5 ms·
I look at how Trump, Bolesanaro, Modi et al view Science. You don't see Merkel saying the stuff they say. They see admitting ignorance as a weakness. They don't
by op03 6y ago
I look at how Trump, Bolesanaro, Modi et al view Science. You don't see Merkel saying the stuff they say. They see admitting ignorance as a weakness. They don't do it as a rule. If you are a scientist and have to work in an institution funded by such people how would you feel?
Plus there are these kind of articles as a reaction to what populist leaders say every 2 days - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/angela-merkel-germany-coronavirus-pandemic/610225/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/an...
And finally a close friend I have in Europe who had an option to move anywhere choose to stay in Germany the past few years because he feels its much saner and stable than anywhere else right now. I don't see that as an accident.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago> And finally a close friend I have in Europe who had an option to move anywhere choose to stay in Germany the past few years because he feels its much saner and stable than anywhere else right now. I don't see that as an accident. Germany is very conservative, and some people like things to stay mostly as they are?
- rorykoehler 6y agoIf you look at what is happening in the rest of the world you will see destructive change. I want to make the world better not "change the world". I'll take careful and steady over that clusterfuck any day of the week. I also moved back to Germany from Singapore last year. Three years ago I renounced my US citizenship. I work for an Australian company. I could literally have chosen to live anywhere and chose Germany because Germany values pragmatic reality driven policies and quality of life. There is no better country to live in globally if you're not a hyper-competitive sociopath.
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoOr France, let's don't forget France :)
- luckylion 6y agoIt seems to primarily be something that people feel in comparison to other politicians in the handling of Covid-19, though I don't know whether that's super accurate - Germany is very different from e.g. the US, it's not the person in charge that makes the big difference. In other areas (e.g. digitalization, nuclear power etc), I never got the impression that she was ruling as a scientist. Her governing style in general is pretty normal for a career politician in my opinion. She'll wait for the debate to lean heavily to one side and then add her weight to that side. Did your friend consider that differently in e.g. the early 2000s? Stability has always been a major driving force in Germany, and previous chancellors have not been scientists, so I'm not so sure that it has any influence, really.
- cycomanic 6y agoI think we should be careful with conflating being a "sane" politician with a scientific education. I don't think Merkel seeming more "scientifically sane" has anything to do with her scientific education. If anything it has to do with the political system of the countries in question. In fact Merkel certainly got into the position she is in, not by following scientific advise, but by being an extremely talented "Machtpolitiker" (a politician who knows how to play for power). She was actually well known for never taking any clear position and it was even a bit of a running gag, how she would never say anything that would position her so that someone could attack that position. The 2016 refugee crisis was the big exception. She is also a very strategic thinker and it is known that advisers in the CDU essentially looked at the democraphics of voters and showed that if the party does not take a more liberal position on gay marriage, the environment etc., the party will be irrelevant within the next 15 years.
- marcus_holmes 6y agoso...she didn't have an opinion until the data was in, and then let the data form her opinion? That's almost the definition of a good scientist.
- s1artibartfast 6y agoIt is also a trait of any rational actor.
- elbear 6y agoWhat's the difference between the two (genuine question)?
- tanseydavid 6y agoI would think the difference is one of motivation (or maybe intent). Relating the two terms in various ways helps me to see this more clearly: a "good scientist" is necessarily a "rational actor" but a "rational actor" is not necessarily a scientist.
- rsynnott 6y agoI mean, they're probably bad examples, in that they're populists, in Trump's case in particular of the "know-nothing" school, and they're basically the poster children for bad governance. And Merkel is _one_ example of a politician trained as a scientist. But there are plenty of reasonable politicians who aren't scientists. In an alternate universe where Obama had run 4 years later and was thus presiding competently over this crisis, and where Germany had elected some sort of weird hotelier with silly hair who had screwed up their response, that would argue for _lawyers_ being good at science by this approach. I think all you can really take out of the example of current world leaders is that competent leaders are better at dealing with science than incompetent leaders. Mostly because competent leaders are inclined to listen to expert advise rather than making it up as they go along. But you don't need to be trained as a scientist to be competent. (There is probably an argument that scientists, and indeed lawyers, are more likely to be competent than business scions or newspaper columnists, but it's going to be a difference of degree).