3 ms·

Well, when the overwhelming majority of experts in the field agree, I think it’s best to not waste brain space on crackpot contrarian positions, especially if

• macspoofing 6y ago
  >Well, when the overwhelming majority of experts in the field agree You're conflating some issues here. Experts inform policy, not set policy. Democratically elected representatives should use experts but not delegate decision making to experts. Take climate change, even if 100% of scientist believe in climate change and certain outcomes of climate change, because any climate mitigations are going to drastically impact my life and the lives of all my fellow-citizens, I sure as heck want to hear alternatives and understand the full implications. I don't want climate scientists deciding climate policy (only informing it), because the cost for stemming climate change may be too high and when balancing all the other factors, we may instead decide instead to focus on mitigating the effects of climate change. We see this with Coronavirus policy as well. Certain public health officials only focus on stemming the pandemic (a noble goal in a vacuum), but ignore the cost associated with some of the drastic measures to stem the pandemic (like lockdowns). Put another way, even if every single epidemiologist argues that lockdown is the best way to 'flatten the curve', we may decide to do something else because we need to balance all kinds of other factors in addition to 'flattening the curve'. The Great Barrington Declaration [1], for example, which presents an alterative coronavirus policy by all kinds of public health officials makes this case and has been censored by Twitter, and others, for it. Don't you think their point of view is a worthy topic for discussion? Or is this one of those things where you are afraid of 'platforming' an alternative lest it convinces some people? [1] https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/