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Comment by lsm07 | Hacker News Reader

This guy is just another jackass running cover for the regime. "Let the experts do the data analysis for you!" You think running this program still works after the past 6 years? Why are "high IQ" people so unbelievably daft?

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Consider for a moment that "Let the experts do the data analysis for you!" may be a much kinder way of saying, "You're too uneducated to understand the data and will with a high degree of certainty screw up the analysis!"

As George Carlin famously says, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." Half!

The problem is not one of qualifications, but of motivation and trust. Even if you genuinely believe the organization before you is filled with nothing but the brightest individuals in the world, leagues beyond your understanding in their field, it means absolutely nothing if you don't trust them. In fact it would mean less than nothing, as there's nothing scarier than a clever individual with "impaired" ethical values.

Trust is difficult to earn, and easily lost. And we live in a society where, for most, trust is gone. The way to get it back is through extreme transparency and coming from a point of view of understanding this distrust.

Trust isn’t so easily lost when you understand the lack of certainty in this world.

So then, who benefits from offering certainty, if it’s more or less impossible to obtain?

Everyone does. That's why its such a popular tactic, but trust is so hard. That is the reason for transparency.

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