Consensus of the Uninformed

Against the validation of low-information opinions

When traditional lines of authority and justification come into dispute, some take to using the approving nods of low-information mobs as a source of validation for their positions and tactics. The core of this approach is a “we are asserting we hold the correct position, and hope to do so long enough to ensure it becomes the common sense concerning a thing. When a matter is actually a subject of common sense this is fine, but when it is a matter requiring specialized knowledge to navigate and assess, this turn to the uninformed for validation is a betrayal of the body of knowledge you seek authority from. Even further, this does an incredible amount of damage to the mechanism that produced this knowledge by sending the message that facility with the material is unimportant. If this happens enough, the methods that produced the core body of knowledge are neglected and are rendered inert, unable to produce new knowledge in line with itself.

One impact of this is the absolute intolerance of dissent. All detractors, even inadvertently, fundamentally undermine an authority built on improper and predatory injections into the sensus communis, attempting to rest all sorts of action on ‘well we all agree this is proper, don’t we’. Any dissent ejects it from the protective circle of the herd and back into the arena where it can be subject to scrutiny it is not likely to survive. This threat engenders a nasty sort of wailing and gnashing of teeth, a clamoring to ensure that the herd protects it from the very authority it claims to embody.