Being and intellectual and having credentials are two separate things. There are plenty of people here who build things in the "real" world, eg chips, trading systems, distributed infra, biotech. They still want to discuss policy because those policies shape what gets built and where.

It’s fine to call out overconfidence, but dismissing everyone as clueless is just another flavor of anti-intellectualism. The real intellectual honesty is admitting:

1. We’re all partial amateurs outside our domains.

2. Policy and trade affect everyone, not just specialists.

3. Listening and engaging beats sneering at “NPR readers.”

If you think most opinions here are shallow, good for you! You set the scene though, so maybe contributing depth instead of punching down?

You know it’s free to admit what we both know this is.

It’s some lying, it’s some pretending, it’s crying, it’s some footstomping, it’s some complete bullshit. And every now and then small nuggets of facts are seen sometimes even intentionally.