I would wish that anyone with a smidgen of education read the Federalist article linked below, for the good of our society and our political process. Tom Nichols expresses the view that we are witnessing the death of expertise, "a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen" where everyone presumes to be an expert on anything. Without acknowledgment of experts -- labeled derisively as elites, authoritarians, and stiflers of democracy -- we get events like the resurgence of whooping cough because that medical authority Jenny McCarthy says vaccine causes autism. Nichols writes with convincing rationale of how the less learned are more confident and aggressive with their assertions (the Dunning-Kruger Effect), how not assuming a baseline of collective knowledge makes debate (or even conversations) on issues of the day exhausting and unproductive, and how essentially not having gatekeepers in public discussions is both bad and good for democracy.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
