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Comment by tensor | Hacker News Reader

I suppose we are at a huge impasse as a society then. Because someone like me holds the opinion of non-experts as having zero value. I will not respect and do not want any policy being set by people with your attitude. I will continue to follow the science, and if I feel that people like you who ignore it are threatening my life, then I will do everything I can to stay far away from you and keep you far away from me.

I'd be totally for splitting society into those who respect science and experts, and those who don't. I have no desire to live in your world.

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> I'd be totally for splitting society into those who respect science and experts, and those who don't. I have no desire to live in your world.

What of those of us who respect science, but have less respect for experts? I strongly believe in science, and believe it to be humanity's "candle in the dark". I have little respect for individual experts who insist that their advice must be followed by all those they deem to be lesser than them, whether science is their justification or not.

Science as a process is the best tool we have. Scientists are human beings, and are just as flawed as everyone else. The contexts they operate in have also shown themselves to be highly susceptible influence by political trends. There was no end to the "science" that would show you the inferiority of minority races 100 years ago. You are not doing science a favor by steeping it in dogma and being blindly deferential, you're turning it into a religion.

If you can demonstrate your position via the scientific process then great I'm all in. If you can't then I'm going to side with those to try, even if their technique is less than perfect. Today our scientific experts are some of the very few who even try to follow the scientific method. I acknowledge that there are a small few outside of the profession who also try to apply science, but the number is so small that it's almost not worth mentioning.

The reality is that few even have the means to actually perform experiments. Certainly outside of computer science, that is true. It's unfortunate that the resources we allocate as a society towards scientific pursuit is such a tiny fraction of the resources we spend as a society. But I suppose that is more a reflection on the value of science to the general population than it is to anything else.

Make us go to Galt's Gulch?

I think bubbling society is the future. We need to aim for this. But not physical barriers, electronic. IE your phone tells you if this is a pro or anti expert cafe. Where to sit on public transport, even what path to walk.

At an extreme, ideally this time last year when experts told people to not wear masks, those who chose to not believe them would within our internal world become like an Asian country and have kept it at bay while the society around us burned. Bubbles don't interact at all. But that's fantasy with the current structure.

That said, although I don't want to associate with people who believe in experts, but I also know the alternative might not be better, I would lose a lot of friends. Bubbling will make people chose between ideals and reality.

"Experts" didn't really tell people not to wear masks. A small number of political bodies did, but the scientific consensus was pretty clear right from the start. In fact, even those who said not to wear masks argued it from the point of view that those masks should be allocated to medical workers because of a shortage, not that they didn't work.

That's where we disagree, that's not the reality I lived and that's a fundamental part of my belief system.

I do agree to the physical separation you talked about, but it's simply not possible. Seasteading costs are so high you/I won't be able to pick our friends.

I do think the way forward is intermixed lives where we could share roads for instance but never connect. I think that's possible in the future. But as yet we can't even achieve it electronically, case in point :)

> I'd be totally for splitting society into those who respect science and experts, and those who don't

Science not as a search for knowledge, but as a search for daddy figures to respect and obey. Nothing is as harmful to progress as this blind devotion to expertise.

Why is the answer to make me the enemy just because I spoke my mind?

Because your considered opinion leads to poor results.

Society is a social contract. I participate in it because I think we are stronger, safer, and better off together. But if your idea of a social contract is to disregard experts and the accumulated knowledge that we've worked centuries to obtain, then I don't think we are better together. In that case I think you are a net negative on the social wellbeing, and on my wellbeing, and I do not want to be in a social contract with you.

Working together and benefiting from each others hard work is not an innate right. It's a right bestowed by joining into a particular social contract, be that a national one, or a local one. You are saying to me that you will not pull your own weight. In fact worse, you will work against the common good. Thus I do not want to work together with you.

But which science and experts?

The Swedish epidemiological team? The state of Florida epidemiological team?

Both of whom had better outcome per capita with less Covid restrictions than numerous states who followed the prevailing 'experts' advice.

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