> Rationalist circles make just as many horrific logical errors. If you want to dig into this stuff philosophy has dug deep, and frankly all they came up with i

> Rationalist circles make just as many horrific logical errors. If you want to dig into this stuff philosophy has dug deep, and frankly all they came up with is all sources should be treated as suspect. Sharing some anecdata, because I enjoy when others do. I've got some very dear friends born in a highly prescriptive culture where credential-ism runs deep, being an intellectual is extremely valued -people are often denied leases due to their non-academic status- and authority figures and strangers get the "Mrs." and "Mr." treatment for years after you've met them. Early on in our friendship we would discuss and rant about everything and anything. We would often talk about my attitude of trusting no one and how I believe there are, truly, no experts, in the colloquial sense of the word. We've often had late-night discussions about my "stubborn and deeply misguided attitude", about how it's wrong that the only experts I trust are those who deeply distrust their own abilities, instincts and continuously attempt to disprove their own claims. Shockingly, they defended the aforementioned views until many of their countries top virologists and they themselves, often and loudly, shared their opinion on covid-19 around March, April and May: covid-19 was nothing special, national mortality trends were unaffected, their country is rich and they had a high number of ICUs, it was basically just like the flu and nothing to worry about. Then, as we all know, shit hit the fan and we saw cooling trucks being turned into mortuary vehicles. I simply told them what I've always told them, and for the first time since we're friends they nodded with some sadness in their demeanour: trust no one, acquire evidence, make your own judgments, try to find hidden risks and the only so-called experts worth trusting are the ones who, in their own words, publicly and candidly express their skepticism towards their very own claims and try to help you reproduce their methods and conclusions.