Advanced societies conflate knowledge with decision-competence and truth with power

Evidence

One can see that what came most readily to hand in the process of development towards advanced societies was not the actual specialization of an appropriate decision-making power, but the claim that knowledge was identical to decision-making competence, and that truth was identical to power. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 634

Categorization

• XREF: This knowledge-is-power conflation maps onto how Ishiguro’s Darlington Hall staff defer to aristocratic authority as if it were expertise; also echoes Foucault’s power-knowledge. — connects to: German idealism legitimated knowledge by unifying truth and justice in a single subject — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 268; Scientific knowledge operates as a pragmatic game governed by contract — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 325; Customary knowledge is legitimated by communal consensus the Greeks called opinion — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 187 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: Luhmann seems to frame this conflation as a developmental deficiency — worth checking how he distinguishes proper code differentiation from this collapse.