Title: The Death of Expertise
Author: Tom Nichols
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 254
Rating: 4.5/5
This is easily one of the best non-fiction books that I’ve picked up this year and so I was a very happy bunny. It’s also pretty cool because it was recommended to me by one of my clients, to the point at which he paid for me to purchase a copy of it.
It’s basically all about the way in which everyone thinks they’re an expert today. We overrule doctors because we can Google our symptoms, but we also overrule experts in their different fields instead of taking their hard earned advice.
This is a huge problem, of course, but it’s even more of a problem in the midst of a global pandemic when people are convincing themselves that there’s some sort of secret conspiracy to deprive us all of our liberty by getting us to wear masks in shops. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I found this book more enjoyable than I normally would have because of the time in which I read it.
Arguably my favourite example in the whole book was that of American attitudes towards military action in Ukraine. It turns out that the less people knew about the Ukraine, the more likely they were to demand military action. Those who thought it was in Australia or South America were those who were most likely to support military involvement. What a world, man.
