Experts of Nihil

Myth: experts are useless.

Reality: personnel is policy. 

"The complete uselessness of credentialed elites is the big theme of 2021 for sure."
@outsideness

Expert-credentialing institutions reliably select against wisdom and kenning, because public choice theory is true.

Even mainstream scientists will admit that we expect upward of 60% of scientific studies to be false. Is that real? No: personnel is policy. If upwards of 60% of studies are false, that means upwards of 60% of scientists are snake oil. A real scientist can get the right answer on the first try using a birthday-party budget. The experiment's purpose is to separate those who already knew all along from the many poseurs, in the same way you don't let someone claim they're good at footy without seeing them on the pitch. "Science is still the the most reliable way to know things." Lol @ calling the NSF's product "science."

That said, refresher: domain knowledge is far from useless. If you disagree, try playing chess against someone with more hours but a lower IQ than you.

The Official experts don't even have domain knowledge.

"This is the dilemma then. “Trust the experts” can lead the public astray, and so does “don’t trust the experts.”"

Peasants are inherently astray, much like sheep. Best you can do is have them all go astray to the same place, so the sheepdogs can keep the wolves off.

P.S. "Once, I had two reviewers recommend a paper be publish there, but the editor arbitrarily decided to reject, and I knew I had no good fallback option."

Peer review sounds sketchy, but science isn't even peer reviewed for real. It's editor-reviewed. (I understand the term of art is [desk rejection].) As per Regressive Inquisition doctrine, all gatekeepers are priority capture targets, meaning all journal editors toe the line or they never stood a chance of being hired in the first place.

Naturally journal revenue is almost entirely State-funded, just in case you get any ideas about trying to start an independent journal. 

Naturally, you don't know the name of a single one of these journal editors, even though "Science" is the #1 driver of bureaucrat decisions. Hanania is very careful not to mention a name. You sure do know Jeff Bezos' name though, now don't you? 

P.P.S. "You're ruled by who you're not allowed to offend," being normie sociology, is naturally pwned. How about the guy who is so intimidating that you won't even name him after you don't work in his field anymore? 

P.P.P.S. I think midwit syndrome is this: being able to describe a situation, and therefore thinking you have a worthwhile analysis of that situation. 

"Moreover, we’re much richer than we were in 1960, and I’m sure spending on public safety has increased. With all that, we are now about tied with where we were almost three-quarters of a century ago, a massive failure."

"We’ve likewise seen 80 years of a continuous increase in depression among college students."

P.P.P.P.S. You can't read La Wik's article on public choice theory because it's comically circumspect. Public choice theory is the idea that government agents are self-interested instead of angelically altruistic. For some reason, you find bureaucracies get more money via lobbying for more money from the IRS and Fed, not by pursuing their alleged function. 

More precisely, the EPA causes environmental damage instead of preventing damage, because if they solved all the problems their budget would be cut to zero instead of expanded. They expand problems so as to expand their budget. The feedback is self-accelerating: the larger the EPA's budget, the more they can spend on lavish kickbacks for those in charge of increasing their budget.

The only reason "private" firms serve the customer is because customer satisfaction is directly linked to future revenue. Public vs. private is a bit of a distraction; the real action is entirely in the incentives. 

Bonus round: even PCT doesn't properly recognize the attraction of social status and instead always uses money as a proxy.