"Death of Expertise" article (1 Viewer)

[Clifford]

Dude starts out sounding kinda whiny but there are some real gems in here:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/?utm_content=buffer09f0b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I like the democratization of knowledge and the wider circle of public participation. That greater participation, however, is endangered by the utterly illogical insistence that every opinion should have equal weight

when you get invested in being aggressively dumb…well, the last thing you want to encounter are experts who disagree with you, and so you dismiss them in order to maintain your unreasonably high opinion of yourself. (There’s a lot of that loose on social media, especially.)

(The verb to disrespect is one of the most obnoxious and insidious innovations in our language in years, because it really means “to fail to pay me the impossibly high requirement of respect I demand.”) This yearning for respect and equality, even—perhaps especially—if unearned, is so intense that it brooks no disagreement. It represents the full flowering of a therapeutic culture where self-esteem, not achievement, is the ultimate human value, and it’s making us all dumber by the day.

Good stuff

 

[bostonfred]

Absolutely true but this argument is usually made by people who are mad that someone who they think is less deserving is getting more attention than they are.

You see it in politics all the time, people complaining about science deniers on the one side vs people who complain about benghazi on the other.

 

[matuski]

(The verb to disrespect is one of the most obnoxious and insidious innovations in our language in years, because it really means “to fail to pay me the impossibly high requirement of respect I demand.”) This yearning for respect and equality, even—perhaps especially—if unearned, is so intense that it brooks no disagreement. It represents the full flowering of a therapeutic culture where self-esteem, not achievement, is the ultimate human value, and it’s making us all dumber by the day.

This is so spot on.

I am "disrespecting" you? Quit being a #####.

 

[Clifford]

Absolutely true but this argument is usually made by people who are mad that someone who they think is less deserving is getting more attention than they are.

You see it in politics all the time, people complaining about science deniers on the one side vs people who complain about benghazi on the other.

yeah that was exactly my impression when I started reading but I kept at it and he won me over. His disgust with the common pleb is pretty enjoyable.