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Such a condescending phrase. We should have a similar phrase "low information expert" that has little understanding of everyday people's lives, but instead poi

• nis0s 2y ago
  It’s describing phenomena that’s observable in a sample from a Gaussian distribution, what’s condescending about that?
  • softwaredoug 2y ago
    Yeah totally fair. I think I respond to how I hear it used to describe other people with just different experiences. Like I feel there's a degree of empathy to someone voting because they can't get a job, and are skeptical of "experts" that may be out of touch, not because they have a deep intellectual grasp of the issues.
• jfengel 2y ago
  It's a condescending phrase, but I can't think of a better alternative. A different term won't change the fact that each group thinks that the other makes consistently bad choices. There's just no way to avoid a negative term. The way I see it, there are two possibilities. Either they're right, that one set of people is consistently misinformed, or they're wrong. If they're wrong, then we'd have to find some way to convince them of that. It won't be just a matter of finding a different phrase. The condescension itself would be undeserved, and we'd have to root that out somehow. Or they're right, in which case they might as well be as descriptive a term as they can. There would be literal "condescending", which originally referred to nobility or aristocrats "going down with" their social inferiors. The term was actually viewed favorably at the time -- it implied humility and generosity. Either way, I don't see what to do about it.