It’s also the rampant arrogance of ignorance that has been bred in this country for a very long time, mostly by the right. Actually knowing a subject, having studied it extensively and over time is seen as somehow disqualifying for giving an opinion on a matter. (Go ahead, ask me how I know!)
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How do you know?
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(Just substitute “vaccine” every time you hear “psychic”)
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And this is also how we got the current president, because we have a culture deeply suffused with the idea that being a wealthy business man means that you can solve any problem on your own, because society worships hoarders of wealth more than they care about the production of knowledge for it’s own sake. It’s just not the case that we need a CEO to fix our collective problems… I think the experience with Trump is showing that all it does is exacerbate those problems. We live in an era with such a complex and complicated division of labor, that no one person can be all things. Even the smartest of us, the people with the ability to be a true polymath, are only going to be able to scratch the surface of human knowledge and experience that exists in today’s globalized society. Anyone who tells you they have all the answers are lying, to you and themselves about how competent they are to ruggedly, individualisticly, go it alone.
And when it comes to the rejection of knowledge such as that of the medical profession… well, it can have profound consequences like we’re seeing right now…
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Sometimes I think some of us have taken the feel-good movies we’ve watched a little too seriously. I’ve gotten into arguments with people who say that trying to anticipate things that could go wrong will somehow mystically cause those things to happen, so the key to success is to have a positive attitude and to make decisions based on one’s feelings.
This is how you get things like the Fyre Festival, Theranos, and the Trump administration.
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The Hitler 'stache is very much one of the acceptable styles—they just call it a “toothbrush”; why they didn’t say it’s a “Chaplin” is beyond me.
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It got the green checkmark for mask-fitting, but uhh…yeah you’re still correct.
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That T-Shirt Respirator is legit!
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Who knew that Shaggy was that big of an asshole?
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Who knew Shaggy was a Florida man? I had him pegged for SoCal!
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LOLWUT.
Yeah, sure, I’m being naïve and all, but is it really that common a practice? Shouldn’t the people who wear scrubs for a living be assumed to have a working knowledge of why they wear scrubs for a living?
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Shaggy was a teenager in 1969, that must be Shaggy’s grandson
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Um… actually yes. It’s a “thing”… Just a couple of weeks ago I saw a woman in a restaurant in scrubs. An old school mate of my daughter’s had a mom who was a radiologist. Saw her in scrubs quite a bit. Plus in the actual oral history interview, the woman being interviewed noted the change over the course of her career.
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I guess what I meant was that I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they aren’t still wearing them after working in them.
If they are not changing at work, they are likely wearing them to and fro. I suspect at least some of them stop on the way home to pick up something at the store, etc, just like the rest of us.
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every time he does shit like this, the stock market tanks again
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Well, the 21:00 open-your-window-and-give-a-round-of-applause thing seems to be catching on, even in the rain.
And yes, it felt nice.
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So, the CIA pretending to be medical professionals is why we haven’t eradicated polio yet.
Pigs and spooks pretending to be doctors undermines public trust in the medical profession which is required to contain outbreaks of infectious disease.
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In the end, people just want to be validated and want to silence those who say things they don’t want to hear. It’s a version of sticking your fingers into your ears and going “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”. Or people peddling homeopathy and other quackery - they will always be like “ugh doctors, they don’t know what they’re talking about!” unless it’s a case of “see X? he believes in {quackery X} and he’s a doctor so he knows what he’s talking about!”
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Whereabouts?
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