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Comment by js8 | Hacker News Reader

I have a hard time to understand your comment, in particular, what you mean by "narrative" and "we"?

Could you give an actual example (quote) of what you consider to be bad from "the left"?

Let me give you an opposite example, so that the discussion is not so abstract: Yanis Varoufakis disagrees with all those 4 points (see DiEM25) and he is a leftist.

Experts are politically motivated, like everybody, yes. But that doesn't mean they don't give useful advice. I mean, your doctor is politically motivated, are you going not to trust him? Do you agree with: "Don't trust your doctor, only yourself"? In general, not trusting experts by default is a bad idea (maybe better would be to say: not trusting experts blindly is worse than trusting them blindly).

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If you don't understand my use of the word "we" as in the opposition/Right, or "narrative" as in political narrative; we are off to a bad start.

A quick example of bad left would be their reaction to Brexit and anyone that voted in favor of it, which to them meant, overnight half the country became racist.

Now, comparing a doctor, whom don't base their care on political opinions - to, say, financial experts that have something to gain from their "expert opinions" are two very different types of expert. But again, this is what we see coming from the left all the time, everything is black and white, there is no middle ground, you are either with us or a whole host of 'ism words.

Funny thing is, doctors actually have to make shitty calls i.e. triage, and sometimes society can be so broken, that to fix things, shitty calls need to be made; something the left are utterly incapable of doing.

I don't really know how to reply, I offered a productive discussion but you seem to refuse it.

Since I obviously disagree what is "left" (and since I identify on the left, I would dare to say I have a better idea what it actually is), clearly I don't understand who you mean by "we" and "them". (Which is funny especially since you accuse the left from seeing things in binary.)

See, I offer to educate you, what actually left is about, maybe you would find that you actually agree with it (which wouldn't be surprising for me). But unless you give me an example of person you think is leftist and has those opinions, I cannot proceed - I don't know what exactly is your misconception about left.

Your remark about Brexit is funny - I do consider Jeremy Corbyn to be leftist, even though I disagree with him on Brexit. So does he call himself racist?

Give me a specific example (aka quote), then we can discuss if the statement or the person is leftist and how much.

The left is actually pretty wide, diverse set of people, with many opinions (that's why I asked what the "narrative" means in this context, there is no one). You certainly cannot categorize it as "them" and "us". (And you are the one giving blank statements like "the left are utterly incapable of doing".)

About the experts - it's not really about the profession either. I mean, if you were given the choice to trust the same expert person, 1-year into their career versus 20-years into their career, you would probably choose the latter one, who is probably the bigger expert of the two.

I think the key thing with "experts" is actually not whether to trust experts or not, that's a false dichotomy. The real issue is: How to choose an expert? Which is tricky (although I know some tricks), but beyond my interest in this discussion.

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