"Experts" and "Authorities" - Not

One of the more darker corners of the culture that the Lockdowns shone an unintentional light on, was the idea that Government enquiries, official investigations, and explanations provided by high-ranking officials and academics with their hands on the money-tap, form a coherent officially truthful story of the major events in our society and economy. Disagreeing with the details of this story makes one a dissident whose speech should be restricted from general circulation, and offering competing stories makes one a 'conspiracy theorist' who should be denied access to the media in any form. These "authorities" include "the distributed network of knowledge claim gatherers and testers that includes engineers and politics professors, security experts and journalists" according to Professor Neil Levy, one of those philosophers who appears now and again to suck up to an indefensible orthodoxy.

"Politics professors, security experts and journalists" are not "experts" at anything, but some engineers might be.

If there were "experts" and "authorities", who might they be?

One group of people they could not be is Government, Civil Service and other institutions of the State. It's not a Government's job to tell the voters the truth. Never has been, never will be. One job of Government is to maintain civil peace and order, and all sorts of abuses get hushed up for that reason. Another job of Government is to relate things to "broader interests and issues", which also leads to all sorts of hush-and-lousy-compromise. Governments are rubbish at knowing which issues really need to be played down and which need to be made public, but it's still their job to try to get it right.

For this reason, anyone who holds a Government position, for example Chief Medical Officer, or who is in the pay of the Government, such as every academic in every university, agrees with Government propaganda policy, not because it might be right, but because it's part of their job description to do so. That disqualifies their opinion on any subject in which the Government has an interest.

One rule of thumb is that anyone who says they are an "expert" on something, isn't. Those who know, know how little they know and how ambiguous that little is: it takes real ignorance to be certain and authoritative about anything.

Another rule of thumb is that when a journalist cites an "expert" without also citing that "expert's" name, source of income, qualifications and relevant experience - as would be required in any court - the person they are quoting is a paid shill pushing a policy.

"Experts" must be un-connected with any commercial enterprise, political cause, social movement, religion or other such organisation that has an interest in the issue. Else their support of that institution's position will be considered to be bought-and-paid-for.

"Experts" must only give evidence about the matters-of-fact on which they are "experts", which is generally a fairly narrow range.

Outside that narrow range, "experts" are as ignorant as the person sitting next to you this morning on the bus / train / coach / traffic queue / Zoom screen.

Even within an "expert's" subject, just because someone knows a lot about the facts of an issue does not mean they will be any good at devising the relevant social or legal policy. The Lockdowns showed us that most "experts" are fanatical left-leaning socialists who think more Government-spending and monitoring is the answer to everything.

Did it always used to be like this?

Yes.

But the world wasn't as complicated, inter-connected, and highly populated. There weren't welfare states, and there wasn't as much money to be made by quite so many people. There was no pharmaceutical industry, and the media was way smaller than it is now. Fewer people depended on the Government for their salaries, so the influence of Government was not as all-enveloping as it is now. Your GP routinely made house calls.

Back in the Good Ol' Days<™> it didn't matter that the experts knew even less than they do now. Governments didn't do dumb things, unless it was to invade Russia or attempt to occupy Afghanistan.

Now it matters. And Governments do dumb things year after year after year.