The WHO's withdrawal of lockdown recommendations as a primary tool to control the spread of viruses provides some discomfiting lessons on the value of "experts" in our lives.
Let me begin by stating I'm not anti-expert and don't mean to denigrate what true experts bring to the table. We rely on experts because it's sensible to trust those with the training, knowledge, and skilled expertise we lack to complete certain tasks faster and better. Good experts provide incredible value and society couldn't survive without them.
Still, experts are people like you and me and are just as capable of making mistakes as we are. This is why we tend to pick and choose experts based on our experience with them or, lacking those interactions, from the recommendations of others we trust. Recommendations based on what? The experiences or beliefs of others.
About Those Experts
Put simply, we trust plumbers, electricians, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and other experts because we believe they know better than we do. It's a literal no-brainer, which, ironically enough, turns out to be the problem.
When you choose an expert, in many cases you are doing much more than picking a skill set to suit a need, you are actually choosing what to believe.
For example, how many people support Carbon Taxes as they believe we're living through a carbon fuelled climate crisis because a consensus of scientists supposedly said so? Of those true believers, what percentage of them could explain in significant detail, or any relevant detail at all, the myriad of interrelated factors that influence climate? Very few if any at all. This shows that their belief in the science of climate change isn't rooted in intimate knowledge of climate forces but solely in their choice of which "expert" to believe.
We appropriate for ourselves our selected expert's ideas, perceptions, beliefs, and expertise. We do, and this truth is apparent each and every time we rely on those experts to justify or defend our position on any given subject. Your factual arguments are really their factual arguments. Your solutions, as well, are their solutions. Your thinking, you guessed it, is their thinking. Your conclusions, yup, their conclusions.
This is why it can be painful when experts suddenly reverse course. It means your adopted beliefs were wrong and any actions taken at the time, a horrible mistake. The easiest thing to do is to update your mindset accordingly, allowing you to evolve with your expert but again, that is only more proof the expert controls your thoughts and understanding. Who are you, really? What do you believe, and why?
COVID-19 A Portrait of Power
The problem is much worse for society when our leaders choose their experts poorly because that decision impacts everyone. The WHO's recent walk back on the use of lockdowns is a great case in point.
It always been clear that lockdowns would force the spread of misery and poverty on citizens. (Canada Free Press , April 4, 2020,
"The consequences from the economic shutdown are real and are causing severe distress to businesses and individuals. Economic devastation from the shutdown was inevitable, and predictable. Again, the similarity between the impact to Alberta of the government's war on "global warming" to the impact to all of Canada (and the US) in the war on coronavirus is evident and extremely relevant."
That comment was published in early April, over six months ago and it wasn't revelatory then. Do you believe the big brains at the WHO didn't know this at the time? Why wait for more than six months to admit what's already understood? They knew they would eventually be forced to change their tune, so the most reasonable explanation is the WHO wanted countries to impose lockdowns on their citizens and the entire episode is actually an exercise in tyranny, not safety.
Regardless, if you supported the idiotic lockdowns you now have to accept that all the bad that happened to your neighbours was completely and wholly unnecessary! That painful knowledge will make it difficult to look lockdown victims in the eye but if you're one of the neo-tyrant's like Trudeau and Ford who ordered the lockdowns, you now know you made an atrocious blunder.
The right thing to do would be to admit the mistake and reverse all COVID policies but that would be admitting fault for the harm done. "We deliberately destroyed your job/business/Stampede for no reason at all. Mask up and vote for us!" doesn't seem like a winning electoral strategy so expect them to double down on their viral lunacy.
Support Canada Free Press
Who chooses society's experts?
This looks like an important question considering the enormous impact expert opinion has on society. Expert COVID-19 opinion was used to justify policies that killed jobs, businesses, and civil liberties and they continue to be used today so why do we have the experts we do when the mistakes they make can cause such horrific harm across the planet?
Obviously, choosing the right experts is one of the most critical and important decisions a society can make so who is the expert we are relying upon to choose our experts?
Face it, the media selects our experts for us. It's an awesome responsibility but seriously, are journalists qualified to do it? Hell no, their expertise is communication and little else. They know less than nothing about mostly everything and yet we blindly trust them to choose our experts, our leaders, and our future. How is that working, Mr. Quarantine?
The fact we adopt expert opinions makes expert selection a perfect tool for Fake News! They aren't searching for expertise; they're looking for experts whose position helps advance Fake News' cause at that moment in time. The second their expert's position fails to advance their ideological agenda, they will simply replace them with an expert whose expertise does. They use experts to do your thinking for you and by accepting that you will often find yourself stuck supporting and advocating for ideological policies you intellectually abhor.
The misuse of experts is another way Fake News is able to push free societies towards the totalitarian cliff.
Mark Gray hails from the Kirkland Lake, Ontario area and has spent over 30 years as an Analyst/Developer in Big IT, mostly in Calgary’s Oil-And-Gas Sector. Creator of an non-partisan, analytical methodology that seeks out and identifies Bias and Deceit embedded in weaponized information.
