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In the US, the Death of Expertise
- throw0101d 10mo agoIn 2017 an entire book was written on the topic: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise This is nothing new of the US: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#In_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#In_the_Un...
- CrankyBear 10mo agoAll too true--I mean the story starts with an Asimov quote from 1980--but we're not at the "Hold my beer" stage of wilful ignorance.
- hn12 10mo agoFor me, the salient turning point was the Reagan administration, which began cultivation of the attitude that government collection of routine data on weather, railroad traffic, crime, health, ... was intrinsically suspect, expensive, and partisan, rather than a public service and scientific adjunct. I'll say this a different way: my personal opinion is that there's at least a whole book that deserves to be written on the documentable underinvestment in government measurements of national characteristics. We've trained a couple of generations--especially the most recent one--that rhetoric, rather than analysis, is the appropriate basis for policy decisions. Skepticism, or at least reserve, in the face of expertise, can be a healthy impulse. It's simultaneously a leading slogan of the jingoistic playbook of authoritarians. Anti-intellectualism isn't a solvable problem: it's an ongoing temptation that every society needs to address in contemporary terms.