The Death of Expertise

Today everyone knows everything. the average citizen believes that he can just quickly go through Wikipedia and be on par with a doctor of science and an experienced diplomat. Everyone has to take into account all, even the most extraordinary thoughts. The thesis that "everyone's voice should be heard" has become a doctrine, and any thought expressed against this is condemned and labeled as anti-democratic elitism.

In this book, Tom Nichols shows how the tendency to devalue experts has developed. There are many reasons: the spread of the Internet, the introduction of the "customer satisfaction" model in the field of higher education, the transformation of news into an entertainment service.

Paradoxically, the spread of information has not created an educated society, but an army of those who reject intellectual achievements, the poor and nihilists. When the masses begin to think that no one knows more than the other, populists and technocrats begin to replace democratic institutions.