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

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Thomas M. Nichols
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I believe that we live in a "dumbed down" country. So Nichols's book just reinforces my current thinking. Politicians, business executives and just about every facet of our culture are steeped in ignorance, exaggerations, spins and lies. There was a period of time were most people would be shocked by lies or exaggerations spouted publicly. Not anymore! If one reads the comments sections from news blogs or social media sites, one questions the rationality of many of the writers. It seems that many Americans have lost the ability to filter truth from bull shit. There are some good insights in this book – – not sure people will find them surprising--- definitely worth a read.

Listed below are some insights from the book that attracted my attention:

"Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. 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 is a new Declaration of Independence: no longer do we hold these truths to be self evident, we hold all truths to be self evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every
opinion on any subject is as good as any other."

"Not only do increasing numbers of laypeople lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge."

"The most important of these intellectual capabilities, and the one most under attack in American universities, is critical thinking: the ability to examine new information and competing ideas dispassionately, logically, and without emotional or personal preconceptions."


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In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zalkaria

Some takeaways from this excellently written and persuasive book...

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. 

E. O. Wilson

But for me, the central virtue a very liberal education is that it teaches you how to write, and writing makes you think. Whatever you do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly, and reasonably quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill. No matter who you are – – a politician, a business person, a lawyer, a historian, or a novelist – writing forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas.  

The second great advantage of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to speak. This involves writing, of course, but also the ability to give compelling verbal explanations of, say, scientific experiments or to deliver presentations before small and large groups. At the deepest level, articulate communication helps you to speak your mind.  

The third great strength of a liberal education: it teaches you how to learn. I learned how to read an essay closely, search for new sources, find data to prove or disprove a hypothesis, and detect an author's prejudices. I learned how to read a book fast and still get its essence. I learned to ask questions, present an opposing view, take notes, and, nowadays watch speeches, lectures, and interviews as they stream across my computer. 

Edgar Bronfman, former CEO of Seagram Company, has offered students looking to succeed in business one piece of advice: “get a liberal arts degree. In my experience, a liberal arts degree is the most important factor informing individuals into interesting and interested people who can determine their own past through future. For all of the decisions young business leaders will be asked to make based on facts and figures, needs and wants, numbers and speculation, all of those choices will require one common skill: how to evaluate raw information, be it from people or a spreadsheet, and make reasoned and critical decisions. 

The crucial challenge is to learn how to read critically, analyze data, and formulate ideas – – and most of all to enjoy the intellectual adventure enough to be able to do them easily and often.