The death of expertise
by Thomas M. Nichols, Sean Pratt · first published 2017
56% recommend44% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that public distrust of established knowledge is a serious problem and examines how it plays out in modern societies. It offers insight into anti-intellectualism and into when to rely on real experts.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A cult of anti-expertise sentiment has coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in massively viral yet poorly informed debates ranging from the anti-vaccination movement to attacks on GMOs. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, there are a number of reasons why this has occurred-ranging from easy access to Internet search engines to a customer satisfaction model within higher education. "Thanks to technological advances and increasing levels of education, we have access to more information than ever before. Yet rather than ushering in a new era of enlightenment, the informatio
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> Unfortunately, in social media, everybody gets to be an expert! How can the average person tell? Good book by Tom Nichols: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise Not anything recent: > There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political…
on “Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic” ↗You are the perfect audience for The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. He covers all of this.
on “Where’s the evidence that grit predicts success?” ↗…tech elites. But that doesn't comport with all non-tech, non-elites who also engage in this sort of thing. In fact, it's pretty much the same thing discussed by Tom Nichols in his 2017 book[1], The Death of Expertise. I recommend it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise Edit: Removed extraneous article.
on “Hacker News Disease” ↗See Tom Nichols' "The Death of Expertise"[1] (now also a book) for more on your sentiment. 1. http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
on “Stanford Dropout Says Blood Startup Won't Be Another Theranos” ↗Also of interest: Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters (https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-...)
on “How America Lost Faith in Expertise and Why That's a Giant Problem” ↗No, there are actually experts that we should rely on. Of course no economist is a perfect predicter- predicting the future is hard. Tom Nichols’ book The Death of Expertise is relevant here. —— As for your specific points: - Paul Krugman, on his major predictions, has been incredibly prescient. He was talking about media bothsidesism, a major reason for this political…
on “Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020” ↗…understand. Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark (https://books.google.com/books?id=2hIcDgAAQBAJ) The Master Algorithm - Pedro Domingos (https://books.google.com/books?id=CPgqCgAAQBAJ) These two go nicely together The Death of Expertise - Thomas M. Nichols (https://books.google.com/books?id=x3TYDQAAQBAJ) Maybe the thing that brings about the downfall of society as we know it Fantasyland - Kurt Andersen (https://books.google.com/books?id=aaX4DAAAQBAJ) A…
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗If you're interested in a decent analysis of this phenomenon in modern societies, I can recommend a recent book "The Death of Expertise" by Tom Nichols. The author also explores some ideas for how to counter this trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise
on “Online activists are silencing us, scientists say” ↗You might want to check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise https://www.c-span.org/video/?426290-1/tom-nichols-discusses... Unrelated, but the second link also provides the best definition of fake news I've ever heard.
on “Collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week” ↗…certainly has accelerated/worsened the problem. And it has created a distrust of experts which (as has been obvious for a long time) has made us, as a whole, dumber and less informed. I recommend The Death of Expertise[1] by Tom Nichols for a sane and reasonable treatment of this issue. If books aren't your thing, Nichols did a book talk[2] which lays out the main points he makes in the book. During that talk, he…
on “Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.” ↗For anyone interested to read on the subject of "misguided intellectual egalitarianism": "The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYCDVHH Of course, there are some older well known books touching on this like Hofstadter, etc.
on “Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona” ↗…interview is the question asked in the headline answered. The interview is a plug for Tom Nichols new book, which is an expansion of this article he wrote in 2014: http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
on “Why Americans have come to worship their own ignorance” ↗For a second there I thought you said "Tom Nichols", who wrote multiple books on the un-seriousness of our modern society (such as The Death of Expertise), which is so fat and happy that it looks to government itself to entertain it. This ultimately leads to backsliding of democracies that we observe today.
on “The Society of the Spectacle” ↗I think this is sharply correlated with what Tom Nichols' termed ['The death of expertise'](http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/) and how we tend to assign equal weight to all opinions, irrespective of the voice attached to them. Hence, we end up measuring volume/loudness…
on “The Problem of Publication-Pollution Denialism” ↗…Chomsky's formal training was IN linguistics. He was not an expert in politics in any way, and hence his opinion was as valid as anyone's in academia, for example. This is even mentioned in Tom Nichols's "The Death of Expertise". The vitamin C episode is also covered in the same book :)
on “'Havana syndrome' likely caused by directed microwaves – US report” ↗