Sunday, April 17, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Experts
Last weekend I went to Atlanta for a debate tournament. I didn't grab any reading for the plane (my mistake), but I was able to steal a peak at a book one of my Freshman friends had on him, Passionate Declarations by Howard Zinn.
He was eager to share one particular passage:
'There is in orthodox thinking a great dependence on experts. Because modern technological society has produced a breed of experts who understand technical matters that bewilder the rest of us, we think that in matters of social conflict, which require moral judgments, we must also turn to experts.
There are two false assumptions about experts. One is that they see more clearly and think more intelligently than ordinary citizens. Sometimes they do, sometimes not. The other assumption is that there experts have the same interests as ordinary citizens, want the same things, hold the same values, and, therefore can be trusted to make decisions for all of us.'
I continued to read the next couple pages (5-7), which are highly relevant, but I omitted them for brevity's sake. Instead, I wanted to challenge my readers to come up with their own reasons why this reliance is bad/unnecessary.
However, to help inspire you, I'll reference another source Zinn mentions:
'In John Le Carre’s novel The Russia House, a dissident Russian scientist is assured that his secret document has been entrusted “to the authorities. People of discretion. Experts.” He becomes angry:
I do not like experts. They are our jailers. I despise experts more than anyone on earth…. They solve nothing! They are servants of whatever system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang us…. When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.'
What's persuasive to me here is not that experts are bad, but the over reliance on them is. Experts may try to advance their own agenda, whether they realize it or not. Their own agenda may not be "technical", but rather, it may be influenced by money or personal opinion. Zinn calls it the end of democracy, since it shifts decisions away from the public. A democratic society is one that has society make decisions, not an elite group of "experts."
Now, your turn. :]
He was eager to share one particular passage:
'There is in orthodox thinking a great dependence on experts. Because modern technological society has produced a breed of experts who understand technical matters that bewilder the rest of us, we think that in matters of social conflict, which require moral judgments, we must also turn to experts.
There are two false assumptions about experts. One is that they see more clearly and think more intelligently than ordinary citizens. Sometimes they do, sometimes not. The other assumption is that there experts have the same interests as ordinary citizens, want the same things, hold the same values, and, therefore can be trusted to make decisions for all of us.'
I continued to read the next couple pages (5-7), which are highly relevant, but I omitted them for brevity's sake. Instead, I wanted to challenge my readers to come up with their own reasons why this reliance is bad/unnecessary.
However, to help inspire you, I'll reference another source Zinn mentions:
'In John Le Carre’s novel The Russia House, a dissident Russian scientist is assured that his secret document has been entrusted “to the authorities. People of discretion. Experts.” He becomes angry:
I do not like experts. They are our jailers. I despise experts more than anyone on earth…. They solve nothing! They are servants of whatever system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shall be tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts will hang us…. When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.'
What's persuasive to me here is not that experts are bad, but the over reliance on them is. Experts may try to advance their own agenda, whether they realize it or not. Their own agenda may not be "technical", but rather, it may be influenced by money or personal opinion. Zinn calls it the end of democracy, since it shifts decisions away from the public. A democratic society is one that has society make decisions, not an elite group of "experts."
Now, your turn. :]
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