make massive erroneous assumptions. Nutrition is a field that has suffered greatly from this. However, many of the predictions like currency devaluation and market loss, that were dismissed as expert scaremongering tactics, did occur. 1. The pound dropped 22% in value after the referendum [1] 2. A 13% drop in the FTSE from referendnum to present [2] [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-15/pound-drops-to-3-month-low-as-may-reported-to-seek- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-15/pound-dro... hard-brexit [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-13/what-can-the-u-k-stock-market-tell-you-about-brexit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-13/what-can-...

judahmeek 10y ago

No, it's not right to declare expert opinion to be the same as simple opinion, fad, or partisan propaganda. It is right to expect experts to change their guidance as they gain greater understanding of the objective truth of their fields. Nor is it right to equivalate different fields of study, such as nutrition and economics. Some fields of study are much more stable than others due to the ease of proper sampling, hypothesis testing, and experiment replication. If you want to try to discredit economic experts, then focus on their failures, not the failures of other fields. Last but not least, your claim that it is easier to corrupt and politicize centralized power is meaningless. Power only exists when it is centralized. Decentralization simply means creating multiple smaller groups of centralized power. I think that the benefits of centralization, such as standardization of norms and forced unity, have proven far more beneficial to society as a whole than any increased chance of corruption.

BerislavLopac 10y ago

Actually, the US dietary guidelines had very little to do with the "experts" and had everything to do with the government structures who based their recommendations on an incomplete set of research. [0] [0] From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...: "In the intervening years, the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same."