mikenz66 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 7:51 pmThe key divide that has come to the fore in the past 30 years is not left-right, it's between those who pay attention to the consensus of experts and those who find expertise and science rather inconvenient.
I find this is a simplistic analysis. I believe in climate deterioration ("climate change" is such a politically correct term; I heard it was deliberately introduced to replace "global warming"). But I don't believe this because of what scientists say, but because of what I see for myself, and because of my moral standards.
The latter also don't acknowledge that science changes (hence the typical objection: "they've changed their minds - therefore, they must be wrong!").
Scientists and experts do ask a lot from people; in fact, they ask for too much. The way science demands trust from people is similar to how religion demands trust from people. But at least religion has some aspiration to being constant, unchanegable.
Of course, science is not about everyone agreeing - it's a process that makes progress though disagreement and attempts to falsify models.
That's just not good enough. It's at best moral relativism. No wonder many people are skeptical of science. Trusting science is like being married to someone who tells you every other day that they don't know whether they want to stay married to you or not, but that you need to be faithful to them regardless.
So it's always possible to find people who disagree with the current consensus on anything. And there's always a small chance that they are right.
Science frames the whole issue wrongly. It works on the principle "If it's not too shitty, then it's okay. So let's measure if it's too shitty or not." What's "too shitty" is, of course, quite arbitrary.