The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters The Death of Expertise The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Presentation by: Robert Kennedy, Dylan ArceJaeger, Alexandria Silva, Maria Bogoslavskaya, Marissa Valles, Melanie Hosada

Intro: Expertise is dead? Challenge to take the author down “OMG everything is dead!” Problem is that people are willfully and proudly ignorant Division of labor does not necessitate us to be DaVinci Author is a teacher, political advisor, and commentator Expertise may not be dead, but people’s trust is, and that is SCARY

Aggressively WRONG General Knowledge Well Informed Informed Partially Informed Uninformed People don’t Just believe Dumb things, they actively resist further learning or changes to their ideas. Author was told how to do his job as an arms control and foreign policy in the 1980s. Misinformed Time Aggressively WRONG

The Problem Today People dismiss expertise Internet, social media, news? Not mistrust, questioning or search for alternatives Insistence on things being “Right” and “Wrong” is politically incorrect. People are “correcting” experts: Doctors, Teachers, Researchers Movements against established knowledge; vaccines, evolution, GMOs. Everyone is as smart as everyone else, and we are the smartest people EVER.

“Aids Denialists” Belief that HIV does not cause AIDS Proffered by Prof. Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist at UC Berkeley Believed that AIDS was caused by nutritional factors Influenced then president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki, resulting in 850,000 becoming infected by 2000. Deuseburg was a member of the national academy of sciences Experiment conclusively proves

How Could this Happen? Many would blame “the internet” Scholars not engaging with the public Narcissistic belief in people’s own intelligence Using professionals as “services” and education as an “experience” News sources need to be up to date 24/7, and have to cut corners.

Where’s Ukraine? Well, Whatever.

Chapter 1: Experts and Citizens Expert: In this context, means people who know considerably more on a single or set of subjects than laypeople. This means: Training Experience Engagement in a subject Talent Peer affirmation/review This does NOT mean: Passing familiarity Hobby Poor/uncertified credential Disengaged from the subject matter Most dictionaries say an expert is someone whose advice can be trusted, though this is usually because experts tell us so. Experts are not authoritative all the time, but they are who we turn to advice for Man wrote on the middle east, had never been there, read the language, and engaged with the people.

What We Really Need to Know as Non-experts Division of labor allows us to have technology, even though we don’t know quite how it works. Reading a few articles, listening to the “pull quotes” from interviews, and doing a one hour search on the internet does not make us experts Our understanding of current events and issues impacts our democratic process, and invalidates our control of the government

Chapter 2: Problems with Communication Debate has become a “need to be right.” More education, easier access to knowledge (ie: internet), and use of social media = More knowledge, right?