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We live in a time when a certain kind of status– expertise– is under attack. Dan Williams suggests that by celebrating “common sense” over expert authority, populism performs a dramatic status inversion. It gifts uneducated voters the power of knowledge and deflates those who look down on them…

… As Will Storr argues in The Status Game, humiliation is the “nuclear bomb of the emotions”. When ignited, it can fuel everything from genocide to suicide, mass atrocities to self-immolation. There are few parts of human nature more chaotic, dangerous, or self-destructive. And yet, there is often a rationale underlying these reactions rooted in the strange nature of human sociality.

If humans were solitary animals, we would have evolved to approximate the behaviour of Homo economicus, the idealised rational agent imagined in much of twentieth century economics. We would act in ways that are predictable, sensible, and consistent. The characters depicted in Dostoevsky’s novels would be unintelligible to such a creature, except as victims of mental illness.

But we are not. We are social creatures, and almost everything puzzling and paradoxical about our species is downstream of this fact.

For one thing, we rely on complex networks of cooperation to achieve almost all our goals. Given this, much of human behaviour is rooted not in ordinary material self-interest but in the need to gain access to such networks—to win approval, cultivate a good reputation, and attract partners, friends, and allies. Human decision-making occurs within the confines of this social scrutiny. We evaluate almost every action, habit, and preference not just by its immediate effects but by its reputational impact.

At the same time, much of human competition is driven by the desire for prestige. In well-functioning human societies, individuals advance their interests not by bullying and dominating others but by impressing them. These high-status individuals are admired, respected, and deferred to. They win esteem and all its benefits. Their lives feel meaningful and purposeful.

In contrast, those who fail at the status game—who stack up at the bottom of the prestige hierarchy—experience shame and humiliation. If their position feels unfair, they become resentful and angry. In extreme cases, they might take vengeance on those who look down on them. Or they might take their own life. In some cases, such as mass killings by young men who “lose face” and run “amok” (a Malay word, illustrating the behaviour’s cross-cultural nature), they do both…

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… The name of this newsletter, “Conspicuous Cognition”, is inspired by Veblen’s ideas about economics. Just as he sought to correct a misguided tendency to treat economics through a narrowly economic lens, my work and writings seek to correct a similarly misguided tendency to treat cognition—how we think, form beliefs, generate ideas, evaluate evidence, communicate, and so on—through a narrowly cognitive lens.

Much cognition is competitive and conspicuous. People strive to show off their intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom. They compete to win attention and recognition for making novel discoveries or producing rationalisations of what others want to believe. They often reason not to figure out the truth but to persuade and manage their reputation. They often form beliefs not to acquire knowledge but to signal their impressive qualities and loyalties.

Placed in this context of social competition and impression management, what might be called “epistemic charity”—the free offer of knowledge and expertise—takes on a different appearance. Although this charity can be driven by disinterested altruism (think of parents educating their children), it can also result from status competition and a desire to show off.

In some cases, people are happy to receive such epistemic charity and heap praise and admiration on those who provide it. The wonders of modern science emerge from a status game that celebrates those who make discoveries. However, we sometimes recoil at the thought of admitting someone has discovered something new, or—even worse—that they know better than we do. When that happens, we are not sceptical of the truth of their ideas, although we might choose to frame things that way. Rather, their offer of knowledge carries a symbolic significance we want to reject. It hurts our pride. It feels humiliating.

On a small scale, this feeling is an everyday occurrence. Few people like to be corrected, to admit they are wrong, or to acknowledge another’s superior knowledge, wisdom, or intelligence. On a larger scale, it might be implicated in some of the most significant and dangerous trends in modern politics.

Many of our most profound political problems appear to be entangled with epistemic issues. Think of our alleged crises of “disinformation”, “misinformation”, “post-truth”, and conspiracy theories. Think of the spread of viral lies and falsehoods on social media. Think of intense ideological polarisation, vicious political debates, and heated culture wars, disagreements and conflicts that ultimately concern what is true.

A critical aspect of these problems is the so-called “crisis of expertise”, the widespread populist rejection of claims advanced in institutions like science, universities, public health organisations, and mainstream media. Famously, many populists have “had enough of experts.” As Trump once put it, “The experts are terrible.”

This rejection of expertise goes beyond mere scepticism. It is actively hostile. The Trump administration’s recent attacks on Harvard and other elite universities provide one illustration of this hostility, but there are many others. Most obviously, there is the proud willingness among many populists to spread and accept falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and quack science in the face of an exasperated barrage of “fact-checks” from establishment institutions. Why are these corrections so politically impotent? Why do so many voters refuse to “follow the science” or “trust the experts”?

Experts have produced many theories. Some point to ignorance and stupidity. Some point to disinformation and mass manipulation. Some point to partisan media, echo chambers, and algorithms. And some suggest that the crisis might be related to objective failures by experts themselves.

There is likely some truth in all these explanations. Nevertheless, they share a common assumption: that the “crisis of expertise” is best understood in epistemic terms. They assume that populist hostility to the expert class reflects scepticism that their expertise is genuine—that they really know what they claim to know.

Perhaps this assumption is mistaken. Perhaps at least in some cases, the crisis of expertise is less about doubting expert knowledge than about rejecting the social hierarchy that “trust the experts” implies… some populists might sooner accept ignorance than epistemic charity from those they refuse to acknowledge as superior…

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… If this analysis is correct, the populist rejection of expertise is not merely an intellectual disagreement over truth or evidence, even if it is typically presented that way. It is, in part, a proud refusal to accept epistemic charity from those who present themselves as social superiors.

In the case of populist elites and conspiracy theorists, this refusal is often driven by objectionable feelings of grandiosity and narcissism. However, for many ordinary voters, it may serve as a more understandable dignity-defence mechanism, a refusal to accept the social meanings implied by one-way deference to elites with alien values. It is less “post-truth” than anti-humiliation.

This would help to explain several features of the populist rejection of expertise.

First, there is its emotional signature. In many cases, the populist refusal to defer to experts appears to be wrapped up in intense emotions of resentment, indignation, and defiant pride, rather than simple scepticism.

Second, the rejection of expert authority often has a performative character. Experts are not merely ignored. They are actively, angrily, and proudly rejected. Like Captain Snegiryov, the populist publicly tramples on the expert’s offer of knowledge.

Third, there is the destructive aspect of many populist sentiments. If the issue were merely scepticism of experts and establishment institutions, the solution would presumably involve targeted reforms designed to make them more reliable. As recent Republican attacks on elite universities make clear, many populists prefer to take a sledgehammer to these institutions. The explosive hostility towards public health experts during the pandemic provides another telling example.

Finally, there is the fact that populists often embrace anti-intellectualism as an identity marker, a badge of pride. The valorisation of gut instincts, the proposed “revolution of common sense”, and the embrace of slogans like “do your own research” affirm the status of those who prioritise intuition over experts. The demonisation of “ivory tower academics”, “blue-haired”, “woke” professors, and the “chattering classes” are crafted to have a similar effect. This all looks more like status-inverting propaganda than intellectual disagreements over truth and trustworthiness.

To understand is not to forgive. Just as we can empathise with Snegiryov’s refusal of much-needed money whilst condemning it as short-sighted and self-destructive, we can try to understand the populist rejection of expertise without endorsing or justifying it.

To be clear, there are profound problems with our expert class and elite institutions. They routinely make errors, sometimes catastrophic ones, and often wield their social authority in ways that advance their own interests over the public good. The Iraq war, the financial crisis, and the many failures of policy and communication throughout the pandemic provide powerful illustrations of these expert failures, but there are many others.

Moreover, the social and political uniformity of experts today creates legitimate concerns about their trustworthiness. When scientific journals, public health authorities, and fact-checking organisations are obviously shaped by the values, partisan allegiances, and sensibilities of highly educated, progressive professionals, it is reasonable for those with very different values and identities to become mistrustful of them.

Nevertheless, there is no alternative to credentialed experts in complex, modern societies. To address the political challenges we confront today, we need specialised training, rigorous standards of evidence, and coordinated activity within institutions carefully engineered to produce knowledge. Although these institutions must be reformed in countless ways, they are indispensable.

Given this, the populists’ rejection of expertise does not liberate them from bias and error. It guarantees bias and error. Gut instincts, intuition, and “common sense” are fundamentally unreliable ways of producing knowledge. As we see with the MAGA media ecosystem today, the valorisation of such methods means returning to a pre-scientific, medieval worldview dominated by baseless conspiracy theories, snake oil medicine, economic illiteracy, and know-nothing punditry.

And yet, the dangers associated with this style of politics underscore the importance of understanding its causes. If the crisis of expertise is partly rooted in feelings of status threat, resentment, and humiliation, this has significant implications for how we should think about—and address—this crisis.

Most obviously, it suggests that purely epistemic solutions will have limited efficacy. You cannot fact-check your way out of status competition. And as long as the acceptance of expert guidance is experienced as an admission of social inferiority, there will be a lucrative market for demagogues and bullshitters who produce more status-affirming narratives.

Moreover, it suggests that rebuilding trust in experts means more than improving their reliability, as crucial as that is. Institutions dominated by a single social class and political tribe will inevitably face resistance and backlash in broader society, regardless of their technical competence.

We do not just need better ways of producing knowledge. We need to rethink how knowledge is offered: in ways that respect people’s pride and minimise the humiliations of one-sided epistemic charity…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Status, class, and the crisis of expertise,” from @danwphilosophy.bsky.social‬.

(Image above: source)

* Buddha (Ittha Sutta, AN 5.43)

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As we dig dignity, we might send classy birthday greetings to George Bryan “Beau” Brummell; he was born on this date in 1778. An important figure in Regency England (a close pal of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV), he became the the arbiter of men’s fashion in London and in the territories under its cultural sway. 

Brummell was remembered afterwards as the preeminent example of the dandy; a whole literature was founded on his manner and witty sayings, e.g. “Fashions come and go; bad taste is timeless.”

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