[FRIAM] technocrats vs professionals

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Why do rightwing populist leaders oppose experts? 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/rightwing-populist-leaders-oppose-experts-not-elites

I was first accused of being a technocrat as a sophomore in high school. I didn't know what it meant, then. And I don't know what it means now. Soon after Renee' and I met (>2 decades ago? really? OMFG), she claimed that cops might avoid giving a nurse a traffic ticket as a "professional courtesy", which really rubbed me the wrong way because of my conception of what it meant to be a professional. I'd argue the cops should give the nurse a ticket *because* they're a professional. Professionals should be held to a higher standard than the normies. She didn't like my response. >8^D

But the gist of Müller's article makes some sense. He's largely arguing that professionals mix heuristics and "soft" lessons learned from experience with more trustworthy/delegatory algorithms, whereas a technocrat leans heavily on the algorithms. And although I don't disagree with such a distinction in any fundamental way, I have to back up a bit and argue that *infrastructure* is critical. The only way we short-memoried, biased little creatures can do great things is to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. And our ancestors were just as stupid as we are. So, where does the "wisdom" and knowledge accumulate? In the infrastructure, in the libraries, in the bridges, roads, databases and ... in the algorithms.

So, Müller's distinction (if it survives) would lie in the process and speed with which the lessons/experiences move from just-learned, through heuristics, to algorithms. Technocrats would argue that this process is faster and more trustworthy, whereas the professionals would argue that it's fairly slow and untrustworthy.

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☣ uǝlƃ