It’s a little counter-intuitive, but she probably feels like she’s more helpful in her current role than she would be in politics. A politician has to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning about a lot of different fields, dealing with education, military, civil law, budget, etc etc etc. Where an activist can specialize exclusively in one thing, gaining a lot of clout and helping provide leadership.
Global climate activism has long needed a leader, its own Mahatma Gandhi. Now its getting one, and it leaves her very, very influential. She can’t be thrown out of office either, she could only be assassinated, which would turn her into a martyr like Navalny. So, she’s steadily growing powerful and is virtually unstoppable right now.
She probably wants to keep it that way. Getting elected would derail that a little bit, and having these kinds of non-governmental civil leaders is actually very important.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they’ll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder “why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me.”
Additionally, since they’re also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they’ll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people’s perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And that’s just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that’s inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It’s just that everything else is a lot worse.
You see, you’re engaging in the assumed competency right now.
They DO NOT magically know more about an industry than the professionals in those industries. Ever. Period. Their decisions don’t make sense because they’re corrupted morons, not competent legislators. They do not know the intricacies of the bills they pass nor their impact most of the time.
While politicians can use skill as you describe, they don’t have to and in fact often abuse that assumed competency to hide the corruption.
“Trust me bro, this tax cut will totally trickle down! I talk to economists every day!” Assuming they are competent only hurts YOU, because it primes you to buy in to the gaslighting.
Note, I said “some”. If you think they are all terrible, you’ve likely been propagandized. I also said they’re jacks-of-all-trades, I never said they know more than a specialist about that specialist’s field. This is why they need to consult specialists. What they do know is things outside of that specialist’s field. Say, they know more about governmental budgeting than a doctor would. They know more about medicine than an economist would.
And again, some. They’re not all the same, that’s a gross and inaccurate oversimplification based on emotion.
I’m trying to point out how you are still glamourizing the job, which is the first step to buying in on their excuses. After all, you won’t ever have the “insider knowledge” they do.
You know who else has “insider knowledge”? Crypto bros, bankers, and lawyers. What do they use it for? Getting money from people.
In many cases, it’s justified such as a skilled lawyer knowing which angle will get you off the hook, but in many other cases it is not. Outwardly without that true insider knowledge, YOU have zero ability to discern who is honest and who is gaslighting.
If a metric cannot discriminate between an honest person and a gaslighter, it’s not a good metric. Politicians having “insider knowledge” is, in fact, a red herring at best. If their idea IS good, it will have FAR better justification than, “trust me bro, the lobbyists say it’ll be great.”.
What I’m saying is, the LAST thing you should do is trust a politician’s “insider knowledge”. If you want to learn how to survive prison, you don’t go asking the Warden for advice.
I don’t think its glamorizing to point out some of the nuances in the job itself. And they’re not all in some grand conspiracy or something. You can understand why a good one believes as they do, if you put in the work. You just need to learn enough about the issue to become somewhat fluent in it. Say, covid vaccines or something.
Real information, though, not just emotionally-digestible good-sounding information. It takes actual hard work, like classroom-style.
Eh, glamourizing isn’t quite the right word for sure, but the point is that you cannot use “insider reasoning” to justify anything. At all. Ever.
I do software engineering. I have to explain to non-tech savvy people extremely technical things weekly. They do not need that “insider knowledge” I have to determine if the idea is sound.
That’s what I’m pointing out: “insider knowledge” is nothing but gaslighting, because a real pro can explain things to a non-pro in an understandable way.
If trusting “insider knowledge” only increases your chances of being gaslit … why trust ANYONE who uses the excuse to not actually clarify things? My point is your mindset is still leaving you vulnerable by giving ANY creedence to “insider knowledge”. If they know what they’re talking about, they WILL be able to explain it in simple terms.
Einstein dumbed down relativity for middleschoolers. Why should politicians be allowed to fail to explain much, much simpler things?
That’s why I just explained that you can understand exactly why they have the positions they do, if you simply put in the work to do so. We run into trouble, however, when people try to understand without putting in that hard work.
Then people begin to just apply blanket assumptions across the whole profession, like “politicians bad” or whatever. In real life, nothing is quite that simple.
But to really “get it”, you need to pay quite a lot of attention to voting patterns, as well as work to understand whatever issue is important to you. A good politician, which do exist, has done that work. A citizen that does not will not necessarily understand it, however.
You’ve mischaracterized me several times now. I think the reason that is happening is because I’m challenging a worldview that you hold. Not because I am actually doing any of the things you claim.
Lastly, Einstein’s Relativity in both its forms is extremely misunderstood. People think they get it, but they’re just wrong. Really understanding it comes in around 2nd-3rd year of college level physics. It’s not E=mc^2, that’s pop science. When it comes to a politician, they can spend their time teaching you, which is really the job of a teacher, or they can spend their time teaching themselves what is necessary to do their jobs.
It’s easy to wish for the world to be simple, like in a video game or movie. But its really horrendously complicated, just about all the time. You can understand this yourself, if you put in the degree of hard work that is necessary. Economics? Complicated as fuck. Geopolitics? Complicated as fuck. Psychology? Complicated as fuck. It is not your politicians’ jobs to teach you these things, that’s the job of university professors, mainly.
It’s a little counter-intuitive, but she probably feels like she’s more helpful in her current role than she would be in politics. A politician has to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning about a lot of different fields, dealing with education, military, civil law, budget, etc etc etc. Where an activist can specialize exclusively in one thing, gaining a lot of clout and helping provide leadership.
Global climate activism has long needed a leader, its own Mahatma Gandhi. Now its getting one, and it leaves her very, very influential. She can’t be thrown out of office either, she could only be assassinated, which would turn her into a martyr like Navalny. So, she’s steadily growing powerful and is virtually unstoppable right now.
She probably wants to keep it that way. Getting elected would derail that a little bit, and having these kinds of non-governmental civil leaders is actually very important.
Yea, everyone thinks politicians need those skills, but do the current bout of politicians even have those skills, either?!
There seems to be an assumed competency that doesn’t match reality.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they’ll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder “why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me.”
Additionally, since they’re also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they’ll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people’s perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And that’s just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that’s inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It’s just that everything else is a lot worse.
You see, you’re engaging in the assumed competency right now.
They DO NOT magically know more about an industry than the professionals in those industries. Ever. Period. Their decisions don’t make sense because they’re corrupted morons, not competent legislators. They do not know the intricacies of the bills they pass nor their impact most of the time.
While politicians can use skill as you describe, they don’t have to and in fact often abuse that assumed competency to hide the corruption.
“Trust me bro, this tax cut will totally trickle down! I talk to economists every day!” Assuming they are competent only hurts YOU, because it primes you to buy in to the gaslighting.
Note, I said “some”. If you think they are all terrible, you’ve likely been propagandized. I also said they’re jacks-of-all-trades, I never said they know more than a specialist about that specialist’s field. This is why they need to consult specialists. What they do know is things outside of that specialist’s field. Say, they know more about governmental budgeting than a doctor would. They know more about medicine than an economist would.
And again, some. They’re not all the same, that’s a gross and inaccurate oversimplification based on emotion.
I’m trying to point out how you are still glamourizing the job, which is the first step to buying in on their excuses. After all, you won’t ever have the “insider knowledge” they do.
You know who else has “insider knowledge”? Crypto bros, bankers, and lawyers. What do they use it for? Getting money from people.
In many cases, it’s justified such as a skilled lawyer knowing which angle will get you off the hook, but in many other cases it is not. Outwardly without that true insider knowledge, YOU have zero ability to discern who is honest and who is gaslighting.
If a metric cannot discriminate between an honest person and a gaslighter, it’s not a good metric. Politicians having “insider knowledge” is, in fact, a red herring at best. If their idea IS good, it will have FAR better justification than, “trust me bro, the lobbyists say it’ll be great.”.
What I’m saying is, the LAST thing you should do is trust a politician’s “insider knowledge”. If you want to learn how to survive prison, you don’t go asking the Warden for advice.
I don’t think its glamorizing to point out some of the nuances in the job itself. And they’re not all in some grand conspiracy or something. You can understand why a good one believes as they do, if you put in the work. You just need to learn enough about the issue to become somewhat fluent in it. Say, covid vaccines or something.
Real information, though, not just emotionally-digestible good-sounding information. It takes actual hard work, like classroom-style.
Eh, glamourizing isn’t quite the right word for sure, but the point is that you cannot use “insider reasoning” to justify anything. At all. Ever.
I do software engineering. I have to explain to non-tech savvy people extremely technical things weekly. They do not need that “insider knowledge” I have to determine if the idea is sound.
That’s what I’m pointing out: “insider knowledge” is nothing but gaslighting, because a real pro can explain things to a non-pro in an understandable way.
If trusting “insider knowledge” only increases your chances of being gaslit … why trust ANYONE who uses the excuse to not actually clarify things? My point is your mindset is still leaving you vulnerable by giving ANY creedence to “insider knowledge”. If they know what they’re talking about, they WILL be able to explain it in simple terms.
Einstein dumbed down relativity for middleschoolers. Why should politicians be allowed to fail to explain much, much simpler things?
That’s why I just explained that you can understand exactly why they have the positions they do, if you simply put in the work to do so. We run into trouble, however, when people try to understand without putting in that hard work.
Then people begin to just apply blanket assumptions across the whole profession, like “politicians bad” or whatever. In real life, nothing is quite that simple.
But to really “get it”, you need to pay quite a lot of attention to voting patterns, as well as work to understand whatever issue is important to you. A good politician, which do exist, has done that work. A citizen that does not will not necessarily understand it, however.
You’ve mischaracterized me several times now. I think the reason that is happening is because I’m challenging a worldview that you hold. Not because I am actually doing any of the things you claim.
Lastly, Einstein’s Relativity in both its forms is extremely misunderstood. People think they get it, but they’re just wrong. Really understanding it comes in around 2nd-3rd year of college level physics. It’s not E=mc^2, that’s pop science. When it comes to a politician, they can spend their time teaching you, which is really the job of a teacher, or they can spend their time teaching themselves what is necessary to do their jobs.
It’s easy to wish for the world to be simple, like in a video game or movie. But its really horrendously complicated, just about all the time. You can understand this yourself, if you put in the degree of hard work that is necessary. Economics? Complicated as fuck. Geopolitics? Complicated as fuck. Psychology? Complicated as fuck. It is not your politicians’ jobs to teach you these things, that’s the job of university professors, mainly.
That’s almost what Jon Stewart said about him running for office. He feels he does more useful work outside of politics.