Guys with Expertise are Dumb

Behold:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people without expertise or experience in a particular field suffer from illusory superiority.

Ryan DeLongpre discusses this phenomenon over at Medium. He talks of a podcast involving the atheist Sam Harris and a pundit named Tom Nichols:

What you’ll also find in this podcast is a slew of Dunning-Krugery, many other cognitive bias, lies, mind-reading episodes and a lot of straight-up hallucinations

Nichols is interesting because he argues passionately in favor of relying on experts. He has even written a book about expertise called, The Death of Expertise.  In TDOE Nichols argues that:

As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, 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 has deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise and learning, noting 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. The Death of Expertise is not only an exploration of a dangerous phenomenon but also a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age.

Nichols has deep concerns.

Nichols tells us that;

He is currently a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and a Fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University.
He has also been a Fellow of the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 

In his Washington days, Tom was a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a consultant to the U.S. government, and a research analyst for private industry. Later, he served as personal staff for foreign and defense affairs to the late U.S. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania. 

He is also a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion, and as one of the all-time top players of the game, he was invited back to play in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions. (He was crushed immediately, so apparently, his ranking among the top 100 players was #100.)

Nichols makes a fatal flaw. He knows a lot of things. That does not make him an expert. Also we think the inclusion of a CV is a dead give away for insecurity. We'd run into this during our time at Raritan Valley Community College. Profs with PhDs would be sure to sign their emails Kevin Reilly PhD (that bastard stole a couple of may classes, by the way).

Tom Nichols worked at the CSIS, a think tank! A consultant group! He was think-tanking about great issues but not in say, the State department making decisions. Oh, and he was a Sovietologist! Anyone wanna go through their track record?

We can do it too, we suppose:

William Stroock earned a BA in World Military History from American Public University and an MA from same in American Revolutionary studies.  

William Stroock has published ten novels and more than a hundred magazine articles. 

While attending Wesley College, the most prestigious Methodist school in Dover, Delaware, William Stroock interned in the White House and later the Senate where he was renowned throughout the office for making great copies.

You see, we own more than a hundred books about the AEF in the Great War and have written several hundred thousand words on the subject.  We are an expert on the history of the AEF in the Great War. In case you can't see the difference, it means we have no business planning an attack by say, the 89th Division across the River Meuse.

In 2009 we did an interview with Omri Ceren on Israel, Iraq, etc, etc, and we winced every time he called us 'a counterinsurgency expert'.

Speaking of Dunning Kruger, anyone else remember Barry O?:

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Barrack Hussein Obama was in fact stupid. A beneficiary of affirmative action, low expectations and white liberal guilt. He got most of his ideas from movies, we think, maybe magazine articles. He thought doctors were encouraging surgery for heart arrhythmia when a pill would do. He blamed low job creation numbers on automation. He said proper tire inflation would bring down gas prices. Really, he said. He read it somewhere.

We stand by our statement. Barrack Hussein Obama is stupid.

Tom Nichols studied real hard and knows a lot. Good for him.

We have a test, a mental exercise really when we encounter brainiacs like Nichols. We ask ourselves, can this guy change a tire?