Chats on the Charles

I borrow the title from an article highlighting a disturbing trend, the explosion of factless and illogical thinking in our discourse.  We live in an age of unreason.  Considered opinions, developed through logic and facts, play second fiddle to populist notions unleashed by our elected purveyors of prevarications.  How did this come to pass, especially in a society built on the intellectual foundations of European enlightenment?

A recent book by Professor Tom Nichols of Harvard University makes an attempt to address the question.  The Death of Expertise is an excellent and topical read.  At its core, the current spasm of unreason is not new.  It is embedded in the perennial struggle between two early American impulses – the disdain for elites and authority vs. the benefits of an informed citizenry.  Today, the scorn for experts seems to have won out.

To quote from a review of the book:

“Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.  To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.”

The explosion of media formats and algorithms that feed us information confirming our biases are clearly some of the culprits.  Every person with a blog can transmit their message around the world.  The irony, dear reader, is not lost on me.  My hope, however, is that I attempt to lay out the logic and facts of my arguments, and am willing to change my positions should facts demand, you the reader being the ultimate judge of that.

There is also something more alarming at work.  Perhaps, the accelerating technological changes in our society and the unresolved cultural battles of past decades have left our national psyche extremely disoriented.  We yearn for simple truth and seek refuge in the comfort of our tribes, wherever they may be.  The tribes demand allegiance, facts and logic be damned.  Unfortunately, the costs of this imperviousness to reason are mounting.

Our recent history is filled with catastrophic errors because we chose to listen to our “gut” and ignore the advice of experts.  From climate change to the Iraq war to the current desire to reduce immigration, ignoring expertise has real costs.  To quote Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA and CIA, from his new book, The Assault on Intelligence, “the structures, processes, and attitudes we rely on to [preserve our strength as a nation], and … many of the premises on which we have based our governance, policy, and security are now challenged, eroded, or simply gone.”

This is not to say that experts are always right or should not be questioned.  Quite the contrary.  History is filled with examples where the experts were wrong.  Predicting the advent of the Great Recession of 2008 or the rapid demise of the Soviet Union are two examples that come to mind.  The key is not the infallibility of experts, but that they are wrong less often and in ways that can be corrected for the future.  Not so with “gut” instinct, venerated as it sometimes is, at the pinnacle of American virtue, answerable to no constraints of facts and reason.  This devotion to factless opinion is perhaps best described as a mutation of Descartes’ maxim:  I feel therefore it is!!