Death of experience: Why do people boast about ignorance

The ease of internet and technology spreading has increased the ability to access information more than ever before. While this widespread access has a positive impact on equality among people in gaining knowledge, it has also lowered the level of knowledge required for someone to consider themselves an "expert." These anti-expertise sentiments have coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in widespread debates lacking proper information, from anti-vaccine movements to attacks on genetic modification of living organisms. This increase in intellectual equality, instead of the scene of debates, has made all voices equal and "truth" a subjective term. Browsing the website (WebMD) makes you on equal footing with doctors, and the (Wikipedia) encyclopedia allows everyone to become experts in foreign policy, science, and more. As Tom Nichols shows in his book "The Death of Expertise," there are several reasons behind this, ranging from easy access to internet search engines to the withdrawal of the customer satisfaction model from higher education institutions. The result of these intertwined dominant trends, as Nichols says, is the spread of distrust in expertise among the public, along with a baseless belief among the inexperienced that their opinions are equally valid and comparable to those of experts. Of course, experts are not always correct, and Nichols addresses the failures of experts in his book, but the key point is that poor decisions made by experts could have been challenged and overturned by more savvy experts. The current problem is that attributing a democratic nature to the dissemination of information has produced an army of poorly informed citizens who disdain expertise. Author: Tom Nichols Number of pages: 389 Published by: Book Club Publishing