22<p>A hypothesis.</p><p>First, background. <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/jonah-goodman/a-national-evil" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/jo</span><span class="invisible">nah-goodman/a-national-evil</span></a> is a life-changing long-read about the discovery of how essential <a href="https://sfba.social/tags/iodine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iodine</span></a> is, in the alpine cantons of Switzerland. (I began it as bedtime reading and it’s so riveting the kids begged me to not stop halfway.)</p><p>Now, that hypothesis: societies have a finite “science indulgence budget”. Every concession you have to make to accommodate expert advice. Every tradition you have to modify. Every moment you acknowledge your forebears did it wrong. All that eats into your society’s budget for change.</p><p>Till your whole society nopes out of any more science.</p><p>“Thanks for the iodine, and all the life-saving public health and personal health interventions, but we’re good. We’re not gonna change our ways because of outsider experts. Any changes are gonna be vIbEs-OnlY”</p><p>And western society’s budget for this just got spent, in the last couple of decades or so. It might take years, decades, centuries, to bank back that willingness to listen to experts.</p>