How the internet broke expertise | The Gray Area

Almost a decade ago, Tom Nichols warned that Americans were losing respect for expertise. He didn’t expect things to get this bad. Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO Sean talks with Nichols about his 2017 book “The Death of Expertise” and what’s happened since: why people don’t just distrust experts but actively push back against them, how the internet turns bad ideas into communities, and why a society that can’t agree on basic facts can’t function for long. They also dig into the deeper causes: loneliness, narcissism, and the weird psychology of living in a world where everything “just works.” Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) 00:00 Intro 01:13 A Growing Contempt for Competence: Revisiting The Death of Expertise 08:14 Decadence and the collapse of respect for competence 18:07 How internet echo chambers destroys shared reality 21:59 Is the ruling class to blame for the death of expertise? 28:34 How to separate healthy skepticism from destructive contempt for expertise 35:04 What happens next in a post-expertise world? We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com. Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H