New Reads - Part 3

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols is another good read in the line of James O'Brien and Fintan O'Toole, and the other books that mention Brexit recently, but this crystallises what is going on in the world. It's the best book I've read in recent times. 

Why is it that some knock down experts? Basically, we need experts like doctors who have learned for years how to help the general populace. We cannot shoot them done because of one blunder. Orchestrated cock-ups can occur but more often than not this isn't caused by the doctors, more the cover-ups by others. There is no mendacity in getting it wrong, we and they are human, and they have a greater extent of knowledge on medicine than I'll ever know. 

The author says it best when "The promises of a diagnosis, even if speculative, are always more welcome than the absolute certainties of an autopsy."

#christmasreads 

Some quotes:

"Principled, informed arguments are a sign of intellectual health and vitality in a democracy."

"But there is a self-righteousness and fury to this new rejection of expertise that suggest, at least to me, that this isn’t just mistrust or questioning or the pursuit of alternatives: it is narcissism, coupled to a disdain for expertise as some sort of exercise in self-actualization."

"The fact of the matter is that we cannot function without admitting the limits of our knowledge and trusting in the expertise of others."

"Hofstadter warned. “Once the intellectual was gently ridiculed because he was not needed; now he is fiercely resented because he is needed too much.” "

"the public constantly searches for the loopholes in expert knowledge that will allow them to disregard all expert advice they don’t like."

"The Dunning-Kruger Effect, in sum, means that the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb."

"When feelings matter more than rationality or facts, education is a doomed enterprise. Emotion is an unassailable defense against expertise, a moat of anger and resentment in which reason and knowledge quickly drown. And when students learn that emotion trumps everything else, it is a lesson they will take with them for the rest of their lives."

"As a saying attributed to the British writer Alastair Cooke goes, “Professionals are people who can do their best work when they don’t feel like it.”"

"The growth of new kinds of media and the decline of trust are both intimately related to the death of expertise."

"To ignore expert advice is simply not a realistic option, not only due to the complexity of policymaking, but because to do so is to absolve citizens of their responsibilities to learn about issues that matter directly to their own well-being. Moreover, when the public no longer makes a distinction between experts and policymakers and merely wants to blame everyone in the policy world for outcomes that distress them, the eventual result will not be better policy but more politicization of expertise."

"The Internet is a mixed blessing, a well of information poisoned by the equivalent of intellectual sabotage”

The book is available on Amazon here.