By Anubhav Mishra
Humans have been synergizing and marching towards ‘something better’ since time immemorial. Our desire for and faith in a better future has enabled us to multiply fortunes and arrive at the most prosperous point in human history, and this prosperity cannot be ignored despite all the problems around us. However, this ‘synergy’ does not have a causative relationship with our dependence on our neighbours, but rather it is the realization that human goals cannot be accomplished individually which forces us to become ‘social animals’. One cannot indefinitely sustain and live a full life all by oneself, thus we need help. Public policy is no alien to the application of these fundamental principles of human society.
Source- www.nytimes.com
Regular Skill and Expertise
Since the development of societies, there has always been some sort of division of labour that helps individual beings to come together and work for the betterment of society through different paths. However, merely working in a particular manner is not the same as developing proficiency. Ability cannot be equated to expertise.
Ability refers to doing something, but expertise is a higher-order skill which is achieved by overlearning a very particular area of study and by creating a better understanding of the subject with the help of research, analysis, and academic peer support.
An expert, therefore, is recognized with some kind of authority over his/her subject of expertise and is in a position to advise others. While an improvement in general literacy is welcome, regular skill cannot be equated to expertise, in the same way as ‘gut feeling’ is distinguished from an educated advisory.
Accept it: We need help
The real question is why do we need advice from these people who just happen to know something better than us? Aren’t we better off living according to our views and opinions, because after all we are entitled to them? Why should we listen to people and take courses of action that we do not fully understand or agree with? After all, what differentiates a non-expert from an expert?
The short answer is that expertise is much more accurate in practice than a layman’s opinion, but in wake of new political movements, the value of expertise has been minimized against the rise of denialism and safeguarding of fragile egos.
To not agree with established beliefs and to counter them with opinions has become the norm. It is often misunderstood that experts just provide their side of the story and thus it is an exercise of freedom of expression. The misunderstanding arises because one lacks the basic epistemological understanding that attempts to differentiate a justified truth from beliefs or mere opinions.
Thus, expert opinion generally contains more academic evidence to justify a set of understandings. It takes the role of an expert to research, analyze, and prove a belief beyond a reasonable doubt. The role of an expert, therefore, is significant for a healthy society. To have a society, there must be a shared set of ‘truths’, hence all ‘truths’ by each and every one cannot be held authoritative.
New Politics
Experts were not always despised. Irrespective of ideologies and perspectives, there was respect in their authority over various subjects. Unfortunately, now things are different for 2 primary reasons:
Firstly, over the past decade, there has been a constant rise in populist authoritarianism (let us not focus on their ideologies as of now), which has allowed a few ‘strong’ leaders to emerge. The rise of these leaders, in particular after the 2007 Global Financial Crisis, can be equated to demagoguery by using the general impatience in the masses. The story of these leaders and their rise is quite similar. Firstly, they search for so-called ‘elites’ and distance themselves from these ‘elites’. Secondly, they whip up anger among the masses against these ‘elites’ using fiery speeches. Lastly and most importantly, spread propaganda about their quick solutions to fix every problem there is, without any reference to the nuances and intricacies of the problems faced by the people. The citizenry finds it easier to connect with these demagogues because their logic is simple: Vote for me and your problems are solved.
This kind of populist rhetoric spares no well-informed person who wishes to scrutinize the ideas, or worse, criticize the ideas on their merits. This rise of populism, particularly due to socio-economic problems over the past few decades is today coupled with another human-made disaster: social media.
Today social media is so widely spread, that there are millions of posts every minute. Social media treats all posts are equal, which allows everyone to have his/her voice, but there is hardly any attempt to distinguish a justified belief from a mindless opinion. In an age of the ‘knowledge economy’, it is problematic that the primary sources of information are a bunch of unregulated platforms that allow us to promote and multiply the influence of our prejudices on our thoughts and on others. Hardly is there any effort undertaken to ‘hear the other side’. Thus, a random conspiracy theory, with no merits of its own is treated at par with a well-informed opinion.
The problem lies in the market structure of social media which demands shorter attention spans so that we keep searching for something new. Moreover, there is unintended (and in many cases intended) spread of radical ideas and populism. The whole idea of not ‘hearing the other side’ in a social debate is disastrous. Society has always been a place of compromises, between well-informed ideas and different pictures for our future, but that debate is now changing to a monologue, full of incessant rants. In many ways, social media, and Big Tech, irrespective of their motives, have eroded the shared set of understanding required for an effective society.
The rise of populism when coupled with the power of social media has made us discount expert opinion in favour of our rants. While the argument for ‘equalizing all opinions’ may sound fairly democratic, its impact on public policy is catastrophic. While theoretically, it may reduce policy responses to be ineffective, in practice it may result in no policy at all. Over the past decade, the policy has been substituted by rhetoric and nothing else. Take the example of the problems regarding jobless growth and globalization: while there are genuine issues regarding the global integration of capital markets and its effect on the labour markets and the rise of automation in general, that debate has been taken over by the rhetoric of jingoism. With the absence of experts, strongmen leaders are generally unable to find a win-win solution for all the stakeholders in the national economy and blame the weakest sections living on the margins of the society.
Take the example of India where jobless growth has been an issue since the 2007 Global Financial Crisis. There has been no attempt by successive governments to improve job creation but the rhetoric favours blaming illegal immigrants for ‘stealing’ jobs and livelihoods of real Indian workers. One can look at the statistics and see for oneself that even though illegal immigration is a crucial issue for the border states, in no way it is the primary cause of our economic woes. Blaming immigration for economic issues in developed countries has become the norm in this era of populism, while several experts have provided evidence to the contrary.
A similar practice of distrusting and rejecting the claim of experts is practised on the issue of climate change. The scientific evidence of global warming is discredited, and popular sentiment is whipped up against mitigation measures in the name of saving livelihoods and the economy, even though transitioning to a more sustainable economy will generate newer prospects of employment. Any plan towards transitioning for a more sustainable model, therefore, is met with political opposition, often based on ideologies, not educated scrutiny.
Source- crowdsourcingweek.com
Re-emergence
Expertise has been back in demand after the world has been struck with the coronavirus pandemic and an economic recession. In many ways, this crisis has been a commentary on our socio-economic failures and the shortcomings in our development model. When the leaders around the world met this unprecedented crisis, most of them needed advice, while a few of them went with their ill-informed plans.
Again, taking the example of India, where senior members of the ruling party peddled pseudoscience, particularly in cases of medicine, by often invoking religion the conversation has moved away from rhetoric to factual information. Even though misinformation spread rapidly during the pandemic (particularly the Prince Charles incident), it was relieving to see the Prime Minister warning the people against fake news and pseudoscientific practices. Similar has been the role of the mainstream journalists as well. Although the re-emergence of the relevance of experts has not been as influential as any rational person would want, it is relieving to see a reversal of the trend. The trend has been similar in most of the countries around the world, with a few notable exceptions.
Governing units (both countries and the administrative divisions) that relied on advisories of epidemiologists managed to meet the crisis with a better response, in contrast to units that refused their expertise. Similar will be the result in the global economic recovery in the short-run after the pandemic, and the response to climate change.
Democracy, Equality, and the Expert
For most of the well-informed and rational people that despise experts and their role in modern society, the issue often boils down to the issue of political equality. The ones who disdain experts believe democracy is sacred and technocracy cannot be the answer to our complex social issues. Fortunately, they are not wrong.
Popular sovereignty is the golden principle of governance, but it is not at odds with experts. Popular sovereignty can only be fully exercised when complex matters of public policy are scrutinized well and the citizenry learns about its merits and alternatives. This dichotomy of expertise and the right to free speech has been falsely created to manufacture public opinion against valid claims by experts.
Rhetoric replacing public policy and conspiracy theories substituting well-informed pieces of advice only benefits those who currently benefit from the status quo because rhetoric gives an impression of culminating the droplets of public support, but in reality works like a sieve, or worse, a safety valve. We need experts to scrutinize policy, provide constructive criticism that will result in fine-tuning of our policymaking strategy.
After all, we are entitled to our opinion, but not to our own facts. In a democracy, we have the right to choose. However, to arrive at the right choice (whatever may be their right choice), we need to analyse an issue based on its merits, and ascertaining these pros and cons is where we need expertise. The expertise that our complex society requires is a necessity, not a luxury.
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