A fascinating case has just bobbed up in the Italian Courts. In the city of L'Aquila in central Italy, six scientists and a government bureaucrat have been sentenced to six years in jail for failing to predict an earthquake that killed 300 people in 2009.
This is a spectacular insight into how people think and what they expect. Usually we run into the streets with torches and pitchforks because someone exceeded their authority or moral limits. Here the scientists failed the community by not living up to the community's expectations, despite the fact that the community's expectations were absurd. No one can predict earthquakes. Nor can they read Tarot cards. But some people believe and, if enough Tarot card readers end up on a jury of your peers, some strange things can happen. You need go no farther than the Wee Care Nursery School or the Fells Acres Day Care Center.
Clearly the jury believed that these poor people were responsible for following nonexistent protocols for unknown processes towards imaginary solutions. This is hauntingly reminiscent of modern popular American politics where alternative energies that do not exist and no one uses are touted and financially supported as a solution to our energy problems.
Sometimes the self appointed experts can claim too much. But usually they can find safety in the cynicism and short memories of their electorate victims. Here the fantasies have grown a judicial arm.
This is a spectacular insight into how people think and what they expect. Usually we run into the streets with torches and pitchforks because someone exceeded their authority or moral limits. Here the scientists failed the community by not living up to the community's expectations, despite the fact that the community's expectations were absurd. No one can predict earthquakes. Nor can they read Tarot cards. But some people believe and, if enough Tarot card readers end up on a jury of your peers, some strange things can happen. You need go no farther than the Wee Care Nursery School or the Fells Acres Day Care Center.
Clearly the jury believed that these poor people were responsible for following nonexistent protocols for unknown processes towards imaginary solutions. This is hauntingly reminiscent of modern popular American politics where alternative energies that do not exist and no one uses are touted and financially supported as a solution to our energy problems.
Sometimes the self appointed experts can claim too much. But usually they can find safety in the cynicism and short memories of their electorate victims. Here the fantasies have grown a judicial arm.
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