Political authority is being handed out by communication style — engineers to engineer-sounding influencers, traders to trader-sounding ones. DOGE is the invoice, and the invoice has now been audited.
it's only epistemic trespassing if there is a legitimate owner whose turf you are trespassing on. Outside relatively technical issues covered by political scientist, no one has professional expertise on the big questions of politics.
As an aside, economists (not mentioned) are really terrible trespassers/imperialists but no one else listens even on economics, so it probably doesn't matter.
It's epistemic trespassing when you speak as an authority on topics you are not a legitimate expert in. It's not a matter of credentials or ownership. It's okay to talk about things you're not an expert in and have an opinion on them — even strong ones. I do. I write essays that span many different domains that I am not experts in. But I take care to quote and credit experts in the field for ideas, and rely on public intellectuals from other domains to translate knowledge for me. And again, I credit for that.
But when one does — as many "influencer"-types do — position themselves as economists and philosophers without actually understanding any economics or philosophy other than talking-points they got off of mises.org, then I consider that trespassing. You're not even putting in the work for honest disagreement.
Economists — like all social scientists — have to look across and understand-across domains to do economics. But one must be epistemically responsible in doing so, as my other reply describes.
it's only epistemic trespassing if there is a legitimate owner whose turf you are trespassing on. Outside relatively technical issues covered by political scientist, no one has professional expertise on the big questions of politics.
As an aside, economists (not mentioned) are really terrible trespassers/imperialists but no one else listens even on economics, so it probably doesn't matter.
It's epistemic trespassing when you speak as an authority on topics you are not a legitimate expert in. It's not a matter of credentials or ownership. It's okay to talk about things you're not an expert in and have an opinion on them — even strong ones. I do. I write essays that span many different domains that I am not experts in. But I take care to quote and credit experts in the field for ideas, and rely on public intellectuals from other domains to translate knowledge for me. And again, I credit for that.
But when one does — as many "influencer"-types do — position themselves as economists and philosophers without actually understanding any economics or philosophy other than talking-points they got off of mises.org, then I consider that trespassing. You're not even putting in the work for honest disagreement.
Economists — like all social scientists — have to look across and understand-across domains to do economics. But one must be epistemically responsible in doing so, as my other reply describes.