The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters

Event Big Tech
Event Big Tech

March 31, 2017 The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters

When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy – or in the worst case, a combination of both.

Friday, Mar 31, 2017

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

The Heritage Foundation

214 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington, DC
20002

Featured Speakers

Tom Nichols

Tom Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, an Adjunct Professor at the Harvard Extension School, and a former aide in the U.S. Senate. He is also the author of several works on foreign policy and international security affairs, including "The Sacred Cause", "No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security", "Eve of Destruction: The Coming Age of Preventive War", and "The Russian Presidency".

Description

People are now exposed to more information than ever before, both by technology and by increased access to every level of education.  These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues.  Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats.  All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

As Tom Nichols argues in The Death of Expertise, this rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine.  Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement.  Nichols had deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise and learning, noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy – or in the worst case, a combination of both.