Quotes from Thomas M. Nichols

people who shut off Facebook, even for a month, reported a general improvement in their mood and happiness.32

Political identities that were once constructed from life among those we know in places we live are now formed over huge distances among strangers whose bonds are formed mostly over things they loathe in common.

Laypeople want a definitive answer from the experts, but none can be had because there is not one answer but many, depending on circumstances.

And yet the result has not been a greater respect for knowledge, but the growth of an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.

Maybe conversations and arguments fail because one—or both—of the parties is just stupid. These are fighting words. No one likes to be called stupid: it's a judgmental, harsh word that implies not only a lack of intelligence, but a willful ignorance almost to the point of moral failure. (I have used it, more than I should. So have you, most likely.)

Liberal democracy relies on resilient, civic-minded citizens who think themselves to be members of a tolerant and safe community.

the threat to democracy now in America and elsewhere comes from the working and middle classes—the people among whom I was born and raised—whose rage comes overwhelmingly from cultural insecurity, inflated expectations, tribal partisan alliances, obsessions about ethnicity and identity, blunted ambition, and a childlike understanding of the limits of government.

Sources and apps that goad us into emphasizing our aggression, encourage us to aggrandize ourselves at the expense of others, and reward us for displaying our most negative thoughts are destroying our ability to function as citizens, even without the slew of emotional problems created when our minds are spinning in a tornado of random sensory input all day.

Liberal democracy depends on knowledge and virtue, and both of these are now in short supply among the citizens of the developed world.

Not only do they seek out the streams of disinformation that make them dumber by the minute, but they also then levy demands on government that are contradictory beyond any possible resolution.

the only way to resolve these debates in terms of policy choices is to move them from the realm of research to the arena of politics and democratic choice. If democracy is to mean anything at all, then experts and laypeople have to solve complicated problems together.

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 the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. 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.

Alone in a world full of bewildering options, human beings will prefer the reassurance of the pack and the safety of the herd rather than choose to grapple with the ambiguities and consequences of freedom.

College is supposed to be an uncomfortable experience.

In 1943, incoming college freshmen—only 6 percent of whom could list the original thirteen colonies—named Abraham Lincoln as the first president and the one who "emaciated [sic] the slaves." The

Citizens of the democracies are the authors of their own destinies, and what they have made they can also change and improve.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, in sum, means that the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you're not actually dumb.

the more specific reason that unskilled or incompetent people overestimate their abilities far more than others is because they lack a key skill called "metacognition.

In this hypercompetitive media environment, editors and producers no longer have the patience—or the financial luxury—to allow journalists to develop their own expertise or deep knowledge of a subject. Nor is there any evidence that most news consumers want such detail. Experts are often reduced to sound bites or "pull quotes," if they are consulted at all.

change should mean more participation—but by informed voters through institutions that are not constantly and immediately at the mercy of a majority.

The most important of these intellectual capabilities, and the one most under attack in American universities, is critical thinking: the ability to examine new information and competing ideas dispassionately, logically, and without emotional or personal preconceptions.

more exasperating is that there is no way to educate or inform people who, when in doubt, will make stuff up.

College as a client-centered experience caters to adolescents instead of escorting them away from adolescence. Rather than disabusing students of their intellectual solipsism, the modern university ends up reinforcing it.

The resulting flood of information, always of varying quality and sometimes of uncertain sanity, creates a veneer of knowledge that actually leaves people worse off than if they knew nothing at all. It's an old saying, but it's true: it ain't what you don't know that'll hurt you, it's what you do know that ain't so.