I’m not sure I agree with this framing for several reasons: (1) “random people on Twitter” encompasses all manner of maniacs, the “upper normies” who initially downplayed it and is far too broad a statement to be meaningful without being damaging. https://twitter.com/s8mb/status/1252906662672896000

(2) “Experts” have got it right in some places (SK; HK), wrong in others (CMO, CSA in UK); and have been right and ignored in others (Imperial in the UK in Feb; US as per the NYT investigation into tardy Trump response). (3) Point (1) + (2) are sufficient to disagree with framing https://twitter.com/anonmugwump/status/1249621686837796872

(4) Media effects centre around 0 and I’m not suggesting Sams tweet will have any effect, but prevalence of “experts are wrong” is bad *as a general principle* (which, to be clear, I don’t think Sam is saying); it fosters populism and distrust in govt directions generally.

A lot of wisdom in this SSC post - my take away from it is that, unless you have the intellectual resources and time, you shouldn’t be as *a general principle* (rather than specific scenarios) be encouraging people to distrust a consensus position. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/

Again, I don’t think Sam is endorsing “experts are wrong” as a general proposition, point (4) is saying that the importance of experts and the prevalence of the general position being damaging warrants careful framing.

(5) I think saying “experts are wrong” also has the side effect of minimising govt errors - as per this thread, it clearly appears Vallance and Witty got it wrong, but that doesn’t mean the Govt had to follow them. https://twitter.com/anonmugwump/status/1251790011760095233

To be absolutely clear this is not a defence of the UK govts experts which they chose to listen to or UK govt policy (that should be clear from previous tweets), it’s an attempt to challenge the framing of “UK govt experts got it wrong” vs “random people on twitter got it right”