It has crossed my mind that the internet is a root cause for the power of the stupid to have an outsize effect on policy and government.
Nichols argues that the country has shifted from a healthy skepticism of accepted knowledge to a proud, self-satisfied ignorance and active hostility to the very idea of expertise. Across American society, intellectual authority is resented, resisted and disregarded, with every opinion ostensibly holding equal weight.
This leveling of viewpoints has been accelerated by digital technologies and platforms, which have further lowered the barriers to participation, opening the floodgates to those without the requisite educational backgrounds and professional credentials. As Nichols puts it:
“I fear we are witnessing […] a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.”
In the absence of these crucial distinctions, Nichols asserts, public discourse has become degraded by unquestioned cognitive biases and a dearth of informed, evidence-based argumentation.
