A Case for Expertise

To avoid kakistocracy and kleptocracy, we must insist on reliance on experts

Perusing my feed on Threads yesterday, I came across a note from someone whose ideas I had thought well enough of at some point to follow him. Yesterday, he wrote about the relationship between quantum measurement theory and consciousness, which is, according to his profile, entirely outside his expertise, which is fine. I won’t say anything more about the matter of it other than he was incorrect (I am a quality theorist by training), and when I responded with what I thought he got wrong, I received the typical backlash -- some nasty, some incoherent, some tautological (essentially, “I’m right because I’m right!”). Threads and the like are among the worst possible media to have meaningful discussions about such a topic (or most topics!), so I pretty quickly informed the crowd that I’d be disengaging. Which gives me a chance to say how grateful I am for a medium such as Substack that allows long-format posts (along with short notes, which I use mainly to point to my long posts). My readership is small -- I reach far fewer people here than on Threads -- but at least I have the chance here to use enough words to say what I want to say.

Today, I want to talk about yet another core crisis facing America -- the ascendency of the anti-intellectual, anti-expertise crowd. There has always been such a strain in America, but for the most part, the elites (a term which I’ll say straight-off that I do not consider derogatory), have understood that expertise is necessary for driving what has broadly considered to be success in all sorts of fields -- business, government, technology, arts, and understanding ourselves and the universe. For the first time, I think, we are now led in government -- certainly at the national level once Trump takes office, but also at many state and local levels -- by those who are deeply antagonistic toward expertise. Perhaps the most far-reaching example, and one that serves as an emblem for this circumstance, is the Chevron case decided last term by the Supreme Court, which does away with the long-standing deference to expertise in the executive branch. Justice Alito and his colleagues will now decide which pollutants in the air are acceptable and which are undesirable.

I began this essay with my experience on Threads yesterday because I do have expertise in quantum theory -- I have a Ph.D. in the subject -- and have had a deep (and deeply studied) interest in the meaning of QT, and especially how it intersects consciousness -- for my entire adult life. (By the way, the vast majority of physicists don’t know or care about the philosophical implications of QT.) That doesn’t mean that I know everything about the subject or am necessarily correct in what I think and say about it, but it quickly became clear in my interactions on Threads that I was much more credentialled in this subject than all the other respondents. Yet, they kept insisting -- as I said earlier, sometimes nastily, sometimes incoherently, sometimes tautologically -- that I had no idea what I was talking about and that they were correct. Not one ever responded in a meaningful way to the evidence I provided. They just needed to be right. And they needed to neglect my credentials.

I was not hurt by this, nor even alarmed, because I have been witnessing the rising tide of anti-intellectualism during my entire 62 years. My memory is scattered with countless instances of this, both personally experienced and witnessed. (Examples of the latter include my shock, at the age of eighteen, that most people didn’t seem to be disturbed by Ronald Reagan’s childlike, often incoherent speech; in fact, he was celebrated as a “Great Communicator.” Similarly with George W. Bush.) But again, as these people ascended in power, even they recognized the need to surround themselves with capable people with expertise to drive and accomplish their agenda (whatever disagreements someone like me may have had with those agenda are an entirely different matter.)

One hears often these days that the people who resent elites, intellectuals, and now most alarmingly, experts, are resentful of the tone of such people -- of their condescension toward them. My main goal of this essay is to call bullshit on that. Unfortunately, the media elite buy into this dynamic all the time. In fact, it’s the only reason I’ve ever heard about anger toward “elites.” Before I debunk this, though, I think it’s best to talk about some of these terms.

“Elites” is the term most often selected by those with animosity toward them to denigrate, just as during the 1980 presidential campaign, the Reagan team denigrated the term “liberal” to the point where it couldn’t be used as an identifier anymore (liberals shifted to using the word “progressive”). The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as used since 1738: “A select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.” I’m all for cultivating and surrounding ourselves with such people, and I’m guessing you are, too. I’ll pick up on that point in a bit. For the moment, I simply want to be clear-eyed about what this word actually means, partly as a way of opposing the ongoing corruption of it, just as was done with the word “liberal.” We can and should oppose the corruption of words toward political ends.

Intellectuals have, throughout history (America’s and everywhere else), been shamelessly targeted. Sometimes with good reason, such as when they push an idea too far or too fervently without full consideration of outcomes or alternatives. I would cite some of Freud’s ideas as examples. Another example is eugenics, where the driving idea behind it was natural selection, itself a monument to intellectual achievement. Obviously, some took these ideas way too far, and in directions with horrifying consequences. These sorts of examples -- which are abundant -- tend to make people understandably suspicious of intellectuals. (Isn’t it curious that there always needs to be derogatory words to tag such people with? “Eggheads” comes to mind.) We eggheads are notoriously bad at pushing back on such skepticism, though in my lifetime, Carl Sagan was a great and notable exception; he grew up at a time and in an environment when antagonism against elites and intellectuals was at a relatively low ebb, though he lived long enough to see that the tide was changing, and made highly prescient warnings about what’s happening today.

Lastly, we have the term “expertise.” I will mainly use this term in the rest of this essay precisely because it has suffered the least corruption and degradation (notwithstanding the Chevron decision mentioned above). If we fill the blank in the following sentence with each of the three words I’m discussing -- “Who could possibly be against _____?” -- the only one that would possibly survive among a broad swath of people is “expertise,” precisely because it has not yet suffered the corruption the other two have. Just wait, though -- it’s coming.

With that interlude, I now return to calling BS on the argument that resentment toward these groups (which of course strongly overlap) is because they condescend toward those outside the groups. First, I have rarely heard such condescension. Of course it happens occasionally, but I feel sure it’s the rare exception as opposed to being the rule. What if we consider the trope (in my view, terribly misguided but current) that “a person’s perception is reality?” The first thing to say about this is that generally, the type of person who is complaining about being condescended to is the most likely to roll her eyes about that trope. So, hypocrisy is in play, as usual in such situations. But we now live in a culture where, for many people, their first order of business in any social interaction is to discover some way they can feel offended; it’s the social currency of our times. Second, if they have indeed been condescended to, I just have to say -- even as someone who doesn’t like to be condescended to -- get over it! Go ahead and mention it, say you don’t like it, ask for an apology -- but it shouldn’t take over the whole issue. When I hear talking heads in the media discussing this, they inevitably lose the thread of the original discussion to the point about condescension. The discussion gets usurped. It’s maddening. Not to mention that -- for purely protective social reasons -- these media commentators buy into the charge of condescension, just as many of us at times buy into criticism made against us. This is not clear-eyed objectivity, though, and conceding the point has meaningful and harmful consequences.

If the original issue were ever revived, one could, after an appropriate acknowledgment of the hurt feelings -- respond to the question above: “Who could possibly be against expertise?” Or perhaps better: “What do you have against expertise?” To thinking people (there -- I’ve just been condescending!), it seems a ridiculous question to argue, but because we’ve degenerated so deeply into an anti-expertise culture, I’ll take it on.

One argument is illustrated by the eugenics example: “See what happens when the experts run things!” It’s certainly true that there is always risk (no matter who is making decisions), and that things have gone off the rails before, but expertise is not a monolithic thing. Even among experts, there are different voices with differing perspectives and experiences. Let them fight it out and arrive at some kind of (usually imperfect) consensus. Take climate change as an example. I’ll gladly accept the risks associated with expertise to figure out solutions over those we’re taking now with know-nothings, denialists, and corrupt politicians. Citing a few cases where expertise has ultimately led (usually with the agency of bad-faith actors like Hitler) to undesirable consequences seem to me the ultimate example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The only other argument I can think of against expertise -- and probably the most fulsome -- goes something like this: “Common sense should always be preferred to high-falutin’ egghead notions.” Sometimes, yes, even expert ideas go awry. But we live in an increasingly complex world, and anyway, who decides what constitutes “common sense?” A lot of people think it’s common sense to have guns in classrooms to protect students. I don’t. Neither do most experts in public safety. Experts get to be experts because they’ve been through rigorous training and education, akin to (or in many cases, exactly how) scientists are trained, not by watching Fox News. The historical path leading up to and through such training has eliminated multitudes of bad options and responses to various situations. Does everyone have the expertise to evaluate, for example, whether it’s best and safest to launch a rocket to the moon with a chemical- vs. a nuclear-powered engine? Maybe that seems too obvious an example, but you’ll find people with lots of loony ideas that appeal to a lot of people in all sorts of circumstances. Do we really want to disavow actual expertise in favor of whoever has the loudest megaphone?

The point about the loudest megaphone (far-right media now has a far larger audience than all other media combined) reveals the connection between kakistocracy (government by the least competent) and kleptocracy (which I think is pretty much degenerate with plutocracy and oligarchy): The easiest path to accruing power and wealth is to forestall and even eliminate expertise. We need to be clear-eyed about this and oppose it wherever and whenever possible.