The Death of Expertise
The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
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Narrated by:
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Sean Pratt
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By:
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Tom Nichols
About this listen
People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues.
Today, everyone knows everything and all voices demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols shows this rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of the Internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine.
Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement.
Nichols notes that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy - or in the worst case, a combination of both.
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With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
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Interesting, but not science
- By Lloyd Fassett on 03-14-16
By: Adam Grant, and others
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The War Against Boys
- How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men
- By: Christina Hoff Sommers
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An updated and revised edition of the controversial classic - now more relevant than ever - argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs. After two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, women have made massive strides in education. Today they outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic, and vocational well-being. Christina Hoff Sommers contends that it's time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help.
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Important Book
- By VeritasPlz on 11-05-18
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Weapons of Mass Instruction
- A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
- By: John Taylor Gatto
- Narrated by: Michael Puttonen
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.
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I will never see school the same
- By Nicole on 05-21-15
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Arrogance
- Rescuing America from the Media Elite
- By: Bernard Goldberg
- Narrated by: Bernard Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
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In his #1 New York Times best seller, Bias, Emmy Award-winning journalist Bernard Goldberg created a national firestorm when he exposed the liberal biases of the so-called mainstream media. Now, in his new blockbuster, Goldberg goes even further. He not only takes on Big Journalism, but offers a twelve-step program to help the media elites overcome their addiction to bias.
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wow
- By Douglas on 11-11-03
By: Bernard Goldberg
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The Death of Truth
- Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases.
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Prescient Account of the Mechanics of Tyranny
- By Brian Price on 07-27-18
By: Michiko Kakutani
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The Myth of the Rational Voter
- Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
- By: Bryan Caplan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
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The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book.
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Refreshing
- By Lyle Wincentsen on 05-12-11
By: Bryan Caplan
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The Science of Fear
- Why We Fear the Things We Should Not - and Put Ourselves in Great Danger
- By: Daniel Gardner
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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From terror attacks to the War on Terror, bursting real-estate bubbles to crystal meth epidemics, sexual predators to poisonous toys from China, our list of fears seems to be exploding. And yet, we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Irrational fear is running amok, and often with tragic results. In the months after 9/11, when people decided to drive instead of fly - believing they were avoiding risk - road deaths rose by 1,595. Those lives were lost to fear.
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A rational assessment of the world we live in
- By K Head on 08-29-09
By: Daniel Gardner
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Excellent Sheep
- The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale's admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways.
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skip the book read the essay
- By Amazon Customer on 05-07-15
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Future Babble
- Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway
- By: Dan Gardner
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Future Babble, award-winning journalist Dan Gardner presents landmark research debunking the whole expert prediction industry and explores our obsession with the future. The truth is that experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys.
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Future Babble Babble
- By Karen on 05-04-11
By: Dan Gardner
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American Sketches
- Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Cotter Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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In this collection of essays, Walter Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled as a biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, in most cases, but that is not the secret of their success.
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Not Really Sketches
- By DAVID on 11-04-11
By: Walter Isaacson
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The War on the West
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia?
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Every Human (seriously, everyone) Read This!
- By aaron on 04-27-22
By: Douglas Murray
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Interesting, but not well explained
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What listeners say about The Death of Expertise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- katherine
- 12-31-17
An extremely important book for our time
This book is more important than ever! It covers how expertise is dying at the hands of too much information and the laziness of the average American to get the real facts. The author covers the domains of higher education, journalism, politics, and our democracy as a whole and discusses how people's need for quick snippets rather than delving deeper is costing us a great deal. A scary tome for our future, but understanding the problem is the first step to fixing it. READ THIS BOOK!!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Manny K
- 11-07-20
Lamentations without solutions
Most lamentation genre books describe the problem in great detail and slap dash solutions in the last chapter. Here there's only a weak hopefulness in the last paragraphs. We get it, now use your expertise (and your limited pages) to blueprint a path to a better future. Narrator did a good job with what he had to work with.
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1 person found this helpful
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- L. C. Pinkerton
- 06-26-18
Scary
We let this happen. We need to step up and fix it. Take a listen and re-sign the social contract.
What’s sad is that I did everything wrong in this book. I let this happen just as much as everyone else did. I hope this can be corrected before the author’s fears are made real.
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- Todd
- 11-11-19
“Get off my quadrangle, you damned ingrates!”
I very much enjoyed all of the observations of this wise and grumpy member of the elite, although he’s wrong about the continued existence of true autodidacts like me!
LOL
PS - The spoken performance was trying, at times. I found the best way to erase the sardonic tone and odd intonation choices was to listen at 1.5 speed.
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- Brooke Gonzalez
- 03-02-22
not as much useful info as I had hoped
I appreciate that the author didn't use this as an opportunity to rail against a political party, and I think he made a concerted effort not to do so.
His assessment of the evolution of higher learning establishments was thought provoking, but he didn't offer any solutions to the problem which seems kind of lazy. I would have even been happy with a list of proposed ideas and why they won't work, but to not say anything on it gave me the impression that he didn't even bother brainstorming.
It also seems like he discredits the ability of any uncredentialed person to learn and know things within a specific field without formal training, and that's just not true. If you are smart enough to know your own limitations, are willing to challenge your world view and think critically about things, you can generally distinguish fact from fiction. That's how I can trust in medical science that vaccines are good, but also recognize when a doctor tells me some BS, like, 'wait and see if that cat bite gets infected, and THEN I'll prescribe antibiotics.'
This guy even throws shade on Chomsky for not staying in his lane.
Overall, there's some good info here, but I felt it was lacking something
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- Morgan G
- 06-13-22
Really enjoyable discomfort
I don’t think this book “leans left” or “leans right”. The book is really well thought out about all the ways in which arrogance is affecting our daily lives and the upcoming future. Great insights
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Overall
- Douglas Noble
- 06-14-22
It's good. 👍
It's a good book on a topic of great concern to me: the spurning of expert consensus / expert opinion from a public that is grossly unqualified to pontificate a contrary opinion in the subject.
I have no regrets listening to it; I just feel I really got the nitty gritty of Tom's book in his editorial piece titled, 'The Death of Expertise', which isn't to say the book is of no value, but that I maybe could have better used my Audible credit on a book that could expand my knowledge domain; feed my recent appetite for knowledge domination in topics of importance in my time.
I don't think I could ever become an expert in something, but I should at least try to become a brilliant moron.
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- Christopher Swann
- 02-12-19
Brilliant
A superb analysis. Beautifully written and compelling. Also more than a little depressing. A must-read book.
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- Tom
- 11-16-18
Comprehensive Analysis of a Critical Problem
Democracy in 2018 has become a resentful, angry business. Rejection of the opinions of elites has become a First Principle. In the name of Equality, Democracy and Fairness, populist resentment demands that all opinions, regardless of their source, be considered to be of equal value, resulting in the acceptance of the Least Common Denominator.
These are the basic premises of Nichols’ book and I found them to paint a convincing picture of the current state of American Public Discourse. He goes on to analyze the factors that have brought us to this state.
All the usual suspects are here: the overwhelming amount of information, easy access through the Internet, confirmation bias, news as a profit center causing its degeneration into entertainment, proliferation of Experts and the Education System particularly Higher Education.
His analysis is incisive and wide-ranging but two areas really caught my eye: the Academizing of Journalism and the Devolution of the Professor-Student Relationship at the College Level.
Partly due to the incredible growth of the market for information spawned by Google and the Internet, “news” outlets have sprung up in all fields and at all levels creating an inordinate demand for “journalists”. The Academy has responded by creating “journalism programs” to churn out 27 year old correspondents, pundits and other “experts” to purvey this “information”. Where we once had three networks and fifteen veteran correspondents as our sources of news, we now have hundreds opining about complicated issues in fields of study and countries they have almost no firsthand knowledge of.
The second area he discusses is related. To meet the growing demand for higher education Colleges have mutated into aggressively competing entities vying to claim as much of the tuition market as they can to survive. Like any other business, they have learned that to attract customers they must give them what they want. Students are transformed into clients who must be catered to with easy courses, better food, nicer accommodations, etc. Colleges must keep their clients comfortable for four to six years to keep the dollars rolling in rather than providing what once was considered Education in specific fields of study. The idea of Education has thus become cheapened.
These two examples, combined with the others mentioned above, help the society create “Experts” of dubious credentials who can disseminate “information” to a poorly educated society eager to grab on to any idea or opinion that sounds attractive. Mix this with a populace with little time or inclination for deep analysis and more cynicism about the “Elites” and we have created a volatile atmosphere for half-baked opinions to be taken as gospel truth and implemented to the detriment of Society as a whole.
Nichols’ solution is for Experts to be better trained and more respectful of the limits of their expertise and for laymen to be more cautious and discriminating about their sources of information and the range of opinions they consume.
His arguments are well made and thought-provoking and his subject is vital to the survival of Democracy in America. Reasons enough to read this book.
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- Thomas Robbins
- 07-08-20
A timely and important book.
Tom Nichols’ book should be read by all. This book tackles a variety of issues that shape our perception of the world and how the barrage of poorly or uniformed options have drowned out many experts.
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