Quotes from Thomas M. Nichols

Not only do increasing numbers of laypeople lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge. This

In 1787, Benjamin Franklin was supposedly asked what would emerge from the Constitutional Convention being held in Philadelphia. "A republic," Franklin answered, "if you can keep it." Today, the bigger challenge is to find anyone who knows what a republic actually is.

Conspiracy theorists manipulate all tangible evidence to fit their explanation, but worse, they will also point to the absence of evidence as even stronger confirmation. After all, what better sign of a really effective conspiracy is there than a complete lack of any trace that the conspiracy exists? Facts, the absence of facts, contradictory facts: everything is proof. Nothing can ever challenge the underlying belief. These

A talk show, for example, with one scientist who says genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe and one activist who says they are dangerous looks "balanced," but in reality that is ridiculously skewed, because nearly nine out of ten scientists think GMOs are safe for consumption. At some point, in the midst of all the bickering, the public simply gives up and goes back to relying on simpler sources of information, even if it is a meme on Facebook.

Arguing at length with a conspiracy theorist is not only fruitless but sometimes dangerous, and I do not recommend it. It's a treadmill of nonsense that can exhaust even the most tenacious teacher. Such theories are the ultimate bulwark against expertise, because of course every expert who contradicts the theory is ipso facto part of the conspiracy.

The voters lack the information—or the interest—to develop a coherent view of politics beyond a general party identification, and this reality plays itself out regularly in U.S. elections.

It was probably inevitable that the anti-intellectualism of American life would invade college campuses, but that is no reason to surrender to it. And make no mistake: campuses in the United States are increasingly surrendering their intellectual authority not only to children, but also to activists who are directly attacking the traditions of free inquiry that scholarly communities are supposed to defend. I

As the political scientist Ian Bremmer wrote in the run-up to the U.S. elections of 2020, victims seek saviors, and there is never a shortage of volunteers.

This illustrates an important point: then as now, Americans tend to think about issues like macroeconomic policy or foreign affairs only when things go wrong. The rest of the time, they remain happily unaware of the policies and processes that function well everyday while the nation goes about its business.

Ordinary Americans might never have liked the educated or professional classes very much, but until recently they did not widely disdain their actual learning as a bad thing in itself. It might even be too kind to call this merely "anti-rational"; it is almost reverse evolution, away from tested knowledge and backward toward folk wisdom and myths passed by word of mouth—except with all of it now sent along at the speed of electrons.

Public debate over almost everything devolves into trench warfare, in which the most important goal is to establish that the other person is wrong.

of expectation, that the ordinary pressures, worries, and temptations of life in an open society are serial catastrophes for which the only remedy is the abandonment of their own freedoms.

All modern social, political, and sociological ills can be traced to social media.

Feelings are more important than facts: if people think vaccines are harmful, or if they believe that half of the US budget is going to foreign aid, then it is "undemocratic" and "elitist" to contradict them.

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In

While expertise isn't dead, however, it's in trouble. Something is going terribly wrong. The United States is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance.

None of us is a Da Vinci, painting the Mona Lisa in the morning and designing helicopters at night. That's as it should be. No, the bigger problem is that we're proud of not knowing things. Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.

A kind of intellectual Gresham's Law is gathering momentum: where once the rule was "bad money drives out good," we now live in an age where misinformation pushes aside knowledge.

Principled, informed arguments are a sign of intellectual health and vitality in a democracy.

The lack of metacognition sets up a vicious loop, in which people who don't know much about a subject do not know when they're in over their head talking with an expert on that subject. An argument ensues, but people who have no idea how to make a logical argument cannot realize when they're failing to make a logical argument. In short order, the expert is frustrated and the layperson is insulted. Everyone walks away angry. Even

When students become valued clients instead of learners, they gain a great deal of self-esteem, but precious little knowledge; worse, they do not develop the habits of critical thinking that would allow them to continue to learn and to evaluate the kinds of complex issues on which they will have to deliberate and vote as citizens.

Overwhelming and astounding inequality, especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: 'I might have been in his place.' "30

As one study found, frequent Facebook users—especially those who use the site to check in on the relative status or happiness of others—end up plagued by feelings of envy and are more prone to depression.

The issue is not indifference to established knowledge; it's the emergence of a positive hostility to such knowledge. This is new in American culture, and it represents the aggressive replacement of expert views or established knowledge with the insistence that every opinion on any matter is as good as every other. This is a remarkable change in our public discourse. This