Alan Levinovitz

That's what climate scientists do.

What he says is,

to understand climate science is to know where knowledge lives.

I love that phrase.

So it's a matter of knowing which institutions to trust and a matter of knowing how much emphasis to place on any given conclusion that someone is saying.

And which brings me to another thing, which goes to the wired piece and goes to the health stuff.

We are just flooded by information.

We've got a million different gurus who, like processed food, have been themselves hyper-processed to convince us that they're right.

They've got bodies that would shame Sean Connery in his prime, or Marlon Brando in their prime.

They look absurd.

They're carefully cultivated to convince us of things.

They tell us that the government is hiding things from us, that scientists are corrupt.

And all of these things are true narrowly

but not necessarily broadly.

And so it creates an environment in which, as you know, trust in science and medicine and the government is way down.

And people are cast into a world where virtually anyone could be trusted.

And if you're vulnerable and if you're seeking answers, if you've been burned by a doctor or you specifically have been

harmed by science that turned out to be inaccurate, you're going to be ready and willing to believe, you're going to be ready and willing to use Shapin's phrase to think that knowledge lives elsewhere.

And that's really dangerous because there's a lot of caves with a lot of trolls in them telling you that knowledge lives in their particular cave.

Oh, my God.