The Death of Expertise

The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

First Edition

Tom Nichols

Description

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017 breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.

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• Powerful and scathing indictment of the many forces trying to undermine the authority of experts in the US
• Makes the case that higher education is making the problem worse rather than better
• Ties the rise of anti-expertise sentiment and anti-intellectualism not only to the pervasiveness of the internet, but to other technologies such as the explosion of media options
• Concedes that experts do make mistakes, but argues that the key point is the ability of other well-informed experts to challenge these mistakes and lead to solutions
• The author is a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion, and as one of the all-time top players of the game, he was invited back to play in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction. The Death of Expertise
Chapter 1. Experts and Citizens
Chapter 2. How Conversation Became Exhausting
Chapter 3. Higher Education: The Customer Is Always Right
Chapter 4. Let Me Google That for You: How Unlimited Information Is Making Us Dumber
Chapter 5. The "New" New Journalism, and Lots of It
Chapter 6. When the Experts Are Wrong
Conclusion. Experts and Democracy

【民主裡的自大狂：簡評《專業之死》】

《專業之死》直指當代弊病，逼得我們不得不面對現實──除了專業死去，還有隨之而來的民主崩壞。

書中的美國，不啻是我們生活的台灣.............

文章來源： 獨立評論在天下

OPINION.CW.COM.TW

民主裡的自大狂：簡評《專業之死》｜洪靖／社技台灣｜獨立評論

expertise 表示高知識和技能，具備此的，稱為expert，或稱專家。

將 The Death of Expertise翻譯成《專業之死》又會誤導人。

或可考慮將書 The Death of Expertise翻譯成《人人可能是假專家》。

expert Show phonetics
noun [C]
a person with a high level of knowledge or skill; a specialist:
a gardening/medical expert
My mother is an expert at dress-making (= she does it very well).

expert Show phonetics
adjective [before noun]
The centre provides expert advice for people with financial problems.
What's your expert opinion?

expertise Show phonetics
noun [U]
a high level of knowledge or skill:
We admired the expertise with which he prepared the meal.
I have no expertise in sewing/sewing expertise.
She has considerable expertise in French history.

expertly Show phonetics
adverb
He carved the roast expertly.

(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

"EXPERT"漢文習譯為"專家"--這可能是簡化日文的【専門家せんもん-か ₀ 】(

ある技芸や学問などの専門的方面で、高度の知識、またすぐれた技能を備えた人。)

有趣的是 日文辭點典將 expert解釋為━━ n. 熟練者, 老練家, くろうと ((in, at, on)); 技師; 鑑定人.
━━ a. 熟達した, 老練な ((in, at, with)).
 ex・pert・ly　━━ ad.
 ex・pert・ness　━━ n.


日本就 expert system (a computer system which asks questions and gives answers that have been thought of by a human expert)採取音譯