The question I posed relates to when a technical issue poses a risk to society, take climate change as an example (regardless of whether you think it's a real threat or not).
I submit developing a sound technical opinion on climate change and what we should do about it is well beyond the capacity of even technically trained people (save those few who are immersed in it as a career). What 'we' do of course is form an opinion first and then seek only items aligned with said opinion, disparaging anything else. When I was working, I had Science and Nature come across my desk and I'd try and read articles on CC in them, it was tough going indeed, a lot of jargon, and these are intended to be broad audience journals (in the science community). Do I have an opinion on how big a threat it is? Not really, I know enough to know I don't know. (I spent some time looking into what could be done about it, but that's separate.)
So, in a hypothetical consider some highly technical issue, "X", where the actions needed are indeed critical to the well being of Society, but there are folks disparaging and minimizing it to the point many believe them, and that prevents "society" from taking needed steps to combat "X". I think in reality it means little would get done, sort of like what is in "Don't Look Up", a lot of pandering and pretending and silliness to gain political favor.
And of course the other side is the "cure" could be worse than the ailment, in theory, though if the ailment is a planetary ending disaster of that movie, well, we're screwed.
