
How America Lost Faith in Expertise and Why That's a Giant Problem - sarahfaulkner
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-02-13/how-america-lost-faith-expertise
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malvosenior
Part of the problem is that experts in a particular field will get on social
media, build a huge following based on their expertise, then spout really
uninformed (but authoritative sounding) opinions about fields they are not
experts in. Eventually people lose faith in anything they say.

Tech experts, celebrities... _do not_ have more informed opinions about
politics (for example) than the average person on the street, yet they’ll jump
head first into divisive political arguments that then alienate half their
audience who may have had something to learn from a field they actually know
about.

I know I trust people who demonstrate the maturity to not do this more than
people who let their emotions/desire for attention drive what they say
publicly.

~~~
jriot
Well said.

Ben Carson during last election demonstrated this clearly, top in his medical
field, but was not well informed on matters of politics and economics. Even
though he is the head of HUD now, at least he seemed humble enough to know his
limits at the time.

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chowchowchow
Not a good example. Ben Carson ran for president himself.

~~~
jriot
Yes, as I stated, but then realized he was above his level and dropped out.

~~~
chowchowchow
He realized nobody was going to vote for him and dropped out. Why, out of all
possible examples, would you choose someone organizing a campaign and running
for president and then dropping out when their polls were low as an example of
intellectual humility? I'd say literally every doctor who doesn't choose to
run for president is a better example.

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Havoc
Can't help but think it goes way beyond "faith in expertise".

When I first heard the phrase "Post-truth politics" I thought that's
ridiculous. But lately I'm thinking we're entering a post truth era in
multiple areas of life.

Take for example finance. It's all just numbers in computers. Or notions of
privacy in the digital world. Or identity in general.

Lies, artificial constructs and smoke & mirrors everywhere. And more
importantly I'm no longer confident I can cut through the jungle even as -
what I like to believe - a rather rational person.

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tlb
"people who thought Ukraine was located in Latin America or Australia were the
most enthusiastic about using military force there"

How does that happen? I can see a shoddily educated person mixing it up with a
neighboring country, but to not even realize that it's in Eastern Europe?

I can't remember seeing a poll presented in this format, but it'd be
interesting to see results for any political question presented as a graph
against a score in a relevant knowledge test.

~~~
codesushi42
Not surprising and completely believable. Anecdotal, but the nightly news had
a segment where they went into an inner city highschool and none of the
students knew Poland was a real country.

~~~
redis_mlc
> none of the students knew Poland was a real country.

The punchline is that Russians and Germans still don't believe that. :)

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mrxd
Two things that I think are true:

1\. Ordinary people reject expertise in ways that are incredibly stupid and
harmful 2\. Experts have expanded the scope of what they feel entitled to have
opinions about well beyond their training and experience

> “Stitch this cut in my leg, but don’t lecture me about my diet.”

> “Help me beat this tax problem, but don’t remind me that I should have a
> will.”

Whether to change your diet, whether to have a will or not - these are value
judgments. They tell me about how I ought to live, that I should prefer one
thing over another. Tax attorneys and doctors have no special training in
making value judgments. This isn't very different from a financial planner
telling you to retire in Arizona because there are a lot of golf courses, and
he personally likes to play golf.

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codesushi42
Ignoring evidence is the new cultural norm. I have had American employees flat
out reject findings even though there was empirical evidence backing up those
findings Their retort: "nuh uh"

This was at a FAANG mind you.

Something is definitely wrong, and it's only going to get worse.

Though perhaps cognitive dissonance has always been a major problem, and it is
now so much more evident in the information age.

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jwillie
What an elitest pile of stinky!

Woe is me, the expert, because all the non-experts don't trust me. Rather than
address why that is, the elitest expert condemns the non-elitest commoners and
worries that it portends the end of, or at least a "giant problem" for,
(elitest-controlled) society.

Trust us you must, he argues, because you know too little to make decisions
for yourselves.

Has he ever stopped to consider how juries operate without "experts"? Or basic
infantry platoons, or thousands of small businesses, or small towns - none of
which operate on the basis of experts/expertise?

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cafard
Is it a new problem? Last night, I had a look at George Kennan's memoirs
1950-1963. He discussed the congressional move to remove most-favored-nation
status from Yugoslavia at the time he was ambassador there. He laid out cogent
arguments against it. The congressman Wilbur Mills, who had never been out of
the US, ignored him, as did all the senators and congressmen he spoke with.

In general, Kennan gave a picture, not only with regard to Yugoslavia, of
congressional policies based on home-state politics.

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memmcgee
I think part of this is many of the "experts" people see on TV are not experts
at all, they're ideolouges or idiots (and sometimes both).

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Smithalicious
You can be both of those and still be an expert

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lunias
Modern expertise is deep and narrow; increasing the difficulty of aggregation
and reconciliation of findings.

Those nuanced and complex findings must then be disseminated to a population
with no attention span; meanwhile the competition is motivated to publish a
dumbed-down (wrong) version faster than you in order to capitalize on
sensationalism and pull in ad revenue.

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Isamu
Another thing that people do is to "see" patterns in random data, and perceive
"trends" from anecdotal experience that aren't necessarily happening.

America never had faith in expertise, that's just your younger self being
blessedly unaware of people around you.

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mgh2
Let’s look at the silver lining. People are getting more educated by their own
means using the internet. Although hardly as reliable as experts, some data is
better than none.

Or put yourself in today’s uneducated’s shoes. If today’s values honour
dishonesty and profit making over truth(just look at social media and google
results), why would I, as the weak uninformed, trust in the strong, elite
expert? It is a distrust in today’s society values, that is the real problem.

~~~
mgh2
In other words, I don’t care how smart or talented you are if you are going
lie and screw me over with it.

