Whose Expertise Is Dead?

"Itis difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends onhis not understanding it." 

-----------Upton Sinclair

 

The Death of Expertise

In TheDeath of Expertise, national security expert Tom Nichols warns thatknowledge is under attack by an ill-informed public determined to replace itwith popular ignorance. Though this is not entirely possible - no society couldsurvive such a transition - the breakdown in trust between experts andlaypeople underlying this misguided ambition is making the U.S. ungovernable.Experts are held in contempt, sometimes for their errors, but increasinglysimply because they are experts andlaypeople are not. Knowledge inequality is taken to be as contemptible aswealth inequality, on the assumption that those in possession of it considerthemselves smarter and better than the less educated. Aspiring to acquireknowledge and use it to enlighten others, once a noble ambition, now signalselitist arrogance.

 

Furthermore, where once we wereentitled to our own opinions but not our own facts, today proliferating digitaltribes proudly circulate self-justifying"alternative facts" withoutthe inconvenience of being challenged. The Internet, though not the cause ofthis phenomenon, does aggravate it, since the "informationsuperhighway" has degenerated into a galaxy of glittering websites eagerlycatering to popular delusions on a growing range of topics. What now passes for"research" refers to scanning a few algorithm-curated lines thatconfirm one's prejudices, then clicking away satisfied one's half-baked notionshave been proven right. 

 

Easy access to vast troves ofinformation, the debasement of university education into a consumer experiencein which "the customer is always right," and the fusion of news andentertainment into a 24-hour cycle of mind-killing spectacle, all have helpedproduce this situation, writes Nichols, yielding a deeply ignorant publicnevertheless convinced it holds infallible judgment on a nearly limitless rangeof topics.

Formal democratic governance based onexpert advice and popular ratification has therefore become nearly impossible,because increasing numbers of laypeople not only lack basic knowledge, butreject rules of evidence, effectively eliminating any possibility of logical debate.Strength of conviction, not persuasiveness of logic, determines the"winner" of disagreements, with more and more people succumbing tonarcissistic self-congratulation on the grounds that, "I'm passionatelyconvinced I'm right; therefore, how could I be wrong?"

 

In this emerging Dis-United States ofSelf-Righteousness we risk discarding centuries of accumulated knowledge anderoding the disciplines that allow us to acquire new knowledge. No democracy,even the very partial democracy that has existed in the U.S. to date, cansurvive such a trend.

 

The problem actually goes considerablybeyond mere ignorance, observes Nichols, because want of knowledge can beremedied by study, whereas today's popular impulse is to reject study itself onthe grounds that ignorance trumps established knowledge. This is "theoutrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture" that cannot tolerate anyinequality, even that of knowledge. Equal rights has become equal validity ofall opinions, the more crackpot the better, a proposition whoseself-contradictory nature is rarely noted.

 

Furthermore, latter day know-nothingswant to kick away the intellectual ladder that has permitted us to ascend to anage of at least semi-reason: "The death of expertise is not just arejection of existing knowledge," says Nichols. "It is fundamentallya rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are the foundationsof modern civilization." 

 

We need not look far to find evidencesupporting Nichols's thesis. In the Covid era we have seen massive and painfulverification of it, with credentialed grifters and scientifically illiteratetrolls lecturing career virologists and immunologists about the complexities ofviruses and vaccines, all the while insisting on quack treatments as Covid deathssoar. Nurses and doctors confirm that many Covid sufferers have willedthemselves to unnecessary deaths clinging to medical delusions.Though this is merely one example among many, the fact that people will dierather than let go of their mistaken opinions hauntingly confirms the validityof the author's main point.

 

Nichols's solution for this dismalstate of affairs is for laypeople to re-engage the effort to be responsiblecitizens in a democracy, follow a variety of reputable news sources, at leastone of which takes an editorial line contrary to one's own views, and recognizethat the public has a need to collaborate with experts, not shout them down.

 

This all sounds eminently sensible, andone can hardly argue with the conclusion that the U.S. public needs to be muchbetter informed. Unfortunately, however, Nichols nowhere takes note of theimpact of elite ideology, which relentlessly pumps a false world view into thepublic mind, one that vastly exceeds in impact all the ravings of crackpot conspiracytheorists put together.

 

Those who debunk the establishment'sself-justifying propaganda are given short shrift by Nichols. For example, hedismisses Ward Churchill without examination because the former ethnic studiesprofessor was fired for plagiarism, a conclusion that is narrowly correct butdisingenuous in the extreme. Churchill's real offense was insulting thenational self-image by comparing "good Americans" working within amurderous U.S. empire to "good Germans" working under the Nazis, amplifyingthe provocation by drawing a parallel with Adolf Eichmann. This produced afamiliar tsunami of public hysteria that culminated in an"examination" of Churchill's published works obviously designed tofind cause to fire him. In the event, four footnotes among thousands in hispublished works were found to be objectionable. This horrifying"plagiarism" largely consisted of Churchill re-using content from hispreviously published books, written in activist settings, sometimes inconjunction with others, where no money or reputational issues were at stake.Ho hum. Such an offense, if it really qualifies as such, is far less seriousthan Dr. King's lifting of whole passages without attribution in his doctoraldissertation, but if we retroactively treat King the way we did Ward Churchillwe will have to make ourselves party to a second assassination. Nichols caresabout none of this, convinced that Churchill deserved what he got. 

 

Here we see - once again - cancelculture wreaking havoc, with Churchill's large body of work detailing centuriesof lawless U.S. governments breaking hundreds of treaties with American Indians(among other important topics) shoved down Orwell's memory hole. Incidentally,the very fact that Churchill taught in an Ethnic Studies Department rather thanan American History Department testifies to the fact that twenty-first centuryhistory experts still cannot face the fact that dozens of indigenous peoplesdid not fortuitously vanish or voluntarily disband to make way for the master race,but were deliberately eradicated. Thedeath of their expertise is long overdue.

 

Nichols also dismisses the work ofanti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott on the basis that her expertise is inmedicine, not arms control and disarmament, and she substitutes a psychologicalexamination of a presumed pathological arms race ("Missile Envy" isthe title of one of her anti-nuclear books) for a proper examination of thetopic by a relevant expert. She also once falsely claimed on a radio program that,"If Ronald Reagan is re-elected, nuclear war is a mathematicalcertainty."  

 

Only on the second point is Nichols onsolid ground. Obviously, one cannot predict the future of anything on the basisof mathematical certainty, and Caldicott's misuse of her social prestige as adoctor to try to influence how her audience would vote was dishonest andunprincipled. But that single instance hardly invalidates her entireanti-nuclear career.

 

On Nichols's preference forconventional arms control analysis instead of Caldicott's psychologicalapproach equating nuclear arms production to a form of madness ("NuclearMadness" is the title of another one of her books), there is no need tochoose one over the other. The two can fruitfully co-exist, if arms control expertsengage the critique that their expertise has been captured by ideological dogmathat - over time - can only eventuate in nuclear war. 

 

Caldicott regards the proliferation ofnuclear weapons much like she does a cancer metastasizing in a human body. Shecredits "psychic numbing" for our ability to complacently livealongside what the late Daniel Ellsberg (an expert!) called the "DoomsdayMachine," a world wired up to explode in terminal war at a moment'snotice. Caldicott's nuclear views largely overlap with Ellsberg's, as sheenthusiastically endorsed his book describing our descent to what Lewis Mumford once aptlytermed "the morals of extermination."

 

If it is quackery to see stockpilingthousands of nuclear weapons (many on hair-trigger alert) among eight differentcountries wracked with antagonistic tensions as a form of human madness, thenthis needs to be demonstrated. Nichols shirks the entire debate on the basis ofcredentialism, but he is quite unconvincing in doing so. After all, he himselfcontends that democracy requires cooperative discussion between laypeople andexperts, not dismissal. If Caldicott's expertise is not relevant to the debate,her interest and concerns surely are, and these cannot be piously dismissed asthe result of a few casual internet searches. In fact, they make far more sensethan the self-justifying assertions of arms control experts like KennethAdelman (Nichols regards him favorably), who said at his Senate confirmationhearings to be Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency that he thathe had never given any consideration tothe possibility of disarmament - the very purpose of the agency he soughtto direct.

 

Whatever the deficiencies ofCaldicott's arguments may be, it remains a mystery why the death of such cluelessexpertise ought to be mourned rather than celebrated.

 

Finally, Nichols also dismisses the views ofdissident intellectual Noam Chomsky on credentialist grounds, since his credentials are in linguistics rather than foreign policy. The upshot is thatChomsky, lacking the specialized, technical national security expertise thatNichols obtained by skill and training, cannot be expected to adequatelyunderstand the deep knowledge of the field, and therefore his views arehopelessly confused. This view bears similarity to that of virologists whodecline to debate anti-vaxxers on the grounds that such exchanges only serve tofurther confuse a scientifically illiterate public.

 

But are national security affairsreally a science, impenetrable to laypeople, or can they be understood and beneficiallyengaged using no more than common sense, skepticism, and ordinary analyticalability? Chomsky argues the latter, pointing out that, in the social sciences

 

"the cultof the expert is both self-serving for those who propound it, and fraudulent. Obviouslyone must learn from social and behavioral science whatever one can . . . But itwill be quite unfortunate, and highly dangerous, if they are not accepted andjudged on their merits and according to their actual, not pretendedaccomplishments. In particular, if there is a body of theory, well-tested andverified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs . . .  it'sexistence has been kept a well-guarded secret. To anyone who has anyfamiliarity with the social and behavioral sciences . . . the claim that thereare certain considerations and principles too deep for the outsider tocomprehend is simply an absurdity, unworthy of comment.

 

Yes. Where is the repeatedly testedbody of theoretical knowledge informing national security affairs that Nicholsallegedly possesses but laypeople do not? Obviously, none exists, which meansthat Chomsky's supposed lack of foreign policy expertise is simply another dodge. If Nichols's is an expertise worth saving, he needs todrop the priesthood guise and engage debate, not just with colleagues, but withall who are interested.

 

A good place for him to start would beto examine Chomsky's review of a prominent part of the expert community thathas long held that laypeople are intellectually deficient by nature, and not merely as a consequence of having fallen into astate of narcissism.

 

For example, the democratic rebellionin 17th century Britain, Chomsky relates, was quickly condemned by experts ofthe day as a monstrous affair of the "rascal multitude," "beastsin men's shapes," inherently "depraved and corrupt." Thesesentiments were handed down to succeeding generations of elite thinkers, sothat by the twentieth-century we have Walter Lippmann advising that the public"must be put in its place," so that the "responsible men"may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd." The"function" of these "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders," hebelieved, was to be "interested spectators of action," notparticipants, ratifying the decisions made on their behalf by experts andpolicy-makers, then returning to their private concerns. This was said to beinevitable because of the "ignorance and superstition of the masses"(political scientist Harold Lasswell), the "stupidity of the average man"(Reinhold Niebuhr), and the fact that "the common interests very largelyelude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized classwhose personal interests reach beyond the locality (Walter Lippmann)." The"specialized class" is drawn from the experts at articulating theneeds of the powerful, what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci identified as"experts in legitimation." These intellectual saviors were needed toprotect "us" from the majority, which is "ignorant and mentallydeficient," (Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State) and hasto be kept in its place via a constant diet of "necessary illusion"and "emotionally potent oversimplifications" (Rienhold Neibuhr).

 

Note that these are the sentiments ofthe liberal intelligentsia; conservative theorists are even harsher in theircondemnation. 

 

Since theintellectual backwardness of ordinary people is alleged to be congenital, thepolicy prescription is manipulate them, education being pointless with thelower breeds. Edward Bernays, the Father of Spin, openly declared this:"If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is nowpossible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without theirknowing it." Minority rule was therefore inevitable: "In almost everyact of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in oursocial conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relativelysmall number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patternsof the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the publicmind." And this minority rule was not contradictory to democracy, as onemight think, but an expression of its essence: "The conscious andintelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses isan important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseenmechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the trueruling power of our country."

 

So . . . . hallelujah?

 

Hardly. Given the obnoxiousness ofthese longstanding views, it is difficult to believe that the widespreadrejection of experts by an ever increasing portion of the general public iswholly unrelated to the open contempt with which ordinary people have beentreated by the "specialized class."

 

To be fair, not all experts share thiscontempt for laypeople, and Nichols is at pains to emphasize that not allexperts are policy-making experts. True enough, but in a class-divided worldexpertise of all kinds skews towards fulfilling the needs of the wealthy, notthose who work for them. At the height of the Covid crisis, for example, CDCrecommendations to "shelter-in-place" were meaningless to workers inmeat-packing plants, but highly valuable to the wealthy, who retreated tosecond homes remote from areas of high contagion - with no loss of income.

 

In any event, experts with the wrong class loyalties,such as those who advise labor unions on how to resist the continual blowscapital directs at workers, command little attention, respect, or resources.For as Karl Marx pointed out, the "ruling ideas" of an epoch do notarise by happenstance, but are the ideas of the class that occupies power:

 

"The ruling ideas arenothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of therelationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas oftheir dominance."

 

Since public opinion necessarilydiverges from "the ruling ideas," especially on issues of wealth and power, experts perceiveit as a threat to be managed and controlled, not a democratic reality to beintelligently cultivated.

 

Expertise, in other words, consists asmuch of rationalizing the needs of the powerful as it does of reasoning one'sway to a justified conclusion. And this, in turn, feeds popular mistrust ofexpertise, for as the great Chinese sage Lao-Tse said, “Those who justifythemselves do not convince.”

 

Finally, and most importantly, Nicholsfails to address the stunted moral intelligence of so many experts, who,consumed by the demands of their specialized tasks, often end up morallyblinded.

 

A classic example concerns J. RobertOppenheimer. In the final stages of making the atomic bomb he was pressed byhis Manhattan Project colleagues as to the moral implications of their work.Oppenheimer and his colleague Enrico Fermi replied that they were"without special competence on the moral question."

 

Without special competence on the moral question. A most peculiar turn ofphrase. In other words, the ethical implications of unleashing atomic bombs onan unsuspecting world fell outside Oppenheimer's occupationalspecialty. 

 

Is this not a perfect illustration ofthe dilemma we face in relying on expertise? What good is knowledge divorcedfrom comprehension of its proper direction and use? Oppenheimer's answer to themost important question humanity has ever faced is no answer at all, for itsuggests that the moral question might best be engaged by a different class ofexperts than the bomb-makers, a Department of Extermination Affairs perhaps.

 

For all that Nichols leavesunaddressed, however,  The Death ofExpertise remains a lucid and compelling description of rising popularidiocy. Pity that the larger picture does not flatter the experts Nichols seeksto defend. 

 

We are now drifting towards a world ofhighly specialized moral imbeciles governing narcissistic laypeople tooignorant to defend themselves.

 

 

Andnow that the crisis has subsided, organized efforts are underway to ban anyfuture pandemic response measures that might interfere with getting andspending.

EveryU.S. military intervention abroad, for example, is portrayed as necessary tostop "another Hitler."

 

However,her claim that in a brief meeting with President Reagan she was able to"clinically" assess his IQ to be 100, is also suspect.

 

"DanielEllsberg, The Doomsday Machine –Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, (Bloomsbury, 2017)

 

." Chomskyquoted in Raphael Salkie, The ChomskyUpdate - Linguistics And Politics, (Unwin Hyman, 1990) p. 140]

 

Commentstaken from Chomsky's "Year 501," (South End Press, 1993) p. 18, and"Deterring Democracy," (Hill and Wang, 1991) p. 253.

 

Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845

Oppenheimerquoted in Jonathan Kozol, The Night IsDark and I Am Far From Home – A Political Indictment of the U.S. Public Schools,(Continuum, 1984) p. viii

@font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}p.MsoFootnoteText, li.MsoFootnoteText, div.MsoFootnoteText {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-link:"Footnote Text Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}span.MsoFootnoteReference {mso-style-noshow:yes; vertical-align:super;}span.FootnoteTextChar {mso-style-name:"Footnote Text Char"; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:"Footnote Text";}div.Section1 {page:Section1;}