You hit the nail on the head for the conservative agenda, though that is not as impressive as it once was since they all have started saying the quiet parts out loud. Anyone with enough brain cells in close contact to notice that Jesus was about as anticapitalist as you could possibly get is appalled and concerned for their safety. At least all of the ones I know are.

To your point on the authority of a postdoctoral level person who assumes they are right in hubris, I feel like they have kinda earned it. It is also likely that their “wrong” is going to be far closer to right than that of a lay. I am personally a polymath, so I don’t find lay topics for myself very often, but when I do, I do listen to topical experts and respect what they say, while checking the voracity of things that feel off to me using reputable journals and prepublication articles on the likes of arXiv.

If someone is lay and they are either unable of unwilling to do the diligence to verify the person claiming topical authority, then they really need to just take what is said at face value and not enter the more global conversation aside from trying to learn more (eg asking questions). I am so tired of my numbskull uncle claiming that Anthony Faucci doesn’t know how viruses work of some distant relation bitching about how student loan forgiveness is theft from taxpayers. My uncle knows nothing about virology and my distant relation couldn’t parse economic principles to save his life, but there they sit, acting as counter-authorities to people with doctorates and 40+ years of professional experience. That is the part I want to see stop. If you have a Masters degree, fine, argue with the expert, but if you have never stepped foot inside a classroom where that topic was being taught, just don’t. Your opinion is woefully uninformed and thus not worth the CO2 you expended to voice it.

I do like your take on the societal and philosophical underpinnings for the Death of Expertise. It gels well with some things and gives me some avenues to investigate should I finally get fed up with this world enough to write it. Until that time, I will just keep Farnsworthing it. Dr. Farnsworth meme: I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.