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Comment by Top19 | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading something once along the lines of "knowledge is just the opinions of those in power".

Interesting approach, and may be valid for some fields. I feel that most of science is about discovering falsifiable objective truths, though the specific set of potential truths that are chosen for research activity is definitely influenced by those in power.

In the long run that is correct. However, in decision making, when work is "cutting edge" the opinions of experts/"key opinion leaders" weighs more heavily, or equal to, data.

For example, it is now >50 years since anthropogenic global warming was first proposed. The first intergovernmental action I can find with a brief search that tackles climate change is the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Legislation surrounding CO2 emissions was not introduced until the 2000's. The matter is still "controversial".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Framework_Conve...

To be fair, while we can run controlled experiments on components of this problem, I don't think we can run a global controlled experiment of the entire system, or fully understand the long-term impact of climate change on humans in the face of advancing technology.

That problem exists for almost all innovative work. Generally, a paradigm becomes accepted when the predictions that follow from it are found to hold true. For people to make the effort to test such predictions requires (from a human standpoint) a "leap of faith", regardless of the integrity of the data that lead to said paradigm being proposed.

Experts are those employed to say what The Powers That Be (tm) prefer to hear, regardless of how wrong they get it. Others get no play.

I disagree.

Some things are demonstrable. When I started finding and reporting cyber security holes to various governments and governmental departments I was hired to help them. They fixed the holes or at the very least they started a public review of cyber security and got the process for better our regulations started.

Don't give in to cynicism.

Western governments have corruption and malaise, true, but government is made of people and most people want to make things better and fairer and our democracies aren't perfect but you can make a difference if you put your best foot forward. You just need to try.

"History, Lister, is written by the winners."

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