"My analysis begins with a remarkable essay [by] Jonathan Rauch [who] pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge. This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny. 'We let alt-truth talk,' Rauch said, 'but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars.'... [M]illions of people have come to detest those who populate the epistemic regime, who are so distant, who appear to have it so easy, who have such different values, who can be so condescending.... [Trump] and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime."
From
"The Rotting of the Republican Mind/When one party becomes detached from reality" by David Brooks (NYT). Brooks goes on to blame distrust of experts and anxiety about social and economic conditions, but never explains why this would happen on the right but not the left, nor does he attempt to demonstrate that the problem does in fact belong to the right and not the left. That is, ironically, he himself does not follow "a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge"!
And it's so ugly to speak of "rotting" minds. You'd better be sure there's no rot in your own before you express that kind of emotive contempt and disgust. What makes you so sure you and your friends constitute an epistemic regime that ought to be deferred to by the people you obviously regard as deplorable? It's right there in the open. And you assume that the non-elite people of the left are already in full deference mode. Why?!
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212 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 212 of 212True or False:
It is immoral to impoverish your country's working class by sending jobs overseas where they are done by people being paid slave wages or for nothing by political prisoners and also allowing the dodging of environmental regulations, thus empowering a totalitarian regime that is practicing genocide against ethnic minorities and other, equally abhorrent, human rights abuses?
Just a little question for the "epistemic regime."
True or False:
Should young children be given hormones that will change their body's inalterably in order to satisfy an adults perception of what "gender" the children should be?
Another one for the "epistemic regime."
True or False "epistemic regime":
Should the children and other relatives of high ranking government officials be involved with business enterprises with overseas entities that have ties to foreign governments?
Asking for a friend named Bunter.
True or False and just putting this out there because I have literally decades of IT experience, security related certifications, and a Master's in Information Assurance:
Why in the world would you hook a voting machine up to the Internet, or transmit voting data over the internet to an overseas location, or update the software right before an election?
Cause as someone who is part of the "epistemic regime" in regards to computer security I'm just saying that anyone who claims that there are no issues in regards to the election's computer security is most likely part of a conspiracy to steal the election.
True or False:
Does open borders increase the corruption and economic stagnation of the immigrant's home countries by drawing off the most enterprising and energetic people from those countries? And wasn't doing so considered a form of colonialism at one time?
Just a thought.
The most destructive conspiracy theory pushed in the last four years is the Russia Collusion myth that was pushed daily by sources that Brooks would certainly consider more reasonable, so really we need to stop it with this 'OMG Internet Conspiracy' shock. The internet is a cesspool of bad information that people of all stripes can be gullible too. Because our national media have become so thoroughly in the tank for the Democrats, what would you expect right wingers to do? Some of the information from the nakedly biased and often looney right wing sources do highlight real live facts that the national media are intentionally not telling us. Unfortunately those real live facts are mixed with greater conspiracy that should not be required because the base facts are damning enough. Alas, they can't help themselves.
Shorter David Brooks, "who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?"
They get things backwards. The country wasn't in agreement about what the truth was because there was an "epistemic regime," rather there was such a group because the country was already in agreement about so many things. Reporters had to at least pretend to be "objective" and "unbiased" because they couldn't anger or alienate the mass audience. They also had to answer to managers, and advertisers who didn't see things as they did. Professors could favor Stevenson - though not nearly as unanimously as they opposed Trump - but college presidents had to at least appear to be even-handed to keep enrollments and donations coming. Go too far in any direction and you lost the public.
The fragmentation of the mass public - plus 60 years of affluence and cultural change - mean that our gatekeepers no longer have to answer to a more homogeneous mass public, but can be more biased and more determined to fulfill their own agenda. The homogeneous mass public, moreover, no longer exists. Without such unity, the "epistemic elite" would have to be far more scrupulous than they have been to function as gatekeepers.
"...by David Brooks (NYT)".
=
Based upon fevered imaginings.
Another question for the "epistemic regime":
Do you support this?
https://www.outkick.com/apple-nike-coke-china/
One problem with "expert opinion" is that "experts" take such pride in their expertise that they don't bother to really investigate things. Most of the "17 intelligence agencies" didn't investigate the Russian collusion claims, and those that did didn't do a very serious and thorough job of investigating. I'm looking at the statement of "59 election security and computer experts" that there was "no credible evidence of computer fraud" in the 2020 election, and it looks like they really didn't bother to investigate anything either. They are experts so they know best and don't need to investigate.
Roger Sweeney @ 10:12am,
You put it far too gently. Getting to a 15th-century level of energy usage will necessitate a 15th-century population level.
They expect 95% of us to die.
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