Those we elect are not “involved in science”. Still you’re supposed to have higher bar for representatives, instead of saying “representatives are dumb”. You realize this essentially says those being represented are also dumb. Or there is a systemic flaw to address

Government is involved in science everywhere. Through both policy and investments. Everyone always points out how some politician has failed to understand some aspect of technology or some particular deep domain of knowledge. This problem is never going to get better because it isn't feasible that those who spend their lives mostly trying to understand how to campaign and influence you to vote for them are going to deeply understand anything about complicated subjects of the world.

It is the entire reason the original role of government was essentially to protect your liberties. Not decide how you should live your life or what is true or false in the realm of deep fields of knowledge.

How can we limit the domain of their responsibility so severely?

Take climate change. Ultimately we need elected officials to enforce regulations. If we limit their ability to do so, then you’ll have a power vacuum, and those with the most money power and influence will be making the rules... again with science losing.

I don’t think we need to expect them to have expertise in every field. Instead even basic critical thinking skills, basic ability to asses scientific method vs pseudoscience. I feel like that should be a low bar to hit.

And yet, when they get involved it completely distorts what is known. https://www.livescience.com/56396-americans-misinformed-on-c...

Well yes, because we’ve chosen poorly, and the bar is so low on basic scientific knowledge in this country.

So then how do you combat climate change? Why would those making billions to pollute the environment care about science if we don’t elect officials who can enforce regulation. At least now we have some pull and some percentage of elected officials making rational decisions. Without even that, what do we have?

And back to the article at hand. Elected officials need to be at least in charge of military response I would assume you would agree. Is it not best that they can understand it’s not an alien or “commy” conspiracy when they make decisions?

Before regulations, pollution was solved by strict property rights enforcement. Courts eventually stopped enforcing property rights because it allowed for zero pollution. Regulation agencies were created to allow pollution, but in a manner that would be acceptable to balance business needs.

In effect, regulations have only outsourced the creation of pollution to elsewhere. How much better have we actually gotten vs just making the optics look better?

However, ironically if politics weren't involved, there might actually be more universal public opposition and pressure on companies as before political involvement in climate change the belief in climate change was about equal among left and right.

Military response should require an act of congress which requires debate and discussion which should also involve the public.

Congress has given up its role in this endeavor to the executive branch, but that is how it is supposed to be. With more open debate and discussion at least your more likely to stay within the realm of rational.

I think I used to agree with you in principle, but perhaps I’ve become more jaded. I don’t have a lot of faith in people to do the right thing, and I see libertarianism (which I believe you’re kind of arguing for, and which I used to support) as a very imperfect solution since it doesn’t deal effectively with parasitic elements in our society.

The world has also become too global, property rights for instance, are no longer simple issues. Also relying on them simply pushes the requirements for understanding science onto the judiciary branch.

Does 5G for instance trample my rights to have an EM free property zone? If it does, does that mean regulation allows 5G EM pollution along with air pollution? The rational voice says of course not since 5G is not pollution and yet we have a wave of people believing it also caused Covid.

Ultimately I’d argue still that better science education for all is a must in an increasingly complicated and connected world. I don’t think anyone could argue against that. We can fix whatever government issues we might have without also having to battle poor thinking and irrationality.

BTW, thanks for the insightful comments. Even if we disagree on some points it’s refreshingly not another conspiracy theory or idiocy, but actually well thought and articulated. So thanks!

Agree, it is great to have a rational discourse on social media. It is very rare.

"as a very imperfect solution since it doesn’t deal effectively with parasitic elements in our society"

I think this is a very deep subject specifically and probably would require substantial dialog. In brief, I somewhat agree, but at the same time would suggest that almost all alternatives are not "effective" either and they only result in moving the problem from one domain to another.

I look at such issues as whether they are even meant to be solved. As a frame of reference for my perspective. If you are familiar with waterfall method of software engineering. It was an attempt to solve the problem of planning and software design. However, it turns out that it was an unsolvable problem. Agile was essentially the answer, but not the solution as it didn't solve the problem of planning and designing a large project upfront. It accepted that can't be done, and therefore it led to a completely different method which avoids solving that problem. So, where I'm going with this is that maybe parasitic elements will always exist, eliminating them is fraught with problems just as regulation results in regulatory capture. Maybe we need to think about this differently.