"The Death of Expertise"

Senan wrote: I feel like the dumbing down of America has created a population that is threatened by educated people, particularly experts. People don't like to be wrong, but they are too lazy to learn what is right so they attack the expert in an attempt to discredit him or her. It's sad.

Unfortunately, this is a global phenomenon. Right-wing political tendencies mostly go hand in hand with anti-academia.

looking at the article again I think there should also be some clarifications here. You have a right personally to hold your opinion. I do not have to respect your opinion, but you have the right to hold it. Even if your opinion is dead wrong. You also have the right to publicly state your opinion no matter how wrong that opinion is. Does that mean that others have to respect it and not challenge it? No it does not. In the words of British particle physicist Brian Cox, "The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it.

The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!".

Cyan Sarden wrote:

Senan wrote: I feel like the dumbing down of America has created a population that is threatened by educated people, particularly experts. People don't like to be wrong, but they are too lazy to learn what is right so they attack the expert in an attempt to discredit him or her. It's sad.

Unfortunately, this is a global phenomenon. Right-wing political tendencies mostly go hand in hand with anti-academia.

This is not a major point, but more progressive folks can also have an anti-science outlook. An easy example would be the villification of wheat.

I would agree that all parts of the political spectrum can be guilty of anti-academia behavior, but for different reasons. Some may fear academia because it generates new information that flies directly in the face of their strongly held beliefs. Others may fear it because it makes them feel inferior. Still others may disagree with experts because they have access to google and wikipedia and this access to information makes them believe they are equally qualified.

In my opinion, people need to stop trying to one-up each other and accept that some people are just better than others at certain things. There's nothing wrong with that.

steamboat28 wrote:

Adder wrote: I guess the topic approaches concepts of democracy, does every opinion count or should decisions be made by defined sets of people who have sufficient accurate (& pure lol) understanding...

"No. It's not your opinion. You're just wrong."

I was going to post this article then saw Steam had beaten me to it.

So Ill add what I said on my facebook account when I shared it some weeks ago.

"A reminder that just because we have a right to an opinion, doesn't make that opinion right."

Expertise is relative. So is fact for the most part. Some things are indisputable (for the moment anyway. Things change). Some things are purely subjective.

When there's people involved, I dont know that anything can be purely factual or objective, even if a person is highly experienced. Scientists on both side of the climate change debate comes to mind.

Senan wrote: I would agree that all parts of the political spectrum can be guilty of anti-academia behavior, but for different reasons. Some may fear academia because it generates new information that flies directly in the face of their strongly held beliefs. Others may fear it because it makes them feel inferior. Still others may disagree with experts because they have access to google and wikipedia and this access to information makes them believe they are equally qualified.

In my opinion, people need to stop trying to one-up each other and accept that some people are just better than others at certain things. There's nothing wrong with that.

What do you think about the inevitable fact that "the experts" are frequently wrong?

For years the FDA told us that saturated fats are bad for our arteries, and a whole industry popped up selling FDA-approved food replacements like margarine that have no saturated fat yet are even worse for the body.

Or, taking another tact, what about the fact that homosexual behavior has only recently been removed from the DSMV as indicators of mental illness? Today the experts have reversed themselves.

I'm thinking that our society has blown up examples like these to discredit the notion of expertise. It's an example of the unmooring of the average person from any steady mental grips to hold and orient themselves. Sort of like the mental distress that comes from a loss of myth? What do you think?

One final note, I'm recalling that "appeal to authority" is a formal logical fallacy.

Brenna wrote: Expertise is relative. So is fact for the most part.

Expertise is quantifiable. Of course, how much of an expert anybody is on any given subject remains dependant on the quantifier's standard for measuring said expertise. So it is subjective, in the sense that it is subject to the measuring stick we use. It is relative in the sense that one can compare levels of expertise. In the sense that it is a blurry unclear term that means little to nothing in practice, expertise is neither.
Fact, on the other hand, is relative in no sense of the word. A fact is a point of data that is not in dispute because it either passes all coherent sets of epistemic filters or is incorrigible and skips epistemic filters for that reason.

Some things are indisputable (for the moment anyway. Things change).

No, actually, everything that is indisputable now has always been so and shall forever remain indisputable. Everything that can be disputed, either is being disputed this very instant or has been disputed already to a maximal amount provided the current information supply.

When there's people involved, I dont know that anything can be purely factual or objective, even if a person is highly experienced. Scientists on both side of the climate change debate comes to mind.

Purely factual, yes, things can be. Objective, probably not so much. That not any one expert is right by default goes without saying, as does that any finite set of them would be. We do not believe experts because that's what they elected to call each other but rather we trust them based on their track record and their independant convergence on particular conclusions over others. We test them against each other, as they do themselves and we test them against the little evidence that we can gather ourselves. We ought never to appeal to their authority alone. And if a situation arises where three very well paid experts from three oil refineries happen to "dispute" the climate change observations that about three million experts from research centers and universities around the world struggling to keep their labs afloat made, maybe what we think is a debate in the scientific community really, really isn't one. Unfortunately popular science media isn't exactly helpful in this regard...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYZE5900EBA

Also, @ae242: The FDA is under the jurisdiction of the US federal government. It is an organ to regulate and supervise foods and drugs, not a center of scientific research in either medicine or nutrition. That is not to say that they are wrong about any one given issue or that they do not have credible experts in all the right places, but it is a call to caution to appeal to it as an authority on matters of public health.
As for homosexualiy and the DSM, it was removed as a mental disorder not "recently" but as long ago as 1973, thank you very much, and hasn't been back in ever since. The reason it was removed was - guess it - research comparing the behaviour of heterosexual to homosexual people and finding no consistent correlation of their sexuality to anything outside of it; research, that one might say had not been previously done, rendering previous conclusions premature and the new ones supported by studies specifically designed to address the question at hand. I would say that a habit to change one's mind after collecting new, more relevant, and more conclusive evidence is what makes somebody not only reasonable in the literal sense of the word but also honest and by implication trustworthy; and anything less than that deserves, in my experience, no place in science, let alone our trust.

Gisteron, what is an example of something you would call indisputable?

You seem to be giving the American Psychiatric Association a lot of credit. Do you think it's possible that the APA as a general rule is looking at human nature through a distorted lens, and the listing of homosexual behavior as a mental disorder is evidence of this?

What about the listing of ADD and ADHD as mental health issues, or the over prescription of drugs like SSRIs? It seems to me that the APA sees humans as needing to fit into a very specific mold, and deviations from that mold are to be corrected with medication. Individual "disorders" are here today, gone tomorrow, but the outlook is the same.

We could expand this criticism to the medical practice of family doctors. They're trained to treat symptoms with medications, but what doctor ever considers a patient's diet and exercise and need for a fulfilling life? We trust our doctors as experts, yet the scope of their expertise is much narrower than we give them credit for.

Is it possible that "the death of expertise" is in some ways a recognition of the limits of specialization?

Well, looks like Ive joined the club of those hit with the pedantic stick. :woohoo:

Thank you for the specific clarifications on my my choice of words Though my point still stands.

@Brenna: That very much depends on what your point is. Surely, if it can stand on other grounds however, you would have brought those up. I for my part can only address what you said, not what you meant.

adventureexcitement242 wrote: Gisteron, what is an example of something you would call indisputable?

I would say any incorrigible statement or logical axiom would qualify. In other words, that which is not subject to epistemic filters is, by definition, indisputable. They are not propositions reached through reason nor can any reason challenge them because they are outside of reason. Every synthetic or analytic claim however is disputable. Analytic claims can, in addition, be either proven or disproven and thereby become certain, albeit still contingent on the logic they stem from. Synthetic claims remain up for debate indefinately.

You seem to be giving the American Psychiatric Association a lot of credit. Do you think it's possible that the APA as a general rule is looking at human nature through a distorted lens, and the listing of homosexual behavior as a mental disorder is evidence of this?

I'm not a psychologist. All I can do is use what little I know to review their findings and compare them to the conclusions of other research collectives that are independant of the APA. However, seeing how they haven't been listing homosexuality as a disorder in over fourty years and have even publicly spoken in favour of equal rights and protection of those with the more rare sexualities, the case that they are biased in this regard is a hard one to make. You make it sound like what they list or don't list is arbitrary, a matter of the whim of those in charge at any given time.

What about the listing of ADD and ADHD as mental health issues, or the over prescription of drugs like SSRIs?

Good question. What about it? I agree that the diagnostic tools are not ideal in every place, and what qualifies as ADD where you are from may not be what ADD is here. That being said, I have met and known people diagnosed with either and the suffering they both endure and inflict when off their meds is quite noticeable. Does that make them sick? I don't know, I'm not a doctor. Does it mean everybody is better off if they are treated? I think so.

It seems to me that the APA sees humans as needing to fit into a very specific mold, and deviations from that mold are to be corrected with medication. Individual "disorders" are here today, gone tomorrow, but the outlook is the same.

Maybe, but I don't think that mold is completely arbitrary. This is easily illustrated with extreme examples of either suffering people or notoriously making others suffer. Norms are convenient. Whether there is anything wrong with people far outside of it shall be up to the philosophers, but in a society consisting of people that are mostly within some margin along any given spectrum those strongly different happen to suffer and often also cause those close to them to suffer, too; I think that if we can help that, we should.

We could expand this criticism to the medical practice of family doctors. They're trained to treat symptoms with medications, but what doctor ever considers a patient's diet and exercise and need for a fulfilling life?

Any good doctor and also most doctors whose income is not a matter of their patients' wallets. I have had to deal with doctors with pretty much my entire life and rarely was there one who cared to be rid of me rather than me not needing him again.

We trust our doctors as experts, yet the scope of their expertise is much narrower than we give them credit for.

Some doctors are. They are certainly experts at being doctors, but they may not be experts on all branches of medicine. There is nothing wrong with appealing to an expert opinion when one isn't oneself qualified to judge given facts. One should however try to avoid appealing to those who are not authorities. Doctors are not generally medical scientists, rather they are practitioners of applied medicine and even then specialized to their particular field.

The only down-side of being specialized is that it takes a lot of time and effort and one can seldom become a specialist on a large number of subjects. However, being the social animals that we are, we have the privilege of being able to consult with multiple people who may be specialised in different subjects and chances are, that the opinions we can gather about any one question from a finite collective of experts for each are far better informed and accurate than all the opinions on all of the issues from a collective of jacks-of-all-trades. I am not limited to a shoe maker for fixing a car, I can go to a car mechanic instead. And that is good.