Or:
Guy who gets high and talks about MMA and aliens, is influencing people on their medical decisions.
Joe Rogan isn't the problem. The anti-vaxxers he had spreading and more importantly, normalizing, lies were the problem.
New ideas and criticism in science often come from the fringe. That Covid has become so politicized may explain why any contrary viewpoint is hasty and forcefully attacked. Yet, why would anyone assume that what we know, or “experts” say they know, is unquestionably correct? Especially with Covid. What was conspiracy theory yesterday is establishment truth today. I don’t know if Rogan’s guests are wrong or not. But it is obvious that he, and not the MSM that hates him, is the one promoting science. To paraphrase Feynman, doubt is an important part of science. And experience is that those who seek to stifle doubt probably have ill motives.
That is the biggest pile of stinking horseshit I have had the misfortune to read in a long time.
It's founded on the counterfactual claim that we are being asked to "... assume that what we know, or “experts” say they know, is unquestionably correct".
Nobody's asking you to make that assumption.
You are being asked to accept that what you think you know is (insofar it conflicts with what experts say), probably wrong.
Which is absolutely and unquestionably true.
Reality is complex, and it's not subject to your (or anyone's) opinions.
The ability for doubt to contribute usefully to the advancement of science is directly proportional to the expertise of the person expressing those doubts.
The ill-informed are NOT valuable contributors to the advancement of knowledge, and they never have been.
What was conspiracy theory yesterday is almost certainly NOT establishment truth today, or ever. Conspiracy theories are utterly valueless; In the extremely unlikely event that one turns out to contain a grain of truth, it's purely accidental, and is impossible to identify in the ocean of crap until expertise is brought to bear.
Your expression here of popular epistemology is a neat encapsulation of everything that's wrong with modern discourse. Fuck your amateurish, half-baked, nonsensical conspiracist claptrap. It's not in the same league as expertise. Not even close.
The strong desire of non-experts to be able to grasp complex subjects and to thereby be able to contribute usefully to discussion of them, and to thereby reclaim control over their lives in a highly technological age is completely understandable, even laudable.
There are two common approaches to this. The less popular is to go get educated. That's very hard work, takes a long time, and is often expensive.
Much more popular is to simply declare that all opinions are valuable, and that therefore yours should get taken seriously. This has the advantage of being quick, easy, and free of charge; And the disadvantage of being totally batshit insane bullshit nonsense that's not worthy of the slightest scintilla of respect.
Democracy is a last resort solution to problems that are completely impossible to resolve by reference to facts. It's not a good option ever; But for some questions it's the least bad option. Questions of fact are not amongst those 'some questions'. Inexpert opinions on questions of fact are less than worthless; And if being told this makes the ignorant people pushing their opinions feel worhless and sad, then they need to get off their arses, turn off Fox News, Spotify, and all the other light entertainment that fraudulently claims to be informative, and get back to school.
Meanwhile, sit down and shut up. The grownups are trying to have a serious conversation.