> there's been a huge, sustained war on expertise, and an effort to undermine the public's trust of experts.
I find your verbiage particularly hilarious considering the amount of media and expert complicity that went into manufacturing the public support for the war on terror.
The media has always been various shades of questionable. It just wasn't possible for the naysayers to get much traction before due to the information and media landscape and how content was disseminated. Now, for better or worse, they laymen can read the bible for themselves, metaphorically speaking.
Fifty four percent of Americans read below the sixth grade level.
They shouldn't be reading anything for themselves and should be trusting the experts, even if those experts are sometimes wrong they will be more accurate than the average American.
Teaching someone to think for themselves, without first teaching them how to think is an invitation to disaster.
You gonna complain that they drink light beer and eat junk food while you're at it?
Only showboating "english language for the sake of it" type use cases need much beyond middle school reading level. News and the like aren't that because they need to reach a mass market. Professional communication needs to reach the ESL crowd and be unambiguous it too isn't that. Even legal literature is very simple. Professional and legal communication just have tons of pointers going all over the place and a high reading level won't help you with that.
People who lack literacy are not just bad readers, they are bad thinkers.
It is fine to be simple, and to live a simple life. That does not mean that your ignorance is as good as an experts knowledge.
Worse, teaching people to think for themselves without first teaching them how to think does not just halt progress, it put's it into full retreat.
Exactly--it's not English language snobbery. It's just that the median person out there is simply not capable of doing a satisfactory depth of research to reach a conclusion about most topics. This is exactly why we have experts who dedicate their lives to understanding niche and complex topics. I consider myself a smart guy, and I know I don't have the time or knowledge to sufficiently research the vast majority of topics.
I agree with you 100%. Most people do not have the time or knowledge to become experts in all the fields they hold opinions in.
However, I actually AM being a bit of a snob as well. I'm proposing the deeply unpopular idea that not every person even has the capability to. It seems to have become a little-known fact that fifty percent of people are of below the median intelligence.
A lot of people are reluctant to admit that to themselves. They shouldn't be... It's an enormous relief when you finally realize that you don't have to have an opinion on everything.