The Age of Expert Ignorance

[rangerrebew]

The Age of Expert Ignorance

by Christopher DeGroot

March 16, 2018
 

Last year Tom Nichols, an ardent Never Trump Republican, published a popular book called The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Expertise and Why It Matters. “Americans have reached a point,” argues Nichols, “where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.” For “to reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything.”

It seems to stand to reason that mass education would have produced a more curious and educated citizenry. Still, that is not what has happened. As William James wrote in “The Social Value of the College-Bred” (1907),

  http://takimag.com/article/the_age_of_expert_ignorance_christopher_degroot/print#ixzz5B3rFlGpS

[goatprairie]

Who gets to define who the "experts" are? 

[roamer_1]

It seems to stand to reason that mass education indoctrination would have produced [...]