Excerpt
“Yankelovich (1991) has described the crisis in governance facing modern societies as one of moving from public opinion to public judgement. Public opinion is notoriously fickle and inconsistent on those issues for which the public has not confronted the system-level implications of its opinions. Coming to judgement requires three steps: (1) consciousness raising, (2) working through, and (3) resolution. A prerequisite for all three of these steps is breaking down the gap between expert knowledge and the public, that is, a breaking down of what Yankelovich calls the “culture of technical control”. Information in the modern work is compartmentalized and controlled by various technical elites who do not communicate with each other. This allows experts from various fields to hold contradictory opinions, and it allows the public to hold inconsistent and volatile opinions. Coming to judgment is the process of confronting and resolving these inconsistencies by breaking down the barriers between the mutually exclusive compartments into which knowledge and information have been put.”
From “Visions, Values, Valuation, and the Need for an Ecological Economics” by R. Costanza.
...
...
This is one of my biggest issues with the tenants of free speech, it enables people to feel they are “entitled” to an opinion. In reality you are not entitled to an opinion, nor is your freedom of speech protected from anything but the government itself and any government entities. I propose that people are not entitled to an opinion, and no person should be allowed to formulate an opinion in the absence of research, however much is necessary (always more than 3 papers). You don’t get to run around spouting lies, garbage, and pseudoscience, or claiming unscientific things without consequence. Or at least that’s what I believe. - You’re not entitled to shit.