Society is social, it’s not a deficit of facts we’re suffering from. It’s a deficit of trust, of respect. We…

Society is social, it’s not a deficit of facts we’re suffering from. It’s a deficit of trust, of respect. We can’t do basic things like public health because millions get in the way with their opinions, people who have no background or expertise in the areas they obstruct. /1

We can keep firing facts at people all day. In an environment where hierarchies of trusted expertise have already been terminally damaged, it’s shouting into the void. But we can shift our focus to trust. For me one of the fastest ways to progress arguments in these key areas? /2

Ask the minimiser (of Covid, climate, or whatever) if they welcome members of the public into *their* workplace, with no background in that area, telling them what to do every day. Of course they don’t, it would make them furious. But THEY do it all the time. /3

Libertarians are already aware of this danger, they call it credentialism, they know referring to hierarchies of expertise exposes their con. They set up their own opposing hierarchies, through think tanks, pay-for-view radio and TV, social media influencers etc. /4

All to damage and eventually destroy existing hierarchies of expertise. But they’re not gone yet, because the libertarian alternatives couldn’t make a vegemite sandwich. Reality still requires our existing hierarchies, to function. /5

Everything is social, that’s the key point. If people are paying no attention to public health basics, for Covid, or climate science, it’s not because they’re stupid, or because they need more facts. It’s because their locus of trust has shifted. /6

There are many ways that could be turned around, but above all we need to target trust, not facts. The social mechanism that’s creating the problem. The basic respect people should have for the expertise and experience of others. /7

The respect THEY expect others to have for them, in their areas of expertise and experience. Call them out for their hypocrisy, sabotaging existing institutions every day. And this isn’t to have blind faith in anything either, part of trust and hierarchies of expertise…/8

…has always been mechanisms to test claims. For example you could say we are following the existing hierarchies of expertise with Covid, the chief health advisers are telling governments to let everybody get infected. But…nobody is allowed to see the actual advice. /9

And increasingly that expertise is not allowed to speak anyway. That’s clear evidence that the existing mechanism has been debased and distorted, by politicians in this case. Trust us, they say, because we’re popular, we get lots of votes, so we must be right. /10

I often say to people at work who ask why I’m still masking, ‘who do you trust with your health? A politician, or a medical scientist?’ Target the trust, which in turn targets the foundational social act - imitation. Emulation. We emulate who we trust, we imitate them. /11

Democracy has never been millions of individuals all competing with their opinions in every area of life. It’s not like selling coffee. An essential part of all *representative* democracy is to trust others to do work we don’t have the time or knowledge to do ourselves. /12

That’s the mechanism the libertarians (really Queen Bees and Prom Kings from high school) have been attacking for decades. They attack trust, not facts. Don’t trust ‘the elites’, they say. It’s quite easy to make the point every day that trust needs to rest with expertise. /end