RE didn't choose the end of the road because he was scared of doom and needed mountains to hide from zombies (see his most recent in-car video? He has as many zombies around him as any place in suburban US, with the SUVs, chain stores and infrastructure to match), he choose the end of the road because he can't stand people. He admits it. So Doom comes to him from ANY other route than buying into whatever the hysteria of the day is..RE wants to see the world he hates, the world that kicked him out after all the advantages it gave him from the get go, he wants to see it DIE. Watch it cower and scream and shrivel up and disappear....not because he honestly thinks Doom is happening, but because he hates everyone and they DESERVE it.
This is interesting, and it certainly is in line with the basic doomer psychotype (i.e. it is logical); what I wonder about is the empirical reality. You say that R.E. "can't stand people" and "he ADMITS it". Where? Has this actually been made explicit?
He actually said "people disgust me" during a conversation where I was saying that I enjoyed people because of their stories. All people. Any people. They all have stories to tell, good or bad, and I love stories. RE then went off about people disgusting him and whatnot, and in that moment I realized, it made quite perfect sense, why he was hiding in Alaska. Why Doom worked for him, why he was gloating over at po.com back in 2008, you could just visualize him rubbing his hands together in glee at the 2008 collapse.
It all matched, including his admission that he doesn't do so well with folks (spoken in general) when talking about an ex somewhere far in the distant past. Not necessarily an anti-social though, right? Because he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to seek communication and contact with others during his pre-internet time, let alone get involved in doomer blogs and message boards and then forums themselves. Still needs people contact, and the end of the road provides that, because a real Doomer would live somewhere halfway up the Dalton to Coldfoot, and wouldn't want to fire up forums to talk to folks, or fly around the country to meet other true believers.
the internet does a fantastic job of taking little nobodies and making them into talking heads and by extension "experts"
True, but the other side of that coin is that it is possible for real independently-developed expertise to find a platform that did not exist before the internet.
Possible? Sure. And any of us would know the difference between a real expert, and a talking head, blogger "expert"...how? Experts certainly have platforms, and those platforms certainly existed before the WWW came along and created the impression that all opinions have equal value. What the internet mostly did was NOT allow experts without platforms to find a voice, it created the impression that all opinions are created equal because those awards, certificates, training, decades of experience and recognition of expertise are invisible. And then people think EXACTLY like how RE has already demonstrated...they call you names for daring to claim such a background in an environment where it is more fun to pretend that 1000 amateur opinions are worth the same as a single, real, live, actual expert.
The "expert" opinion throws the entire internet equality system out of whack, and introduces the real world back into a bunch of folks enjoying their breathless (sometimes brainless) speculation on a topic. Or in the case of the Diner, pretending that bloggers are "experts". Then all the amateurs line up behind their favorite blogger, and try and use that as a defense against an actual expert. No different than a mcdonald's worker trying to use a burger king worker as their source for an opinion on brain surgery.
The peak oil movement was a DISASTER for resource economists being taken seriously. idiots throwing chaff in the air to distract from the real work on this topic, because the first 5 minutes of any conversation was involved in explaining why resource economics didn't follow the rules laid down by peak oil "experts".
Further, the presumed "experts" are not always so expert as you seem to think. It depends. Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not, and (most often) they ARE in fact experts in some narrow area, but lack holistic understanding.
Some of them certainly ARE experts, and there aren't so many on the globe that in my niche we can't all get together on occasion and yuck it up. Same as on a web forum. The difference being I sure as HELL don't have to explain the difference between curve fitting time series aggregate data versus thinking such a wonderfully fit curve is predictive in nature. Might be. Might not. In oil production, it certainly isn't. The entire game of peak oil is BUILT on just such a common mistake.
So sure, there can be real specialists. And some of those specialists are pretty damn good at holistic understanding as well, although not perhaps holistic in the sense that an advocate is. For example, Heinberg pretends to have a holistic understanding..and most certainly does NOT. He has an advocacy position, and that is not a holistic understanding. As a generalist rather than a niche expert, I actually do pretty well on the holistic understanding side, and I can name those who are better, but the real question is perhaps, what level of holistic?
I for one think it is a great thing that the internet has shaken things up as it has and radically lowered the bar to entry. Yes, a lot of rubbish gets admitted, but the vastly improved access to all kinds of good stuff that would formerly have been inaccessible makes it worth it.
I have no objection to the internet. I have an objection to what it has done to intelligent discourse, and that is perhaps a reflection of USE of the internet. Because more people appear to use it to verify a previously held opinion rather than research a topic and make an honest, objective and informed decision, it perhaps only appears to be overrun at the forum level by advocates, zealots, and ideologues.
The internet is still young, so maybe folks will figure this out for themselves, but it is more likely it will always reflect society, and get even worse as our children grow up in their hollywood/internet world, with less and less ever thinking for themselves. Good for me I suppose, being paid to straighten out idiot ideas on complex topics, but teaching the children has been a challenge in such an environment.
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