-
The Death of Expertise
- The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
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Publisher's summary
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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- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of US espionage, gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America's intelligence agencies, and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight.
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Superb and insightful!
- By Cameron on 02-01-22
By: Amy B. Zegart
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The Identity Trap
- A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time
- By: Yascha Mounk
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice.
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May It Mark A Turning Point
- By Larry on 09-28-23
By: Yascha Mounk
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You Are Not So Smart
- Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself
- By: David McRaney
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise. You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you're as deluded as the rest of us. But that's OK - delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It's like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework. Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday.
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Covers a lot of old territory
- By Sarah Dumoulin on 07-19-12
By: David McRaney
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The Art of Deception
- Controlling the Human Element of Security
- By: Kevin Mitnick
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The world's most infamous hacker offers an insider's view of the low-tech threats to high-tech security. Kevin Mitnick's exploits as a cyber-desperado and fugitive form one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history and have spawned dozens of articles, books, films, and documentaries. Since his release from federal prison, in 1998, Mitnick has turned his life around and established himself as one of the most sought-after computer security experts worldwide.
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Good security device delivered by old misogynist
- By James S. on 02-01-21
By: Kevin Mitnick
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Why We Did It
- A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
- By: Tim Miller
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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As one of the strategists behind the famous 2012 RNC “autopsy,” Miller conducts his own forensic study on the pungent carcass of the party he used to love, cutting into all the hubris, ambition, idiocy, desperation, and self-deception for everyone to see. In a bracingly honest reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment, Miller draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class's Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th.
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No, Tim!
- By Lori Renard on 06-30-22
By: Tim Miller
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Disunited Nations
- The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World
- By: Peter Zeihan
- Narrated by: Peter Zeihan, Roy Worley
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In Disunited Nations, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan presents a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where trade agreements are coming apart and international institutions are losing their power. Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicts, a shift in outlook on the Middle East: it is no longer Iran that is the region’s most dangerous threat, but Saudi Arabia.
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brilliant geopolitical primer re the future
- By Howard on 04-11-20
By: Peter Zeihan
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Technopoly
- The Surrender of Culture to Technology
- By: Neil Postman
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, Postman chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it. According to Postman, technology is rapidly gaining sovereignty over social institutions and national life to become self-justifying, self-perpetuating, and omnipresent. He warns that this will have radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, religion, family, education, and more.
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Error in recording
- By D. Cassidy on 04-30-15
By: Neil Postman
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Welcome to Your Toddler's Brain
- By: Lise Eliot, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Lise Eliot
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Original Recording
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The brain is a marvelous and complex organ that takes decades to fully mature, and no stage in that long process is more critical than the one we call the “toddler” years. During this period—from about one year old to three years old—a child transforms from a helpless infant into a running, chatting, insatiably curious little person with distinctive traits and interests. So, what is happening in the brain during this metamorphosis? How do humans acquire the motor, linguistic, and social skills that define this vital childhood period? Lise Eliot offers answers to these intriguing questions.
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Good science; well presented
- By kch on 08-19-24
By: Lise Eliot, and others
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The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By ejf211 on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
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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- 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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