Nobody is asking you to take public transport that doesn’t exist – Stiff Upper Quip

The concept of expertise has become a tricky one; how do you identify it across a sea of competing voices? How do you identify experts when everyone has the capacity to set themselves up with an online megaphone? It’s worth saying though that, although many people want to establish their own personal internet publishing brand, the majority of don’t, and remain instead happy to trust to expertise. The daily SAGE briefings in the pandemic demonstrate this. Who amongst us does not feel reassured and oriented by those dull men and their PowerPoints? But that’s in a crisis. Outside of one, such expertise is rarely given such a public platform, and in areas where there is less public interest, consensus can easily form around more ill-considered positions. For less sensational debates, the difficulty is that the only people who feel strongly enough to try and convince others are those with extreme views, which means that quite easily a marginal opinion becomes the default one for a person who takes just enough interest in a thing to make conversation.

Added on 04/12/2021 by Steven Edwards

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