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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: psychology

Towards an Idiocracy

27 Sat May 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on Towards an Idiocracy

Tags

confirmation bias, critical thinking, Death of Expertise, democracy, expertise, Gutenburg, internet, journalism, media, printing press, psychology, public sphere, safe space, social media, Tom Nichols, trigger words, university

ExpertiseNichols, Tom. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 272 pp.

There are few books – at least contemporary ones – I would insist that one must read, but Tom Nichols’ The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, a spectacular survey of the most corrosive social malady of our time, is undoubtedly one of them. In an era in which another’s ignorance has not only become as good as one’s knowledge but there is outright hostility towards any kind of proficiency, The Death of Expertise comes as a much-needed, calm, and unbiased analysis of today’s warped public sphere.

Every generation inevitably complains about the one following it. The “deterioration” in values, the “abandonment” of customs and traditions, the pursuit of “newfangled” ways and questionable goals have always attracted the sharp remarks of older generations. As Seneca the Younger reminds Lucilius in one of his Moral Epistles (#97), these are the vices of mankind and not of a certain age. Nichols’ issue is not with this recurring generation gap. Rather, The Death of Expertise addresses the contemporary normalisation of ignorance in civil society and hostility, not just rejection, towards experts and their research. The United States is a country that is obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance, Nichols argues, where people are proud of not knowing things and to reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy.

In studying this postmodern turn, Nichols, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, looks at American society but his observations can, in an increasingly globalised world, easily be applied to several countries with only a few minor local adjustments.

Nichols sees four reasons why the reservoir of latent hatred for experts has burst its banks in the past couple of decades. First, universities have started treating students as customers rather than informed members of a future body politic; two, the internet has made possible the lightning spread of spurious data and arguments; three, the media has abandoned its post as the sentinels of society; and four, experts have become increasingly unaccountable, insular and defensive.

India does not suffer from the same problems American universities are facing – yet. There have thankfully been no demands for safe spaces or trigger warnings from Indian students in the humanities so far. Additionally, lack of privatisation in education has not allowed the profit motive to dictate Indian curricula yet. Rather, the primary concern is the politicisation of the university and the student body. Not only does this manifest itself in cheap displays such as that of hosting beef festivals or expressing solidarity with separatist terrorists that are further sensationalised by the media but the political slant in the curriculum itself. The abdication of the Right from politics after independence allowed the Left to capture key institutions in India. Decrying moral science in schools, education became about Leftist values. Critical thinking, that most important of skills we hope to pick up in our 12+4 years of schooling, was the first victim.

This is not to say that college goers have become dumber over the years. Nichols cites the example of a 1943 survey in which only six percent of incoming freshmen could name the original thirteen colonies; India was/is probably not much different. What has changed, thanks to greater penetration of the state and the internet, is our awareness of it. It also speaks to our failure as a society to harness technology to prepare a better informed citizenry.

It is not fair to blame the internet for the death of expertise, and Nichols admits to as much. Critics of the Gutenberg printing press worried that “printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery.” They were not entirely wrong. Though the printing press enabled the spread of literacy and the easy dissemination of knowledge, it also produced tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and taught people to confuse words with facts that diluted that same knowledge. The internet is the printing press at the speed of fibre optics. Nichols argues that the speed and reach of the internet changes the process by which we consume information. Furthermore, the lack of gatekeepers to the material available together with the inability to think critically makes for a deadly combination. As Nichols notes, as Wikipedia has evolved, it has sought to emulate a peer review process akin to professional journals. Whatever flaws the academic process has – and there are many – it remains a relatively reliable source of getting accurate information. Moreover, the sheer volume of websites available makes it difficult for a well-intentioned autodidact to sift through the chaff and arrive at credible information that has been put together cogently and argued logically.

It has also been shown that reading information on a screen changes the way we read. Rather than read horizontally, our eyes make an ‘F’ pattern down the page. Essentially, this means picking up the headlines and maybe a couple of sentences beyond but not engaging with much of the article. The purpose of most readers today is to pronounce judgement on the author rather than engage with the topic under consideration.

As Nichols argues, “the Internet has accelerated the collapse of communication between experts and laypeople by offering an apparent shortcut to erudition. It allows people to mimic intellectual accomplishment by indulging in an illusion of expertise provided by a limitless supply of facts… This is erudition in the age of cyberspace: You surf until you reach the conclusion you’re after.”

Confirmation bias is something that affects not just lay people but even experts: we all like to be right and the evidence that tells us so is irresistible. However, experts have been trained to recognise this failing and their work is subjected to peer review to additionally screen for such biases but laypeople on the internet have neither safety nets. History is not done merely by referencing a couple of primary sources any more than one knows sailing because he read Moby Dick. Expertise is more about years of diligent practice and methodology more than it is about the simple accumulation and recall of facts on demand.

The third pillar of society that has given away is the media. World over, not just in India, people have less faith that the media are reporting news honestly and accurately. Most news outlets have become commentary portals rather than houses of old-fashioned journalism. In India, the media has completely lost credibility due to its servility to political parties of one persuasion and the habit of “manufacturing news.” Social media, for all its ills, is seen as a David to the media’s Goliath and this emotional loyalty gives credibility to even the most spurious of anonymous claims floating around on these sites.

Whether it is due to government regulations on speech, unseen financial and access strings, or personal advancement, the media’s partisan character has irredeemably damaged its reputation among laypeople. Journalism is one of the most important institutions in a democratic society and this erosion of trust has consequently skewed Indian democracy and society. Half the time, the vicious arguments over food, language, sport, Kashmir, customs, minorities, or economics is actually not over those issues but over something far more fundamental. In this cacophony, the public sphere can only limp forward.

This is just one part of the rot in the fourth estate. In the pursuit of profit, even sensible editors are pressured into casting headlines as click-bait and looking for the sensational angle to every story. Thus, a missing lamp-post becomes a caste conflagration, a heat wave becomes a communal innuendo, and celebrities’ musical genitalia take precedence over matters of policy and substance. As long as this business model is rewarded over long form essays, it is difficult to fault media houses alone for sensationalism.

Finally, Nichols turns his gaze on to the experts. Despite being a professor himself and presumably of the class the masses would term as elite, Nichols is unsparing in his criticism of his colleagues. Yes, experts can get it wrong sometimes, Nichols admits, they should certainly be held more accountable than they are today. Yet the public also needs to be able to understand the difference between an expert getting something wrong once or twice and the hundreds of times the same expert has got something right. The one-in-a-million stories of a teen finding an accurate diagnosis on Google while his doctor gets it wrong makes headlines but the ten thousand other times the same doctor made a correct diagnosis is forgotten. To demand that level of perfection from anyone is asking to be disappointed.

Experts do sometimes branch out beyond the scope of their expertise, commenting on fields of study that bear little relation to what they do. This is a human folly, the irresistible urge to proffer an opinion, especially when asked for one. Pace the inter-disciplinary trend, it would behoove experts to mind the fences and tend to their own field when asked about topics unfamiliar to them academically.

What is important is that experts ask normal citizens to trust them and have confidence that mistakes will be rare, that experts will learn from the rare mistake they make and constantly improve themselves. On the other hand, an amateur with slick fingers on a keyboard may occasionally be able to trump an expert but he would be hard-pressed to give a repeat performance.

People must also be discerning what information they consume. When an argument is presented, it is vital not only to look at the inherent logic but also the data, its sources, and the track record and credentials of the person making the argument. Part of the problem is that laypeople are uncomfortable with ambiguity – they prefer answers rather than caveats. Except in exceptionally rare occasions, expertise only comes in shades of grey.

The Death of Expertise is a tour de force that has implications beyond just the sad state of public awareness and the failure of some of our prized institutions. Nichols uses plenty of data, anecdotes, and arguments to make a persuasive case that the public sphere stands on a precipice. Readers will find Nichols’ mustering of psychology an important peg in his analysis of what ails modern discourse. Ultimately, he is more hopeful than I that we can step back from the edge.

Although The Death of Expertise does not address this issue and its author remains committed to the status quo of the present systems of government, it is our duty to ask ourselves again if democracy is indeed the best possible system of government. The theory sounds great but in practice, we are unsure if everyone is willing to be sufficiently informed to be a useful member of the pubic sphere. If not, why must the rest force this choice upon them? Perhaps, like Athens, a multi-tiered democracy might be an option worth exploring for political theorists; perhaps the Great Reform Act of 1867 was overly progressive. The more we force everyone to become part of an informed electorate, the more we may end up feeling the sensation Roman senators felt when Julius Caesar introduced Gauls into the Senate.

But this is the opinion of an expert. And he could be wrong.

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Holiday Reading

24 Tue Dec 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on Holiday Reading

Tags

A Bend in the River, A Handmaid's Tale, A Sultan in Palermo, Amin Maalouf, Atmospheric Disturbances, Balthasar's Odyssey, Capgrass Syndrome, Dalia Sofer, Elias Khoury, Ethiopia, fable, faith, fate, Foucault's Pendulum, Gate of the Sun, Gravity's Rainbow, history, Il nome della rosa, In Search of King Solomon's Mines, Iran, Israel, Khufu's Wisdom, love, magical realism, Margaret Atwood, mysticism, Naguib Mahfouz, Palestine, psychology, religion, Rhadopis of Nubia, Rivka Galchen, Salman Rushdie, Samarkand, Septembers of Shiraz, Tahir Shah, Tariq Ali, The Book of Saladin, The Caliph's House, The Enchantress of Florence, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Name of the Rose, The Rock of Tanios, Thebes at War, Thomas Pynchon, Three Novels of Ancient Egypt, Umberto Eco, VS Naipaul

‘Tis the holiday season, and whether you celebrate Chanukkah, Yalda, Saturnalia, Dongzhi, Modraniht, Malkh, Solis Invicti, Christmas, or are a Festivus-celebrating mutant, looks like good food, family, and free time are foretold in your near future.

For those of you yearning to get away from it all, disconnect from mobile phones and the internet (gasp!), and snuggle under a warm blanket with some cider, a ghalyoon, and a good book, here are a few suggestions. Neither serious nor trash, they have just the right amount of fluff to send you through time and space on your own private vacation!

These books are not in any order, nor is there any mystical meaning to the number of suggestions save the tyranny of a slavish obedience to base 10. Hopefully, there is something in this list for…many people – cannot cater to everyone!

Samarkand, Amin Maalouf: A historical fiction novel written in 1988, Samarkand won the Prix Maison de la Presse and is set in 11th century Persia soon after the assassination of the Seljuq king Alp Arslan and into the reign of Malik Shah I. The main characters of this rich tale that infuses mysticism, philosophy, and historical what-ifs include the great Omar Khayyam, Abu Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi (better known as Nizam al-Mulk), and Hassan al-Sabbah of the Nizari Ismailis, or more excitingly, the Ḥashshashin. Samarkand was originally written in French by the Lebanese-French author. Also recommended by this author: Bathasar’s Odyssey, The Rock of Tanios

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco: Originally written in Italian (Il nome della rosa) in 1980, translated into English three years later, and made into a movie starring Sean Connery and a young Christian Slater three years after that, The Name of the Rose is a spectacular murder mystery set in a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy 1327. The key to the murder lies in Aristotle’s book on comedy – as William of Baskerville, the protagonist, discovers, everyone who has read it has died. William brings up questions of forbidden knowledge, inquiry versus theological dogma, memory, meaning, and reality by discussing the murder through a lens of various medieval manuscripts with his understudy, Adso. In a sense, Il nome della rosa can also been seen as a bildungsroman. For the more accomplished reader, the book carries allusions to various philosophies, authors, and even fictional characters and fits them in a manner that deeply enriches the story. Also recommended by this author: Foucault’s Pendulum

The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie: This novel is one of the most sumptuously rich mixtures of history and fable in a multicultural setting ever written. The main characters in this story are none other than history’s famous rulers and politicians, the Mughal Emperor Akbar in India and the Italian diplomat and political thinker Niccolò Machiavelli, in a time when Florence as well as the Mughal Empire were in their ascendancy. Some characters are imagined by other characters in the book – Qara Köz, for example, is Akbar’s fantasy of the perfect lover – yet accepted by all as if real. Rushdie brings magic, religion, desire, and sheer imagination together in a novel that is nonetheless deeply historical and profound in its symbolism and characters if only the reader allows his/her mind to explore the fantasy world of the enchantress rather than dissect, analyse, and categorise it. Also recommended by this author: The Moor’s Last Sigh

Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon: Written in 1973, the story is set in England towards the end of World War II. Admittedly a confusing plot, the story feels very much like a term paper written for a creative writing class taught by Werner von Braun by a psychology student who is a cross between Dante Alighieri and Dave Chappelle. To give you a sample of the mind-blowing jumble of high culture, low class, and technical, the protagonist, Tyrone Slothrop, gets an erection every time there is a V2 rocket attack! Gravity’s Rainbow contains a bizarre diversity of themes via its characters’ interactions – rocketry, Nazi occult practices, psychology, and metaphysics; its minute historical details, such as a photograph of von Braun with his arm in a cast or a rare radio broadcast, are stunningly accurate.

Septembers of Shiraz, Dalia Sofer: Set in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, this is a tale of a well-to-do Jewish family whose world is turned upside down by the fateful events. The new Islamic government, suspicious of the Jewish heritage of the family and their slender ties to the Shah, arrest the father, Isaac Amin, and try to torture him into confessing that he is a Zionist spy. In the puritanical new theocracy, Isaac’s brother’s alcohol smuggling racket creates another pressure point as does the pre-arrest estrangement between Isaac and his wife, Farnaz. While the focus is on the adults, the nine-year-old daughter, Shirin, steals files that contain state secrets from her playmate’s house who happens to be the daughter of the man in charge of the prison Shirin’s father is in. There is a Brooklyn connection too – the non-religious son of the family struggles without money his family sends. The author was herself a refugee of Iran’s turmoil in her youth and this experience has clearly informed her writing. She weaves together questions about faith, love, and memory in the setting of political and religious oppression, and comes to a startling, perhaps naïve yet difficult to refute truth – meaning and significance in life derive not from ideas or ideologies but from shared memory and the ties that bind.

Atmospheric Disturbances, Rivka Galchen: A very clever story about a middle-aged psychiatrist, Leo Liebenstein, who wakes up one day believing that his Argentine wife has been replaced by a doppelgänger, this book also spreads awareness of a rare neurological disease known as Capgrass Syndrome. Rather than take a distant narrator’s perch, Galchen dives into the story and follows Liebenstein’s thinking and efforts to track down his real wife. The result is an insightful, sensitive, and witty book that frays identity, reality, and even geography. The wife’s anguish at her husband’s condition is also shown but as far as Leo is concerned, Rema – the wife – remains a rather cool simulacrum. Liebenstein sees his wife as an impostor, all the while completely unaware that it is he who is not himself. At times touching, the novel is also a philosophical inquiry into the mind, Being, and the false authority of science.

Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury: If the Palestinians ever wanted their own Exodus (Leon Uris) story, this book, albeit more sophisticated, is certainly one of the contenders. Set in the backdrop of the Shatila and Sabra massacres during the Lebanese civil war in 1982, Khoury unravels a powerful story via a one-sided conversation between Younis, a comatose Palestinian fighter of the previous generation, and Dr. Khaleel, a nurse in actuality who had a little training in China. The narrative depicts the sufferings of the average Palestinian in the camps trying to survive. Yet the message in this tale is to try and understand the Israeli Other. As Khoury said in an interview, the Other is usually the mirror image of the “I.” Incidents such as a checkpoint crossing or the meeting between a Palestinian and an Israeli who now lives in the former’s home record the indignities of daily life but also scoffs at the Arabs who claim to stand with Palestinians yet allow the dire state of the camps. One character tells another that Palestinians must also understand the pain of the Holocaust: “In the faces of those people being driven to slaughter, didn’t you see something resembling your own?” Gate of the Sun also looks at memory, overlaying the Lebanese experience with the Nakbah – as one character admits, we remember things we never experienced because we assume the memories of others. A powerful and nuanced snapshot of the tragedy in the Middle East.

Three Novels of Ancient Egypt, Naguib Mahfouz: These three novellas, Khufu’s Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, and Thebes at War are among Mahfouz’s earliest works and less known than his more famous Cairo Trilogy, Midaq Alley, or The Day the Leader Was Killed. Nonetheless, the three paint a scene of life in Ancient Egypt and are in many ways Greek tragedies in an Ancient Egyptian setting – the hero coming undone for just one tragic flaw. The first story is set during the construction of the Great Pyramid and about the pharaoh’s attempts to thwart his throne passing to someone not of his lineage; the second tells the tale of a kingdom neglected by a pharaoh in love with a courtesan; and the third is about an exiled son of Thebes reclaiming his kingdom from the Hyksos who had defeated the Egyptians and chased them out of their country. All three deal with fate, mortality, and morality, and have a strong cast of female characters. Perhaps not as sophisticated as the Nobel laureate’s later works, these three stories are quite enjoyable and reminiscent of Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian.

A Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood: This award-winning novel from 1985 is a work of dystopian speculative fiction based in a futuristic Christian theocratic totalitarian state. In the fictional Republic of Gilead, women’s freedom is severely restricted – they are not allowed to read, go out of the house, or have any privacy – and a class of them are kept as concubines for purely reproductive purposes in an era of increasing sterility due to sexually transmitted diseases and pollution. The protagonist, Offred, is a high-ranking official’s concubine – a Handmaid – and the tale is related from her perspective. The Handmaid’s Tale is a commentary on race, gender, and religion in a highly stratified and rigid society that designates different classes of people for various functions. Even sex is purely for reproductive purposes and not for pleasure. Even in this repressive climate, biology throws a spanner in the works and the Commander has an affair with Offred. The author has always tried to explain that her book is not science fiction but speculative fiction, meaning that it could indeed happen now. Readers must keep in mind the rise of Billy Graham and evangelicalism in the United States in this era.

In Search of King Solomon’s Mines, Tahir Shah: A light and fun read, this novel follows the author’s quest for the fabulous and unparalleled riches of the wisest king of the Bible. Sparked by coming across a bogus map in Jerusalem, Shah follows the clues in the Septuagint, the Copper Scroll (one of the Dead Sea Scrolls), the Kebra Nagast, as well as local folktales to chase down this ancient legend. The author, the reader realises, is not actually looking for the treasure but chasing down a story, from the Temple to the rock-cut churches of Lalibela and a cursed mountain. Pulling together geology, myth, and history, Shah creates his own Biblical mystery tale in the form of an Ethiopian travelogue. As such, narratives and characters remain shallow if colourful and one might not be drawn to the protagonist in any way. Yet that serves to direct attention to the story…not of King Solomon or Sheba, but to the story of the story, how it is remembered and a part of local life in various ways. Also recommended by this author: The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca

Other suggestions: Tariq Ali – A Sultan in Palermo, The Book of Saladin; VS Naipaul – A Bend in the River

So I wish you cheer, I wish you good reading, and I wish you peace to enjoy the two. Enjoy the holidays!


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on December 28, 2013.

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