I mean, yes, I'm educated, realistically not everyone will be able to do what I do.
I still think that "do your own research" is more respectful (even when it's targeted at people who probably won't) than "just listen to me, I'm one of the Elect."
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and I'm much more likely to encounter people being overly insecure about their intellects and not even trying to go straight to the data/papers, rather than people who "do their own research" but really shouldn't.
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(and no, I don't think every "crank" who believes a false thing is on balance better off "listening to experts"; I know several anti-vax types who are pretty sound on other issues.)
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The condescension and noble lies seem to come mostly from bureaucrats not researchers. I can’t think of any active researcher who has the “one of the elect” posture. Mostly they just seem to struggle to communicate at all with laypeople.
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There are researchers whose attitude is condescending and don't act in good faith. For example, the ones who conducted the PACE trial. me-pedia.org/wiki/PACE_trial
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There's another group that tends to be condescending - practitioners. Doctors, or nurses, or contractors, and so on. If you can trust whatever default auto-pilot script they follow to be good enough for your situation, that's one thing, but that category excludes many people.
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For example, many medical devices are not tested on women at all. If you happen to be a woman, there's a high probability that your medical care will be impacted by several such things. Caroline Criado Perez wrote a book about it. carolinecriadoperez.com/book/invisible
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I think experts, not just bureaucrats, but researchers and practitioners too, have earned a lot of the distrust and skepticism. I would prefer a world where "do your own research" was not needed as a counterweight to the sheer amount of shoddy practices and perverse incentives.
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This seems orthogonal. It’s great when incentives and aptitude to solve a problem line up neatly. They rarely do. My point is “do your own research” is not a general solution in either case. The world is too complex for everyone to be an expert on everything that affects them.
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Indeed. I resent that I have to do literature reviews to have a chance that interacting with the medical system will not harm me. "Do your own research" is not a general solution, or even a good individual solution. However "trust experts" can be even worse as a general solution.
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My general solution is neither doing my own research, nor trusting experts. It’s lowering my expectations and standards. Mediocre compromises 99% of the time.
I was wondering what your alternative to doing research was, and you've said it is "lowering expectations and standards", "mediocre compromises", "common sense least effort" and "half-ass an alt way" but I don't think I actually understand what that looks like in practice.
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