Even the "experts" can't tell shit from shinola any more.

[JohnyCanuck]

You're on your own

The ugly truth behind the markets: Not even the experts have a clue

Charles Lewis, National Post

The soothing voices of experts -- the sound that always made sense of a chaotic world and reassured us that all would be well -- first turned into clanging and then a whimper by the end of 2008.

When things were good, there was no end of optimistic advice. Suddenly, though, between market crashes and political turmoil and a massive alleged Ponzi scheme, when most everyone was looking for some explanation about how everything could seemingly unravel so quickly, no one had any real answers. And apparently none of the experts had seen the disaster coming or could say with any certainty what's coming next.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, a teacher and author whose research has focused on how societies adapt to complex social change, said the bleak truth is no one really knows what is going on.

SNIP

"In many cases our complex institutions and technologies and arrangements and events within our society exceed human cognitive ability. There are so many unknown connections within the system that are really opaque to us," Prof. Homer-Dixon said. "A lot of people who are at the centre of the storm, who are supposed leaders and senior decision-makers, did not understand major financial innovations and could not anticipate the connections that developed within the system. So that's a kind of consequence of complexity that in many respects is new."

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1118065

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

1. So... now we panic?

Begin the hording and profiteering!

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Interesting read

The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation. Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.


The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying.

[Hannah Bell]

3. Plenty of people know what's going on. But they want to convince the public it's a big mystery.

So they won't have to fix it.

Which would involve giving up something of what they've stolen.

[DainBramaged]

4. Shit, meet Shinola

I can tell the difference, one comes in a can!

:rofl:

[leftofthedial]

5. given how we got here, it's clear they never did.