Wine has a "Fog of Science" Problem
If only the solution was as easy as applying our Social Line of Sight
Social Line Of Sight: The phenomenon of being able to see the truth of the matter with your own eyes, even as people insist what you see isn’t real.
The Fog of Science: Believing what you are told about invisible things.
If you have never attended an alcohol industry trade conference at which state regulators, trade groups, attorneys, and lobbyists gather, you’ll just have to take my word for this: Earnest declarations emanating from suit-wearing panelists that the “three-tier system” of alcohol distribution makes everything better and saves America from falling into an alcohol-induced stupor is believed by no one in the room.
The reason these regular and constant appeals to industry orthodoxy are mentally brushed off by those in the audience is due to Social Line of Sight: It’s perfectly obvious to anyone looking that the claim is untrue.
This phenomenon of Social Line of Sight also applies to declarations that the direct shipment of alcohol from producers and retailers to consumers will harm society, draw minors into a life of alcohol-induced debauchery, and poison the unwary who end up drinking tainted alcohol that was shipped right to their door.
It’s also the phenomenon that leads every single person who reads the claims that American pie-making mothers support the three-tier system.
Everyone (and I mean everyone from those speaking the lies to those at whom the lie is aimed) disbelieves these things because they can see the claims are not true. Now, it helps that these claims are both big as well as outrageous. It’s hard to miss the obvious gaslighting. Nonetheless, it’s that Social Line of Sight that lets everyone know these kinds of claims emanating out of the bowels of the alcohol industry are not only untrue but really nothing more than a cover story for the obvious attempts by one sector of the alcohol industry to extract economic protection from those that regulate the alcohol industry.
But then there is the Fog of Science, a much more concerning phenomenon.