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A few weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration as President, the New Yorker published a cartoon depicting a mustached, mostly bald man, hand raised high, mouth open in a sort of improbable rhombus, tongue flapping wildly within, saying: “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?” The tableau surely elicited many a self-satisfied chuckle from readers disgusted by the populist energy and establishment distrust that they perceived in Trump’s supporters.

But what exactly is the joke here? Citizens in a democracy are not akin to airline passengers, buckled quietly into their seats and powerless to affect change, their destinations and very lives placed in the hands of professionals guarded by a reinforced door up front. Even brief reflection reveals the cartoonist’s analogy to be comparing like to unlike.

> A few weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration as President, the New Yorker published a cartoon depicting a mustached, mostly bald man, hand raised high, mouth open in a sort of improbable rhombus, tongue flapping wildly within, saying: “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?” The tableau surely elicited many a self-satisfied chuckle from readers disgusted by the populist energy and establishment distrust that they perceived in Trump’s supporters. > But what exactly is the joke here? Citizens in a democracy are not akin to airline passengers, buckled quietly into their seats and powerless to affect change, their destinations and very lives placed in the hands of professionals guarded by a reinforced door up front. Even brief reflection reveals the cartoonist’s analogy to be comparing like to unlike.

(post is archived)

[–] • 0 pt

Take the world’s most famous diversity consultant, Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D., whose degree is in “Multicultural Education” and whose “area of research” is “Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis.” On what field of propositions would we expect her to be an authoritative source and ask the typical non-expert to defer, setting aside his own judgment for hers?

I don't need an expert with a Ph.D. to tell me why white neighborhoods (and countries) are preferred over nonwhites. In fact it seems the Ph.D. is only to give a level authority to the idea that whites are the problems.

Yet another reason NOT to trust the experts. The experts are not only abandoning common sense they are using mental gymnastics to deny reality.

Lakens is not merely asserting here that the non-expert’s common sense is sufficient to contest the expert’s study. He is suggesting that common sense remains an essential part of the expert’s arsenal. The apparent expert who abandons it may end up worse off than the non-expert.

[–] • 1 pt

Yet another reason NOT to trust the experts. The experts are not only abandoning common sense they are using mental gymnastics to deny reality.

Experts are expert at twisting 'common' sense to suit their arguments.