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Why is PS slower than 10 yrs ago?

Andelain

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Chrono|1412186789|3759965 said:
Protection is an individual's responsilibity. Don't post pictures of yourself and family, don't bring up where you live and other such obvious markers.

Not disagreeing one bit. But added security never hurts, and seems to be what several others in this thread are looking for. My suggestion was a way to provide that.
 

VRBeauty

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.
 

chrono

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Andelain|1412187241|3759971 said:
Chrono|1412186789|3759965 said:
Protection is an individual's responsilibity. Don't post pictures of yourself and family, don't bring up where you live and other such obvious markers.

Not disagreeing one bit. But added security never hurts, and seems to be what several others in this thread are looking for. My suggestion was a way to provide that.

Gotcha! It's an additional layer of protection on top of other personal methods. I misinterpreted it as the sole method on the forum.
 

Dancing Fire

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[quote="Mara|
I also can't even recall you and I even really corresponding much on PS... now DF is another story. :bigsmile:

[/quote]


:tongue:
 

pyramid

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I don't see Kenny as a bully. There are many posters who are very attacking with words on lots of boards and I don't read Kenny like that at all. I never see him single out posters and annoy them like that. He is usually the opposite with his people vary and just states what his opinion is for himself. I suppose we all come from different backgrounds and read things differently.
 

aljdewey

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I'd say because the world is a much different place than it was 10 years ago.

PS had its heyday when there weren't many 1:1 social media outlets and most connection was done through interest-specific boards......jewelry, cars, purses, etc. In those early days, this was the way people primarily connected for common interests. Since there weren't a ton of other options, spots like this enjoyed captive traffic, and i think people made more of an effort to become part of the community and contribute to it. Through that, relationships formed and friendships began. With so many more social media connection points available today, people are less likely to stick around and carve their space into a community - if it doesn't jive immediately, they just move on.

Those were also the early days when many traditional brick-and-mortar products were making fledgling steps to move to online commerce for big-ticket items. Ten years later, I think there is a dramatically increased comfort level to purchasing online, so again---less dependence on spots like this.

There seems to have been a shift in ideology, too, that really diminishes the value for me. When I first found PS, exchanges of differing ideas was done with passion, and in those conversations, sometimes your own viewpoint aligned with the majority and sometimes it didn't......and either way, that was ok. Not today. Today, the moment a poster realizes that his/her opinion isn't unanimously agreed with, s/he cries foul, feels victimized and whinges about feeling piled-on. 'It miiiiiiiiiiiiiight be ok if just one person doesn't see it my way.........but if two or three or four don't, it *must* be a conspiracy to attack me, right?'

The downstream effects of the 'everyone on the soccer team wins' approach are manifesting now; differences of ideology have morphed into being perceived as personal attacks instead of mere differences of opinion. People seem incapable of getting along with others unless they fully agree with everything they think, and that's made it a far less interesting place for me personally.
 

Dancing Fire

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Alj...
boxinggy2.gif
:lol:
 

mayerling

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kenny|1412124090|3759526 said:
ruby59|1412123502|3759520 said:
kenny|1412119739|3759479 said:
ruby59|1412104193|3759321 said:
Someone up there posted about "not being able to take constructive criticism." I remember 3 threads (mine was one of them) where the OPs were attacked and piled on unmercifully. The "opinions" given seemed to be agreed upon according to friendships, were far from kind, and were delivered with a shove it down your throat mentality. And even after a couple practically pegged posters to stop, they were made fun of through cruel icons and pictures.

After that I could see why no one out of the loop would want to post anything of substance anymore.

This drips with victim mentality. :nono:

Like DF I also just roll with the punches.
If it gets to a certain point I just stop responding to a person.

I don't miss the overly-sensitive who have left. You know what they say, if you can't take the heat ...
I'd much rather have a forum that's jumping, interesting and challenging.
How many baskets of puppies can you say Aww! for?

What did you expect ... starting a thread on children on leashes?


My dear Kenny. You are misunderstanding my response. The thread question asked - Why is ebay so slow. Of course, you would rather have a jumping, interesting forum. Well, sane people who have so many other options out there, apparently do not want to deal with bullies. And, in those instances, you did not get your own memo to know when to stop taunting. So they left.

As far as a victim mentality, I worked in the public school system at the middle school level. Nothing anyone on here can throw at me to top that. But like other apparently missing posters, we have found other places where we can participate in stimulating conversations without the drama. Might be the reason why those places are still very busy!

Great.
Everyone is where they like to be. :clap:

Dear?
ebay?
bullies?
getting memo?
taunting?
drama?

Can't you just post without the garbage?
What you write will be more powerful when you don't resort to that stuff.



This type of exchange is exactly why I don't really post these days.
 

ksinger

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aljdewey|1412221549|3760354 said:
I'd say because the world is a much different place than it was 10 years ago.

PS had its heyday when there weren't many 1:1 social media outlets and most connection was done through interest-specific boards......jewelry, cars, purses, etc. In those early days, this was the way people primarily connected for common interests. Since there weren't a ton of other options, spots like this enjoyed captive traffic, and i think people made more of an effort to become part of the community and contribute to it. Through that, relationships formed and friendships began. With so many more social media connection points available today, people are less likely to stick around and carve their space into a community - if it doesn't jive immediately, they just move on.

Those were also the early days when many traditional brick-and-mortar products were making fledgling steps to move to online commerce for big-ticket items. Ten years later, I think there is a dramatically increased comfort level to purchasing online, so again---less dependence on spots like this.

There seems to have been a shift in ideology, too, that really diminishes the value for me. When I first found PS, exchanges of differing ideas was done with passion, and in those conversations, sometimes your own viewpoint aligned with the majority and sometimes it didn't......and either way, that was ok. Not today. Today, the moment a poster realizes that his/her opinion isn't unanimously agreed with, s/he cries foul, feels victimized and whinges about feeling piled-on. 'It miiiiiiiiiiiiiight be ok if just one person doesn't see it my way.........but if two or three or four don't, it *must* be a conspiracy to attack me, right?'

The downstream effects of the 'everyone on the soccer team wins' approach are manifesting now; differences of ideology have morphed into being perceived as personal attacks instead of mere differences of opinion. People seem incapable of getting along with others unless they fully agree with everything they think, and that's made it a far less interesting place for me personally.

What she said.
 

Ellen

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aljdewey|1412221549|3760354 said:
I'd say because the world is a much different place than it was 10 years ago.

PS had its heyday when there weren't many 1:1 social media outlets and most connection was done through interest-specific boards......jewelry, cars, purses, etc. In those early days, this was the way people primarily connected for common interests. Since there weren't a ton of other options, spots like this enjoyed captive traffic, and i think people made more of an effort to become part of the community and contribute to it. Through that, relationships formed and friendships began. With so many more social media connection points available today, people are less likely to stick around and carve their space into a community - if it doesn't jive immediately, they just move on.

Those were also the early days when many traditional brick-and-mortar products were making fledgling steps to move to online commerce for big-ticket items. Ten years later, I think there is a dramatically increased comfort level to purchasing online, so again---less dependence on spots like this.

There seems to have been a shift in ideology, too, that really diminishes the value for me. When I first found PS, exchanges of differing ideas was done with passion, and in those conversations, sometimes your own viewpoint aligned with the majority and sometimes it didn't......and either way, that was ok. Not today. Today, the moment a poster realizes that his/her opinion isn't unanimously agreed with, s/he cries foul, feels victimized and whinges about feeling piled-on. 'It miiiiiiiiiiiiiight be ok if just one person doesn't see it my way.........but if two or three or four don't, it *must* be a conspiracy to attack me, right?'

The downstream effects of the 'everyone on the soccer team wins' approach are manifesting now; differences of ideology have morphed into being perceived as personal attacks instead of mere differences of opinion. People seem incapable of getting along with others unless they fully agree with everything they think, and that's made it a far less interesting place for me personally
.
Good to see you miss. :wavey:

The part in bold is true, but goes the other way too. If one says something that doesn't fit in with the "herd mentality" these days, they are attacked, many times rather viciously. There are several on this board, or used to be anyway, that if they haven't heard of it, don't agree with it, or it doesn't come out of the mouth of some "higher head" or main stream mediea news outlet, you are just plain nuts. They think because they have gone through higher education/work for leading fillintheblank company, they know more than "us". So they make trying to post something outside the box a very unenjoyable process.

I don't post things expecting everyone to agree, that wouldn't be normal. But I would like to occassionally post things to get people thinking (and asking legitimate questions), to make them look at their world through different eyes, to see things that are indeed hidden in plain sight. That's all. If one doesn't agree, doesn't want to consider another point of view, or, *gasp*, consider the horrifying possiblity they might actually be wrong about something, that's fine. No need to turn into a pack of rabbid dogs ready to tear someone to shreds. It's not necessary, and it's juvenile.

I quit posting mainly because it was time to move on, that season of my life was over. There have been times I would have liked to post something for serious discussion, but from past experience, I knew these ladies would ruin it, for everyone. Pity.
 

AGBF

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It was lovely to see you posting again, even if it was briefly, Ellen. I know that you have flitted (flit?) by from time to time to say "hello", but until today I haven't really read anything very substantive from you in a very long time. I didn't mean that to sound as rude as it does. What I meant to say is that all of your recent visits appear to have been just to greet former friends who had come back to Pricescope or were celebrating occasions. You didn't honor us with lengthy postings when you stopped in. It is great to hear you weigh in on something again. I have missed your voice very much.

Big hugs,
Deb :wavey:
 

Polished

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It gladdens my heart Ellen, whether you are posting or not, to know there are people who think the way you do. I'm not referring to Pricescope but I agree that people pick up on a general "noise" that's going around and spout the same; instead of having the courage and exercising the intelligence to come up with genuine, independent thoughts of their own.
 

Ellen

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AGBF|1412253802|3760507 said:
It was lovely to see you posting again, even if it was briefly, Ellen. I know that you have flitted (flit?) by from time to time to say "hello", but until today I haven't really read anything very substantive from you in a very long time. I didn't mean that to sound as rude as it does. What I meant to say is that all of your recent visits appear to have been just to greet former friends who had come back to Pricescope or were celebrating occasions. You didn't honor us with lengthy postings when you stopped in. It is great to hear you weigh in on something again. I have missed your voice very much.

Big hugs,
Deb :wavey:
lol It didn't sound rude at all friend, I knew just what you meant. ;)) Thank you for the kind words, which from you, I can always count on.

*hugs back*



Polished, thank you also for your kind post. And yes, people need to seriously start thinking for themselves....
 

kenny

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ksinger|1412245979|3760452 said:
aljdewey|1412221549|3760354 said:
I'd say because the world is a much different place than it was 10 years ago.

PS had its heyday when there weren't many 1:1 social media outlets and most connection was done through interest-specific boards......jewelry, cars, purses, etc. In those early days, this was the way people primarily connected for common interests. Since there weren't a ton of other options, spots like this enjoyed captive traffic, and i think people made more of an effort to become part of the community and contribute to it. Through that, relationships formed and friendships began. With so many more social media connection points available today, people are less likely to stick around and carve their space into a community - if it doesn't jive immediately, they just move on.

Those were also the early days when many traditional brick-and-mortar products were making fledgling steps to move to online commerce for big-ticket items. Ten years later, I think there is a dramatically increased comfort level to purchasing online, so again---less dependence on spots like this.

There seems to have been a shift in ideology, too, that really diminishes the value for me. When I first found PS, exchanges of differing ideas was done with passion, and in those conversations, sometimes your own viewpoint aligned with the majority and sometimes it didn't......and either way, that was ok. Not today. Today, the moment a poster realizes that his/her opinion isn't unanimously agreed with, s/he cries foul, feels victimized and whinges about feeling piled-on. 'It miiiiiiiiiiiiiight be ok if just one person doesn't see it my way.........but if two or three or four don't, it *must* be a conspiracy to attack me, right?'

The downstream effects of the 'everyone on the soccer team wins' approach are manifesting now; differences of ideology have morphed into being perceived as personal attacks instead of mere differences of opinion. People seem incapable of getting along with others unless they fully agree with everything they think, and that's made it a far less interesting place for me personally.

What she said.

+1
 

isaku5

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Thanks for dropping by to say 'hello'. I've missed your contributions to our fora :wavey:

You're family so drop by whenever the urge strikes. :appl: :appl:
 

Gypsy

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aljdewey|1412221549|3760354 said:
There seems to have been a shift in ideology, too, that really diminishes the value for me. When I first found PS, exchanges of differing ideas was done with passion, and in those conversations, sometimes your own viewpoint aligned with the majority and sometimes it didn't......and either way, that was ok. Not today. Today, the moment a poster realizes that his/her opinion isn't unanimously agreed with, s/he cries foul, feels victimized and whinges about feeling piled-on. 'It miiiiiiiiiiiiiight be ok if just one person doesn't see it my way.........but if two or three or four don't, it *must* be a conspiracy to attack me, right?'

The downstream effects of the 'everyone on the soccer team wins' approach are manifesting now; differences of ideology have morphed into being perceived as personal attacks instead of mere differences of opinion. People seem incapable of getting along with others unless they fully agree with everything they think, and that's made it a far less interesting place for me personally.


I agree with you Aljd.

It is so tiring to be accused of bullying just because you disagree with someone, or have facts that contradict someone else. Not to mention the net nanny's that want everyone to always be "nice". Especially when they admonish you to be "nice" because having a different opinion is somehow not "nice". It drives me nutty. I'd rather have genuine than nice. Polite is the standard we have to adhere to per the moderators. What the "nice" squad doesn't realize is that they aren't moderators.

What's ironic is that these people don't realize THEY are the ones bullying. They cry "you are bullying me" to force people who don't agree with them to shut up. Same thing with the "nice" squad. They want to bully everyone into behaving the way THEY think it appropriate.

It is the reason I can't post on any substantive posts outside of Rocky Talky. I'll talk about stuff like a loss in my life or my cats or job hunt, but things that really mean something? No. It's not worth dealing with the bullying of the "nice" squad.
 

ksinger

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Gypsy|1412310775|3761117 said:
aljdewey|1412221549|3760354 said:
There seems to have been a shift in ideology, too, that really diminishes the value for me. When I first found PS, exchanges of differing ideas was done with passion, and in those conversations, sometimes your own viewpoint aligned with the majority and sometimes it didn't......and either way, that was ok. Not today. Today, the moment a poster realizes that his/her opinion isn't unanimously agreed with, s/he cries foul, feels victimized and whinges about feeling piled-on. 'It miiiiiiiiiiiiiight be ok if just one person doesn't see it my way.........but if two or three or four don't, it *must* be a conspiracy to attack me, right?'

The downstream effects of the 'everyone on the soccer team wins' approach are manifesting now; differences of ideology have morphed into being perceived as personal attacks instead of mere differences of opinion. People seem incapable of getting along with others unless they fully agree with everything they think, and that's made it a far less interesting place for me personally.


I agree with you Aljd.

It is so tiring to be accused of bullying just because you disagree with someone, or have facts that contradict someone else. Not to mention the net nanny's that want everyone to always be "nice". Especially when they admonish you to be "nice" because having a different opinion is somehow not "nice". It drives me nutty. I'd rather have genuine than nice. Polite is the standard we have to adhere to per the moderators. What the "nice" squad doesn't realize is that they aren't moderators.

What's ironic is that these people don't realize THEY are the ones bullying. They cry "you are bullying me" to force people who don't agree with them to shut up. Same thing with the "nice" squad. They want to bully everyone into behaving the way THEY think it appropriate.

It is the reason I can't post on any substantive posts outside of Rocky Talky. I'll talk about stuff like a loss in my life or my cats or job hunt, but things that really mean something? No. It's not worth dealing with the bullying of the "nice" squad.

Well, considering the way this thread has turned, I will post this and let the chips fall where they may. It addresses at least part of the reason why we can't disagree in a discussion on ANYTHING, let alone politics, anymore, without someone getting their panties in a wad at the first hint of disagreement.

The Death of Expertise
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
 

missy

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ksinger|1412318258|3761174 said:
Well, considering the way this thread has turned, I will post this and let the chips fall where they may. It addresses at least part of the reason why we can't disagree in a discussion on ANYTHING, let alone politics, anymore, without someone getting their panties in a wad at the first hint of disagreement.

The Death of Expertise
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

Love this article Karen. Thank you for sharing it and for those who don't like to click I hope you don't mind me copying it here. Very enjoyable and I agree with everything he wrote.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but in a particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy. When I say something on those subjects, I expect that my opinion holds more weight than that of most other people.

I never thought those were particularly controversial statements. As it turns out, they’re plenty controversial. Today, any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy.


But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. Lewis and the Snowden affair, denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. It means that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

What’s going on here?
I fear we are witnessing the “death of expertise”: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.

What has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.
This is a very bad thing. Yes, it’s true that experts can make mistakes, as disasters from thalidomide to the Challenger explosion tragically remind us. But mostly, experts have a pretty good batting average compared to laymen: doctors, whatever their errors, seem to do better with most illnesses than faith healers or your Aunt Ginny and her special chicken gut poultice. To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly.

Worse, it’s dangerous. The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways in which we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it’s a rejection of science and rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself. Yes, I said “Western civilization”: that paternalistic, racist, ethnocentric approach to knowledge that created the nuclear bomb, the Edsel, and New Coke, but which also keeps diabetics alive, lands mammoth airliners in the dark, and writes documents like the Charter of the United Nations.

This isn’t just about politics, which would be bad enough. No, it’s worse than that: the perverse effect of the death of expertise is that without real experts, everyone is an expert on everything. To take but one horrifying example, we live today in an advanced post-industrial country that is now fighting a resurgence of whooping cough — a scourge nearly eliminated a century ago — merely because otherwise intelligent people have been second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine. (Yes, I mean people like Jenny McCarthy.

In politics, too, the problem has reached ridiculous proportions. People in political debates no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong” from the phrase “you’re stupid.” To disagree is to insult. To correct another is to be a hater. And to refuse to acknowledge alternative views, no matter how fantastic or inane, is to be closed-minded.

How conversation became exhausting
Critics might dismiss all this by saying that everyone has a right to participate in the public sphere. That’s true. But every discussion must take place within limits and above a certain baseline of competence. And competence is sorely lacking in the public arena. People with strong views on going to war in other countries can barely find their own nation on a map; people who want to punish Congress for this or that law can’t name their own member of the House.

People with strong views on going to war in other countries can barely find their own nation on a map.
None of this ignorance stops people from arguing as though they are research scientists. Tackle a complex policy issue with a layman today, and you will get snippy and sophistic demands to show ever increasing amounts of “proof” or “evidence” for your case, even though the ordinary interlocutor in such debates isn’t really equipped to decide what constitutes “evidence” or to know it when it’s presented. The use of evidence is a specialized form of knowledge that takes a long time to learn, which is why articles and books are subjected to “peer review” and not to “everyone review,” but don’t tell that to someone hectoring you about the how things really work in Moscow or Beijing or Washington.

This subverts any real hope of a conversation, because it is simply exhausting — at least speaking from my perspective as the policy expert in most of these discussions — to have to start from the very beginning of every argument and establish the merest baseline of knowledge, and then constantly to have to negotiate the rules of logical argument. (Most people I encounter, for example, have no idea what a non-sequitur is, or when they’re using one; nor do they understand the difference between generalizations and stereotypes.) Most people are already huffy and offended before ever encountering the substance of the issue at hand.
Once upon a time — way back in the Dark Ages before the 2000s — people seemed to understand, in a general way, the difference between experts and laymen. There was a clear demarcation in political food fights, as objections and dissent among experts came from their peers — that is, from people equipped with similar knowledge. The public, largely, were spectators.

This was both good and bad. While it strained out the kook factor in discussions (editors controlled their letters pages, which today would be called “moderating”), it also meant that sometimes public policy debate was too esoteric, conducted less for public enlightenment and more as just so much dueling jargon between experts.

If experts go back to only talking to each other, that’s bad for democracy.
No one — not me, anyway — wants to return to those days. I like the 21st century, and I like the democratization of knowledge and the wider circle of public participation. That greater participation, however, is endangered by the utterly illogical insistence that every opinion should have equal weight, because people like me, sooner or later, are forced to tune out people who insist that we’re all starting from intellectual scratch. (Spoiler: We’re not.) And if that happens, experts will go back to only talking to each other. And that’s bad for democracy.

The downside of no gatekeepers
How did this peevishness about expertise come about, and how can it have gotten so immensely foolish?

Some of it is purely due to the globalization of communication. There are no longer any gatekeepers: the journals and op-ed pages that were once strictly edited have been drowned under the weight of self-publishable blogs. There was once a time when participation in public debate, even in the pages of the local newspaper, required submission of a letter or an article, and that submission had to be written intelligently, pass editorial review, and stand with the author’s name attached. Even then, it was a big deal to get a letter in a major newspaper.

Now, anyone can bum rush the comments section of any major publication. Sometimes, that results in a free-for-all that spurs better thinking. Most of the time, however, it means that anyone can post anything they want, under any anonymous cover, and never have to defend their views or get called out for being wrong.

Another reason for the collapse of expertise lies not with the global commons but with the increasingly partisan nature of U.S. political campaigns. There was once a time when presidents would win elections and then scour universities and think-tanks for a brain trust; that’s how Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski and others ended up in government service while moving between places like Harvard and Columbia.

This is the code of the samurai, not the intellectual, and it privileges the campaign loyalist over the expert.
Those days are gone. To be sure, some of the blame rests with the increasing irrelevance of overly narrow research in the social sciences. But it is also because the primary requisite of seniority in the policy world is too often an answer to the question: “What did you do during the campaign?” This is the code of the samurai, not the intellectual, and it privileges the campaign loyalist over the expert.

I have a hard time, for example, imagining that I would be called to Washington today in the way I was back in 1990, when the senior Senator from Pennsylvania asked a former U.S. Ambassador to the UN who she might recommend to advise him on foreign affairs, and she gave him my name. Despite the fact that I had no connection to Pennsylvania and had never worked on his campaigns, he called me at the campus where I was teaching, and later invited me to join his personal staff.

Universities, without doubt, have to own some of this mess. The idea of telling students that professors run the show and know better than they do strikes many students as something like uppity lip from the help, and so many profs don’t do it. (One of the greatest teachers I ever had, James Schall, once wrote many years ago that “students have obligations to teachers,” including “trust, docility, effort, and thinking,” an assertion that would produce howls of outrage from the entitled generations roaming campuses today.) As a result, many academic departments are boutiques, in which the professors are expected to be something like intellectual valets. This produces nothing but a delusion of intellectual adequacy in children who should be instructed, not catered to.

The confidence of the dumb
There’s also that immutable problem known as “human nature.” It has a name now: it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which says, in sum, that the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb. And when you get invested in being aggressively dumb…well, the last thing you want to encounter are experts who disagree with you, and so you dismiss them in order to maintain your unreasonably high opinion of yourself. (There’s a lot of that loose on social media, especially.)

All of these are symptoms of the same disease: a manic reinterpretation of “democracy” in which everyone must have their say, and no one must be “disrespected.” (The verb to disrespect is one of the most obnoxious and insidious innovations in our language in years, because it really means “to fail to pay me the impossibly high requirement of respect I demand.”) This yearning for respect and equality, even—perhaps especially—if unearned, is so intense that it brooks no disagreement. It represents the full flowering of a therapeutic culture where self-esteem, not achievement, is the ultimate human value, and it’s making us all dumber by the day.

Thus, at least some of the people who reject expertise are not really, as they often claim, showing their independence of thought. They are instead rejecting anything that might stir a gnawing insecurity that their own opinion might not be worth all that much.

Experts: the servants, not masters, of a democracy
So what can we do? Not much, sadly, since this is a cultural and generational issue that will take a long time come right, if it ever does. Personally, I don’t think technocrats and intellectuals should rule the world: we had quite enough of that in the late 20th century, thank you, and it should be clear now that intellectualism makes for lousy policy without some sort of political common sense. Indeed, in an ideal world, experts are the servants, not the masters, of a democracy.

But when citizens forgo their basic obligation to learn enough to actually govern themselves, and instead remain stubbornly imprisoned by their fragile egos and caged by their own sense of entitlement, experts will end up running things by default. That’s a terrible outcome for everyone.

Expertise is necessary, and it’s not going away. Unless we return it to a healthy role in public policy, we’re going to have stupider and less productive arguments every day. So here, presented without modesty or political sensitivity, are some things to think about when engaging with experts in their area of specialization.

We can all stipulate: the expert isn’t always right.
But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn’t engender insecurity or anxiety to think that an expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than yours. (Because, likely, it is.)
Experts come in many flavors. Education enables it, but practitioners in a field acquire expertise through experience; usually the combination of the two is the mark of a true expert in a field. But if you have neither education nor experience, you might want to consider exactly what it is you’re bringing to the argument.
In any discussion, you have a positive obligation to learn at least enough to make the conversation possible. The University of Google doesn’t count. Remember: having a strong opinion about something isn’t the same as knowing something.
And yes, your political opinions have value. Of course they do: you’re a member of a democracy and what you want is as important as what any other voter wants. As a layman, however, your political analysis, has far less value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you think it is.
And how do I know all this? Just who do I think I am?

Well, of course: I’m an expert.
 

ksinger

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missy|1412332341|3761241 said:
ksinger|1412318258|3761174 said:
Well, considering the way this thread has turned, I will post this and let the chips fall where they may. It addresses at least part of the reason why we can't disagree in a discussion on ANYTHING, let alone politics, anymore, without someone getting their panties in a wad at the first hint of disagreement.

The Death of Expertise
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

Love this article Karen. Thank you for sharing it and for those who don't like to click I hope you don't mind me copying it here. Very enjoyable and I agree with everything he wrote.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but in a particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy. When I say something on those subjects, I expect that my opinion holds more weight than that of most other people.

I never thought those were particularly controversial statements. As it turns out, they’re plenty controversial. Today, any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy.


But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. Lewis and the Snowden affair, denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. It means that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

What’s going on here?
I fear we are witnessing the “death of expertise”: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.

What has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.
This is a very bad thing. Yes, it’s true that experts can make mistakes, as disasters from thalidomide to the Challenger explosion tragically remind us. But mostly, experts have a pretty good batting average compared to laymen: doctors, whatever their errors, seem to do better with most illnesses than faith healers or your Aunt Ginny and her special chicken gut poultice. To reject the notion of expertise, and to replace it with a sanctimonious insistence that every person has a right to his or her own opinion, is silly.

Worse, it’s dangerous. The death of expertise is a rejection not only of knowledge, but of the ways in which we gain knowledge and learn about things. Fundamentally, it’s a rejection of science and rationality, which are the foundations of Western civilization itself. Yes, I said “Western civilization”: that paternalistic, racist, ethnocentric approach to knowledge that created the nuclear bomb, the Edsel, and New Coke, but which also keeps diabetics alive, lands mammoth airliners in the dark, and writes documents like the Charter of the United Nations.

This isn’t just about politics, which would be bad enough. No, it’s worse than that: the perverse effect of the death of expertise is that without real experts, everyone is an expert on everything. To take but one horrifying example, we live today in an advanced post-industrial country that is now fighting a resurgence of whooping cough — a scourge nearly eliminated a century ago — merely because otherwise intelligent people have been second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine. (Yes, I mean people like Jenny McCarthy.

In politics, too, the problem has reached ridiculous proportions. People in political debates no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong” from the phrase “you’re stupid.” To disagree is to insult. To correct another is to be a hater. And to refuse to acknowledge alternative views, no matter how fantastic or inane, is to be closed-minded.

How conversation became exhausting
Critics might dismiss all this by saying that everyone has a right to participate in the public sphere. That’s true. But every discussion must take place within limits and above a certain baseline of competence. And competence is sorely lacking in the public arena. People with strong views on going to war in other countries can barely find their own nation on a map; people who want to punish Congress for this or that law can’t name their own member of the House.

People with strong views on going to war in other countries can barely find their own nation on a map.
None of this ignorance stops people from arguing as though they are research scientists. Tackle a complex policy issue with a layman today, and you will get snippy and sophistic demands to show ever increasing amounts of “proof” or “evidence” for your case, even though the ordinary interlocutor in such debates isn’t really equipped to decide what constitutes “evidence” or to know it when it’s presented. The use of evidence is a specialized form of knowledge that takes a long time to learn, which is why articles and books are subjected to “peer review” and not to “everyone review,” but don’t tell that to someone hectoring you about the how things really work in Moscow or Beijing or Washington.

This subverts any real hope of a conversation, because it is simply exhausting — at least speaking from my perspective as the policy expert in most of these discussions — to have to start from the very beginning of every argument and establish the merest baseline of knowledge, and then constantly to have to negotiate the rules of logical argument. (Most people I encounter, for example, have no idea what a non-sequitur is, or when they’re using one; nor do they understand the difference between generalizations and stereotypes.) Most people are already huffy and offended before ever encountering the substance of the issue at hand.
Once upon a time — way back in the Dark Ages before the 2000s — people seemed to understand, in a general way, the difference between experts and laymen. There was a clear demarcation in political food fights, as objections and dissent among experts came from their peers — that is, from people equipped with similar knowledge. The public, largely, were spectators.

This was both good and bad. While it strained out the kook factor in discussions (editors controlled their letters pages, which today would be called “moderating”), it also meant that sometimes public policy debate was too esoteric, conducted less for public enlightenment and more as just so much dueling jargon between experts.

If experts go back to only talking to each other, that’s bad for democracy.
No one — not me, anyway — wants to return to those days. I like the 21st century, and I like the democratization of knowledge and the wider circle of public participation. That greater participation, however, is endangered by the utterly illogical insistence that every opinion should have equal weight, because people like me, sooner or later, are forced to tune out people who insist that we’re all starting from intellectual scratch. (Spoiler: We’re not.) And if that happens, experts will go back to only talking to each other. And that’s bad for democracy.

The downside of no gatekeepers
How did this peevishness about expertise come about, and how can it have gotten so immensely foolish?

Some of it is purely due to the globalization of communication. There are no longer any gatekeepers: the journals and op-ed pages that were once strictly edited have been drowned under the weight of self-publishable blogs. There was once a time when participation in public debate, even in the pages of the local newspaper, required submission of a letter or an article, and that submission had to be written intelligently, pass editorial review, and stand with the author’s name attached. Even then, it was a big deal to get a letter in a major newspaper.

Now, anyone can bum rush the comments section of any major publication. Sometimes, that results in a free-for-all that spurs better thinking. Most of the time, however, it means that anyone can post anything they want, under any anonymous cover, and never have to defend their views or get called out for being wrong.

Another reason for the collapse of expertise lies not with the global commons but with the increasingly partisan nature of U.S. political campaigns. There was once a time when presidents would win elections and then scour universities and think-tanks for a brain trust; that’s how Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski and others ended up in government service while moving between places like Harvard and Columbia.

This is the code of the samurai, not the intellectual, and it privileges the campaign loyalist over the expert.
Those days are gone. To be sure, some of the blame rests with the increasing irrelevance of overly narrow research in the social sciences. But it is also because the primary requisite of seniority in the policy world is too often an answer to the question: “What did you do during the campaign?” This is the code of the samurai, not the intellectual, and it privileges the campaign loyalist over the expert.

I have a hard time, for example, imagining that I would be called to Washington today in the way I was back in 1990, when the senior Senator from Pennsylvania asked a former U.S. Ambassador to the UN who she might recommend to advise him on foreign affairs, and she gave him my name. Despite the fact that I had no connection to Pennsylvania and had never worked on his campaigns, he called me at the campus where I was teaching, and later invited me to join his personal staff.

Universities, without doubt, have to own some of this mess. The idea of telling students that professors run the show and know better than they do strikes many students as something like uppity lip from the help, and so many profs don’t do it. (One of the greatest teachers I ever had, James Schall, once wrote many years ago that “students have obligations to teachers,” including “trust, docility, effort, and thinking,” an assertion that would produce howls of outrage from the entitled generations roaming campuses today.) As a result, many academic departments are boutiques, in which the professors are expected to be something like intellectual valets. This produces nothing but a delusion of intellectual adequacy in children who should be instructed, not catered to.

The confidence of the dumb
There’s also that immutable problem known as “human nature.” It has a name now: it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which says, in sum, that the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb. And when you get invested in being aggressively dumb…well, the last thing you want to encounter are experts who disagree with you, and so you dismiss them in order to maintain your unreasonably high opinion of yourself. (There’s a lot of that loose on social media, especially.)

All of these are symptoms of the same disease: a manic reinterpretation of “democracy” in which everyone must have their say, and no one must be “disrespected.” (The verb to disrespect is one of the most obnoxious and insidious innovations in our language in years, because it really means “to fail to pay me the impossibly high requirement of respect I demand.”) This yearning for respect and equality, even—perhaps especially—if unearned, is so intense that it brooks no disagreement. It represents the full flowering of a therapeutic culture where self-esteem, not achievement, is the ultimate human value, and it’s making us all dumber by the day.

Thus, at least some of the people who reject expertise are not really, as they often claim, showing their independence of thought. They are instead rejecting anything that might stir a gnawing insecurity that their own opinion might not be worth all that much.

Experts: the servants, not masters, of a democracy
So what can we do? Not much, sadly, since this is a cultural and generational issue that will take a long time come right, if it ever does. Personally, I don’t think technocrats and intellectuals should rule the world: we had quite enough of that in the late 20th century, thank you, and it should be clear now that intellectualism makes for lousy policy without some sort of political common sense. Indeed, in an ideal world, experts are the servants, not the masters, of a democracy.

But when citizens forgo their basic obligation to learn enough to actually govern themselves, and instead remain stubbornly imprisoned by their fragile egos and caged by their own sense of entitlement, experts will end up running things by default. That’s a terrible outcome for everyone.

Expertise is necessary, and it’s not going away. Unless we return it to a healthy role in public policy, we’re going to have stupider and less productive arguments every day. So here, presented without modesty or political sensitivity, are some things to think about when engaging with experts in their area of specialization.

We can all stipulate: the expert isn’t always right.
But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn’t engender insecurity or anxiety to think that an expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than yours. (Because, likely, it is.)
Experts come in many flavors. Education enables it, but practitioners in a field acquire expertise through experience; usually the combination of the two is the mark of a true expert in a field. But if you have neither education nor experience, you might want to consider exactly what it is you’re bringing to the argument.
In any discussion, you have a positive obligation to learn at least enough to make the conversation possible. The University of Google doesn’t count. Remember: having a strong opinion about something isn’t the same as knowing something.
And yes, your political opinions have value. Of course they do: you’re a member of a democracy and what you want is as important as what any other voter wants. As a layman, however, your political analysis, has far less value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you think it is.
And how do I know all this? Just who do I think I am?

Well, of course: I’m an expert.

You're welcome Missy. It's been a favorite of mine since I read it. And I guess it is my caveat (to myself as well as others) against the idea that "thinking for oneself" makes one somehow automatically more discerning or something. No, being all puffed up about thinking out of the box on a topic while being untethered from genuine expertise on said topic, is not intelligence or discernment. It becomes willful ignorance.

Basically, in matters empirical, I try to accept expertise over rampant speculation, and I try very VERY hard to make sure my sources of said expertise, are really that, and not someone masquerading as such. Now, when it involves perceptions of people, or how people react? That's more in the opinion line - a soft science - and therefore more open to my opinion/observation vs yours. But for instance, when the CDC and the WHO say ebola isn't airborne, I don't say, "Oh, wow, I just think they aren't telling us everything." I accept that expertise.
 

JewelFreak

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Gypsy said:
I'd rather have genuine than nice. Polite is the standard we have to adhere to per the moderators. What the "nice" squad doesn't realize is that they aren't moderators.

Gypsy -- can you explain a little more, please? I don't see what's wrong with being polite, but maybe I'm just not understanding what you mean by it.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines "polite" as: " behaving in a way that shows respect for other people’s feelings." That does not mean that disagreement in a discussion is bad, only expressing it so that someone is hurt. Example: "I disagree & here's why, these & these facts." Instead of, "How can a human being with a so-called brain say such a thing?"

Is this what you mean or is it something else?

--- Laurie
 

ksinger

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And speaking of the death of expertise, this just hammers it home, albeit more amusingly. It really will only resonate with corporate/IT/project managers, but for those of us, well, pretty much every meeting we're in is THIS meeting.

Everyone in my office has been almost in tears watching this. Hilarious.
(My husband, even though he is in his own flavor of insanity as a public school teacher, only found it mildly amusing. Its power to highly amuse really does seem to be a function of being IT/project management and maybe government, more than anything.) Requirements from clueless customers, at its very best!

You're The Expert!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop
 

packrat

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I didn't think it was bullying to disagree, just "oh well, I don't really feel that way but ok." I figured it was bullying to inform the other person how obviously ignorant and stupid and uninformed and moronic they are b/c they don't see things the way someone else does, and b/c that person is quit knowledgeable about something, they're obviously right and everyone else is just a slobbering idiot. Cuz I've seen that a lot here. It's one thing to question something and be told oh hey, I've studied this and it's been my field for eleventy twelve odd years, here's the facts of the matter. It's another thing to say jeezalou are you ****ing stupid? Are you missing a chromosome or something b/c I'm TELLING YOU this is the way it is god I hate to hear this shit from stupid people too lazy to figure shit out on their own. Those things I would consider bitchy and bullying. Polite I think as just being nice, even if you don't agree w/someone. I'm polite to my MIL even tho I haven't the time of day for her. I'm polite to a lot of people I can't stand. Being polite isn't being genuine, it's just having common courtesy, which the whole world seems to be lacking these days.
 

Ellen

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ksinger, in regard to the article you posted, there's much that could be said, but I will keep it brief, to this one commemt, and then I am done as I know all too well this could go on ad infinitum. I remember a discussion on this board about something in the health field. I honestly don't recall what it was specifically, might have been vaccines, but it doesn't matter. I don't need the specific to make my point. I was being argued against by a group of ladies who were of course quoting the "experts" and demanding evidence to back up my assertions. So, I posted a quote from what should have been, by your standards, an expert. His opinion was exactly in line with what I had been saying. Well, the group got quiet for, oh, maybe 90 seconds, and then it just went back to the same bickering/harassing. No REAL consideration was given to what he said.

So then it comes down to, which expert are we to believe? The one possibly telling the truth/making a valid point, are the one you want to hear?


I posted absolute proof the FDA has drug companies use their own people to test drugs for market. This IS the fox guarding the henhouse. No way in the world you're going to get an objective decision/result out of that. To believe otherwise is to insult your own intelligence.

Some people think they want the truth, when in reality, they really want what they think is the truth. Because sometimes, the truth does hurt, and people don't want to hear it.


:wavey:
 

Polished

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packrat|1412338808|3761271 said:
I'm polite to my MIL even tho I haven't the time of day for her. I'm polite to a lot of people I can't stand. Being polite isn't being genuine, it's just having common courtesy,

In the example you cite packrat I imagine it also acts as a protective thing for you - a strategy of dealing. Good example.
 

JewelFreak

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Exactly, Packrat. At least that's how I see it. I don't know why people think their point comes across better if they insult the other guy or call him names. They're very mistaken, at any rate.
 

packrat

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Maybe that's why I suck at debating or having heated discussions. I know there are people who are considered experts in their fields of study and they don't agree on everything 100% of the time, so cut the layperson some slack.

And of course, take my genuine politeness w/a grain of salt. I still live in the same small hick midwestern town where I grew up, I don't have a college ejumacashun and I don't read all them there studies and facshul informashun that ya'll do. All's I know if what I've experienced, and what I've seen, and what is important or not, to me.
 

Tacori E-ring

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To me, disagreeing with the content of the post is way different than attacking the personality of the poster. The bullying I have seen and am referring to is very obvious and aggressive. I don't mind if someone has different ideas or opinions than I do. I mind when my character is attacked which is provoked by me not agreeing with the other poster. That's fighting dirty.
 

Laila619

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Tacori E-ring|1412341289|3761300 said:
To me, disagreeing with the content of the post is way different than attacking the personality of the poster. The bullying I have seen and am referring to is very obvious and aggressive. I don't mind if someone has different ideas or opinions than I do. I mind when my character is attacked which is provoked by me not agreeing with the other poster. That's fighting dirty.

Yep. Being "nice" doesn't mean you have to kiss someone's butt and agree with everything they say. It *does* mean you need to try to be polite and respectful when disagreeing.
 

OreoRosies86

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packrat|1412338808|3761271 said:
I didn't think it was bullying to disagree, just "oh well, I don't really feel that way but ok." I figured it was bullying to inform the other person how obviously ignorant and stupid and uninformed and moronic they are b/c they don't see things the way someone else does, and b/c that person is quit knowledgeable about something, they're obviously right and everyone else is just a slobbering idiot. Cuz I've seen that a lot here. It's one thing to question something and be told oh hey, I've studied this and it's been my field for eleventy twelve odd years, here's the facts of the matter. It's another thing to say jeezalou are you ****ing stupid? Are you missing a chromosome or something b/c I'm TELLING YOU this is the way it is god I hate to hear this shit from stupid people too lazy to figure shit out on their own. Those things I would consider bitchy and bullying. Polite I think as just being nice, even if you don't agree w/someone. I'm polite to my MIL even tho I haven't the time of day for her. I'm polite to a lot of people I can't stand. Being polite isn't being genuine, it's just having common courtesy, which the whole world seems to be lacking these days.

I was recently indirectly called "stupid" on a thread here. Which I admit made me laugh at the absurdity as I can't remember the last time I called another adult "stupid." :lol:

I very well could be, but I don't think anyone here is. It stops a discussion cold. What else can one say when another poster has deemed you a babbling idiot? If it happens enough as part of forum interactions it can create a what's-the-point-of-posting attitude.
 

Circe

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Cosign to Alj, Gypsy, and KSinger (I may need to get the text of that article tattooed somewhere on my body for easy reference in meatspace arguments).

I think there's a fundamental difference between two different ideas of bullying, direct rudeness and majority opposition. Agree 100% with everybody who says NO name-calling, ad hominem attacks, etc., but if you say something and something like 80% of the people responding disagree politely, you're not being bullied. And "politely" does not exclude vehement opposition: it just means it needs to be phrased in a civil fashion.
 
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