The paradox of our times is that information has never been more democratized – human knowledge now stands out as just a few taps away and still the credibility of true expertise has fallen to an all-time low. Anyone can declare authority on complex subjects through social media platforms, blogs and video channels, and algorithmic systems often prioritize engagement over accuracy. This “death of expertise” is both freeing from institutional gatekeepers and a potentially lethal chipping away at the slow work of careful knowledge acquisition that civilization has pegged its hopes on. These are new skills to navigate a landscape in which the only real thing we now all share is our ignorance, and distinguishing between actual expertise and merely plausible confidence.
The Erosion of Institutional Authority
Previously they found it easy to suppress fake news simply because the gatekeepers had total control of the so-called facts and we didn’t have a choice but to believe them. Although this democratization has brought increased diversity and valuable conversational perspectives from voices that once were marginalized, it also has eradicated the control mechanisms for quality (originally filterers of dissidence, falsehood and vagueness). Anti-intellectual feeling has spread as nuanced expertise is sneered at as elitist, or compromised by special interests.
This is the information environment in which confirmation bias flourishes: people can easily find “experts” who confirm their existing beliefs, rather than testing these views against rigorous evidence. The result is broken epistemic communities; they barely have a common understanding of the basic facts.
Digital Amplification of Pseudo-Expertise
- Algorithmic Bias: Search engines and social platforms tend to highlight recent, popular, or sensational material above the expertise of the sources in which it originates
- Influencer Culture: Social media statistics (number of followers and level of engagement) are used as surrogates for credibility over actual expertise or qualifications
- Content Overload: Quantity is not the only player here; with so much information out there, it’s hard for everyday people to discern quality sources from noise
- Speed vs. Accuracy: The demand for instant replies incentivizes fast opinions over considered ones
- Visual Authority: Good-looking graphics, video and web pages can give amateur content the sheen of expert analysis
In a lot of ways, trying to figure out who the true authorities are likely feels to people like playing a bets game where luck and appearance and timing may matter more than whether there is actual skill or expertise.
The Psychology Behind False Expertise
The Dunning-Kruger effect provides an answer by suggesting that the less people know, the more confident they are in what they do know, and that true experts understand how little they actually know despite their technical expertise. Parasocial relations with online personalities foster emotional connections which make entertainment and teaching indistinguishable.
There is this illusion from internet that makes some of you believe they know things only just because information is everywhere, without acknowledging years of studies to correctly interpret complex datas or theories.
Restoring Discernment in the Age of Information
We do not need to return to a positivist and purely institutional command, we need new literacies for the digital age. Source triangulation is a process of verifying with several different independent sources before believing anything at all. Credential verification is about actual qualifications, not only what these qualifications look like online. Methodological awareness assists in assessing the extent to which findings are supported by inferences.
More importantly, by cultivating intellectual humility we recognize the limits of our own knowledge and will seek out proper expertise when that’s what is required rather than presuming that we can teach ourselves complex subjects through dilettantism.
Wrapping Up
The death of old expertise carries both opportunities and dangers in our information-saturated world. We should celebrate that democratization of knowledge, and the opportunity for so many different voices to contribute to it, but we also need to develop more discriminating skills at evaluating credibility in the face of this overwhelming cacophony and considerable uncertainty. The aim is anything but uncritical submission to authority —- it’s discernment that properly recognizes the worth of true expertise, and respects the role played by accessible and accountable knowledge in a democratic society.
