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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] thank you so much for coming. Its my or honor to welcome you toe hair taj Heritage Foundation on this rainy day. Today we have the death of expertise and the author, tom nichols, heres. Heat a professor the department of National Security affairs the u. S. Naval war college and harvard extension school. Were not talking about Nuclear Deterrence today. He is a former secretary of the navy fell explore held the Naval War Colleges sherm chair of public diplomacy. Previously chairman of the Strategy Policy Department the Naval War College and before coming to newport he taught at dartmouth. He was person staff for Security Affairs in the senate. Fellow of csis and is senior associate of the Carnegie Council aeat thicks and International Affairs in new york city. Was fellow in the jfk school at harvard university. He was is expert on experts, and im really looking forward to the presentation. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Thank you all for coming on this cold, rainy day. And for being here. Thank you for having me. Im honored to be here with you today. A couple of things, fir, this is washington, were a company up to so nothing i say represent the u. S. Government or the United States navy, harvard, my wife, my cat, just me. And were not going to talk about Nuclear Weapons. We are going to one day. Look forward to it. Ive been asked many times about this book, why would i even do this . Why would i write this book with such an obnoxious title, such challenging and maybe pretentious subtitle, and this very in your face thesis about expertise. It rubs people the wrong way. An expert stepping forward and saying, the real subtitle of the book could have been Something Like, everyone be quiet and listen to me. And people get that, and it rubs them the wrong way immediately. So let me tell you about the genesis of the book. Whyhow i wrote it, why. The problem i think ive identified and where i think it comes from, and then well leave the second half of this for questions and discussion. It has nothing to do with the election, let me start by saying that. Even though most of the questions i get are about the election and the role of fake news and the problem of the low information voter, which is something ive been bang the podium about for years. It really didnt have much to do with that. The genesis of this book probably gab around the time i began my career in washington, which was over 30 years ago, as a russian speaking and soviet expert specialist at the time, and i immediately found that people were very willing to start giving you advice about what they ought to do about arms control, when people they ought to do the following things. Who is they . Of course eventually they say you. But i understood that at the time. As i say in the option of the book, i get that. That was the cold war. People were scared. Wanted to have some kind of avenue of influence into the issues that could kill them. That could destroy their lives and wanted to converse with the people they thought were taking part in this. I sort of accepted that as the price of being an academic, a specialist, a writer, a policy adviser, that people would come up here and say, oh, you work for dish worked here on capitol hill for a u. S. Senator. Heres what you ought to tell the senator. That is a normal thing. What i found that was different over time was the increasing not just skepticism toward experts but hostility to expert and celebration of ignorance as a virtue and that surprised me as time this shows when i say recent live i mean the past 20 years. But thats all belows there the skepticism about intellectuals, part of american culture, healthy part of American Well tour. Were not europe. We do not observe those kind of class niceties or automatic deference to credential reports titleful makes us a great country. But we did respect achievement and respect intelligence and intellectual acumen, and that is something that seems to be lost, and again, with almost the kind of hostility to it. I tell a story early in the book, the first time it occurred to me that bell electric to alls are dis intellectuals are distrusted and perhaps disliked, i grew up in a factory town in massachusetts. I do not come from an educated family. My mom and dad were depression era kids who dropped out of high school. The american success story. One modify older brothers ran my older brothers ran a bar and its a compliment to call its bar. More like a joint. Even next to the Railroad Tracks like right out of central casting. A little tiny place, but next for a factory where people worked in shifts and was open all the time. Would go down there when i first started teaching, in any 30s, and hang ought with my brother. And one day i was there and i left and my brother told me later that one of the people in the bar, after i left, said to my brother, your brother is a professor . My brother said yes. He said, hmm. Seems like a good guy anyway. Like that was the assumption going in. That you couldnt that by definition if your were a professor you probably werent a good guy anyway. That now is everybody. That has become epidemic throughout our society. And i ascribe this not to, not to major policy failures or to any particular cause that has to do with academic credentialing or anything like that. If you cant take an ill sultana intellectual, youre in the wrong job. Think its an epidemic of narcissism, americans have become extremely thinskinned, extremely obsessed with their own their sense of themselves, theyre open selfactualization, their own knowledge, not just as being skeptical, informed skeptics about intellectuals but replacing intellectuals. I dont just question my doctor, im replacing my doctor. Not just questioning my lawyer, im replacing my lawyer because im as smart as my doctor, lawyer, nuclear strategist or anybody else. This came to a head during the snowden business when i which now it seems like an even pedestrian observation to say that snowden was in league with the rescues, wikileaks was fronting for the russians russid the whole thing stank of a russian operation but me as a person with a russia brown that was obvious lee years spying would say this to people and engage people on social media and they said, tom, know you speak russian, but let me explain russia to you. Would would bristle instantly, saying, no. No. Im not going to let you explain russia to you. Youre a lay person, im an expert. Were not peers. A friend of mine who worked the National Security agency for ten years, the same problem, trying to explain to people this is how the nsa does things and this is why this is odd and people were saying, i dont think you really understand how the nsa works. People who until six months ago had not been aware of the existence of the National Security agency. Were now lecturing veterans of the institution saying i dont think you understood this. So i sat down one evening and i like many team i kept a blog for years, mostly sometimes to try out ideas, mostly as therapy. The one place where i could talk to miss and blast it out there and anybody who wants to listen to an old guy rant, it i never did call it this but it is title might have been, get off my lawn, because thats what most of my posts were about. And it was strange because it started to get a little traction, and interestingly enough from experts, as well as lay people. It was noticed by the federalist magazine, and sean and ben asked me if they could have it, and i said, sure, who would want it. Dont know anybody wants to read this guy yelling because, again, blogs and this has come up in the writing of blogs to me are not particularly academic or intellectually rich sources. My students used to say i saw your blog, ick cite it . I said dont cite that. The editor is an idiot. He publishes anything. That guy has no standards. But they took it, turn it into Something Else and oxford suggest told me that this could be a become, and even then i was skill skeptical. The social sciences folks at oxford said this could be a book. Said, really . Turns out that by the time the book entered the works, the piece itself had been read by over a Million People around the world, and i started getting all kinds of mail, not just from grieved intellectuals like myself. People whose bloated academic egos had been annoyed but i remember one in issue to, letter from a molecular biologist in france. He said i love this article. Can i translate into french put is on the door of my lab . I said in my best presence, si view i said yes. And there was this thing going on where experts were saying, finally were kind of getting a chance to talk back. I think were going through a cycle of almost Something Like nonothingism. That it its a populist cycle. This is not related the election. This has been brewing for at least a decade, maybe more. Experts dont know anything. They screwed up the world. Get that a lot. Someone sent me a message saying all of our major itch constitutions have failed. Why should we trust you . All of your major institutions have failed, thats called civil bar and chaos if dont think were quite there yet. And i think the danger here, the reason ive identified this as a problem, is that people are starting to act on it in ways that are up healthy for themselves and unhealthy for our society. People who think theyre smarter an doctors about vaccinations are endangering. Thes and endangering my child and yours. People who think they are smarter than lawyers or parliamentarians or peel about the constitution, and people insist to me that the house can impeach the president alone. Because they believe this. That makes them poor voters and poor voters make poor choices about important decisions the ballot box. Why die think this is happening in in the book i identify three major culprits, although im sure there are more. But i singled out higher education, i actually left aside there is a chapter on the internet but i want to say i do not believe this is an internet driven its internet enabled but i dont think this originated with the internet and then theres a chapter on the media. These are all enablers for this narcissism that i think has hundred growing since at least the 1960s. That theres a long are argument to be made and i didnt want to make it in the book because ive knock enough on at historian or socialollist, my gut feeling, my guess, from talking to sociologists that this is a Youth Culture that prizes intro specifics and patience but the enablers of those have been first let be talk about higher education. I did not write about k through 12, because i did not want to violate star trek spoiler the prime directive of experts talking about something theyve never done. Ive never taught k through 12 but i have sense that k through 12 share this same problem that we college leave see his therapeutic culture of education, a model of education that is very concerned about feelings of students, aaffirms students, making them comfortable, theres a great moment in the book where i talk about the disgusting moment at yale where the infamous Halloween Costume explosion where a group of students surrounded the housemaster and started dropping expletives on him and said this is no an intellectual space. Your job is to create a home here to the professor said, thankfully, dont agree with that. Neither do i. Knowledge is not a home. Its a place to go and to be uncomfortable. College is suppose told be uncomfortable. I now, with that said, let me just say issue enjoyed college. Had a great time in college. Think we awful do. But i also found it was intellectually a very oven comfortable time thump time you let go of childhood and learn to think about things you dont perhaps want to believe 0 are true. The timeouts hear things you accept ode as gospel from your parents, for example. Or growing up in your society, that you want to believe theyre true. I think that college is no longer in that model. Obviously there are exemptions, there are great books institutions, very rigorous programs available out there, but i think college has become a client servicing model. That college is now marketed as an experience, come to college and have a college experience. We have rock climbing. We have pizza. We have cool dorms. We have foreign study. We have all kinds of things. And the professors will never be mean to you. I think its okay to let me just say i dont have any axe to grind. A very successful career of teaching, me students generally dont think im mean but im also not dish dont walk into the classroom with the assumption were peers. I assume theres a reason theyre sitting on that side of the desk and im on this one and i conduct my classes in that way. Ive told the city is before. Very formative event is when i started graduate school at georgetown, and i had imposing jesuit priest for mispolitical philosophy professor and he did something i thought would be unthinkable. He put down he handed us first day of class handed us all an essay he had written called and im not making this up what a student owes a teacher. And it included things like, docility. Trust, humility, and we all kind of read this and went, youre kidding are right . And to look at father shawl, the man in black, okay. In his roman collar and his thick glasses and he was quite serious. I argued with him and fought and struggled through that class and i got an a and i was very proud of myself when i thought, now im a much more collegial relationship with the professor and i walked up to him and i never forgot. It took me down a peg. I walked up to him at christmas and you said what do you saw, father, merry christmas. What do you, peace on earth, good will toward men . Without mixing a beat he says what say to you, mr. Nichol, is repent. And i started okay. I enjoyed your class, father. And ill be slinking off now to the punch bowl. And we actually became best friends friends and he to this day stole somebody whose advice i treasure but it was important. An important moment to understand that this was we were not peers and that i had a lot yet to learn, and i think part of the problem with the modern university, students come and thinking they know plenty and leave thinking they dont need to learn much more because theres been a lot of affirmation in between. And i think as well that while there are wonderful i still think american universities are the best in the world. Let me save this, this is not an attack on the American University of which im a representative and in which i have great deal of faith. But it is a bit like being able to go to and just for four or five or increasingly six and seven years, graze on junk food. Thats a quote in the book, a student who went to a wellknown party school in california, he said, college, or as we called it, those major cal and years between high school and your first warehouse job. Thats an expensive proposition, and when that bubble breaks and bursts we have to rethink white we good to college and what were doing there and how we educate people. The media. I talk about the media again. This is not an attempt to slag journalists because i think ive had a lot of good experiences with journalists and interviewed quite a few of them for this book. By and large, despite their human failings this, want to get the story, they want to tell the truth, yes, they have they byases and theyre human beings whose narratives intrude on their work but but try to do the job corps 0 their profession but the consumer with all of this ban division now available they want to segment the Media Outlets to anywhere rovely and tailored to our own taste that we can live in an echo chamber. We dont really want reel debates. Most of the debates on cable news ares at real as pro wrestling. Just informant real debates. For the next 15 minutes these ten people will argue something incredibly complex and i turns, youre wrong, youre stupid, youre the puppet. These arent real debates. But thats what people want. They want entertainment and the news programs are giving it to them. Now issue was asked when i first first times i said this, somebody asked me, are you saying, prefer, one of this prosecutorial questions do you mean to say, sir, that you think people were better informant when there were three nightly newscasts and for half an hour . I said i think im reaching that conclusion. Yes, to the nightly newscasts were curated, edited, 24 to 28 minutes of what so old white guys in new york thought were important. A corporate view of the world, true. On the other hand curating the news stream and having to decide what fits into 30 minutes meant that a Nuclear Arms Treaty was far more important than who a kardashian what sleeping with, and i dont think that was a worse world because we have gone from a limited, less diverse world, and i do think its important that the news is not just read by middle aged white males like me. I think it is important to have more diverse representation of people involved in making the news and reporting it, and bringing different viewpoints to it. But we have gone from that to a freeforall of, again, just this massive sort of buffet of junk food and when it comes to media tell people, treat me media the way you treat your diet. Portion control, healthy choices and a varied diet. Read things you disagree with. Dont i do at love hits on talk radio. Think talk raidover is a Great Institution of democracy but not for three hours a day. Dont leave on the news all day like the video wall person. If you watch the news, watch the news, Pay Attention. One think that strikes me that is different about the modern era i my father was a dictator about the news. A man with a tenth grade education and if you talked to talk to my father when the news was on this was a running job at my family he would point the screen and good, you just scant talk. The news is on, period. For those 30 minutes, he concentrated, and he absorbed everything that came through there, and then he would usually he watched two newscasts. It was we didnt watch cronkite. Watched nbc and abc. People now think that walking past a monitor in an airport is, i watched the news. You walk by and you heard i watch the news. No. My dad used to watch the news aerobically. If that was possible. Finally this internet, and then ill stop and. Talk your questions. I have turned on the internet. I am a as many of you know im a joyful practitioner of social media. I enjoy it. I am there in the scrum every day. I was an early adopter of facebook and had my little i the first web sites appeared when i was in i late 20s, early 30s, one of those guys who thought it was totally cool watching a web site loading on my old teninch monitor line by line while my haze mode mode. A memory check was going, rrrrr and this is the coolest thing ever. And i thought, this is the beginning of a new aim of enlining. Unfortunately its not. What it has done is create a huge polluted swamp full of intellectual sack sabra tours who are making people stupider by being there were now actually starting to do studies empirically that show that people who click through web pages are dumber than when they started because they have the illusion of gained knowledge. The exam i use is d example i use is, tell a child, an as less sent go look up something about fossil fuel. And theyll say, okay, fossil fuels and that leads to links about the dine sauers because doesle fuels are made out out dead dine didnt dinosaurs. After clicking and browsing that student will say now a lot about fossil fuels. They wont. Their retention well by almost nonexistence and i know a lot dinosaurs and about archaeology, because all of the payments pages they heave blown thousand they believe they have enterrized that and they dont realize theyve been testing people to ask them, did you know this before you searched for it . You say, i knew this already they cant tell the difference between acquired knowledge and inherent college, and thats scary. Itself races the inherent knowledge and thats scary. You can manipulate people with search results. The other thing is that people believe the first ten results, the first page of results are truer than the next page. Now, think about that for a minute. And think about that when it comes to public policy. Not just selling soup. Manipulate the Search Engine and when someone says soup, campbells or progresso has paid enough it pops up in right arizona. Start doing that with political candidates or important Foreign Policy issues. Get the russians have prospered at this because theyre really good at it, really, really got at this manipulation. And i really dont like the way that the president and everybody elves, from the president on down, use the term fake news. Im a russia guy. Fake muse as a specific meaning, a lie deliberately concocted from whole clothe, seeded out into the media sphere through the interit in or other willing mignons out there to pollute the public debate. Intentionally, knowingly, a lie, it is not a bias story, it is not an erroneous story. It is not an i. R. A. Roar that can be retracted error that can be retracted, nothing none a way that is something you dont like. Fake news is an suspensional lie created to mislead people and then placed out into the information sphere so that you will find it and this is some of you may be firm with the term astro turfing. You make look like thisandissue aaye rising natural live like real grass but its fake, these are created simply to spread a story. Did a speaking tour last fall in Central Europe for the state department where i talk about the story about how nato was moving Nuclear Weapons to romania. You didnt in the that nato was moving Nuclear Weapons to row main romania, did you . Well, theyre not. And that was a concocted story originating in russia. I heard third wherever i went. Tell me about these romanian Nuclear Weapons. Thats fake news, story by a New York Times reporter, is not fake news. What are we going to do about this . I dont know. I keep ending these on the most people say, where do we go from here . And i say, disaster, probably. Dont know. People will come back to relying on experting when they have no choice. Take the antivaccine movement. That is a movement that is almost entirely an affect of affluence and good health. Arguing whether vaccine are dangerous is something people do when nobody is sick. A pan pandemic will bring an teo that fast. A real economic problem could bring panel back to saying maybe we ought to talk to somebody who knows something about economics. A war, maybe we ought to talk to diplomats or people who speak the languages of other countries. I dont want us to get to that and wheat thats why i wrote the book. Let me stop there and take your questions. [applause] wait for the microphone and introduce yourself before asking the question. Yes. My name is Mark Bernstein and trash thing media with the exception of myself, 1937, cbs sends edwardr. Moreau to start news coverage. He hires howard k. Smith. Shyer writes, rice and fall of the third reich. Anybody in the media today who could write that book or anyone in the media today who has read it . I cant whether they read it i dont know. Think there are people out there that good. For years i got raised eyebrows from my academic colleagues. Used to teach soviet Russia Affairs and i say assigned lenins tomb which was better than any Academic Work on the end of the soviet union and i think there are i dont want to tar innocent journalists by saying i think theyre gravity because then theyll get hate mail from pool who dont like the book but there are reporters that good. Whether 0 reports are reading it is a different question. That that journalists are aware of the problem in their own profession. One journalist several of them i interviewed, remain aid anonymous but as one said to me, im dealing with young people who dont know the difference between blogging and journalism. Thats a problem. And journalism i think this is where we thread this problem into the universities again. The other thing that is happening to journalism, its been academickized and instead of apprenticed as a report or a cub reporter i feel olympicky olsen when i was in i 20s and friends were starting journalism they were writing obituaries and covering town haul middle eastings in west virginia. And then they ended up in hartford or indianapolis and so on. Now its, i went to college i studied journalism, im smart, i have a great turn of phrase because ive been blogging my very important thoughts for years and now i want to work the new yorktimes. And i think everybody is going to have to lower their expectations about everything in this field. And i but i on the other hand when people want to read a lot of clickbait journalist what is better than an apartment in brooklyn with four guys whoa who will crank out 46 stories a day. I put the blame back writ belongs. Im a consumer and voter and the american custom theyre stepping the demand signal for this stuff. Someone last night asked me a great question about politics and proses and someone said is long formjournalism did dead, long form magazines tend to be more liberal leaping magazines. I said i hope not but the long form, people its terrible that we actually have an acronym called tldr. Too long, didnt read, that people put on the internet and that now the length of too long didnt read is getting shorter and shorter to where if its like more than two tweets, people say, didnt read it. So, on the one hained think professional journalist are frustrated. In the book i outline a story about gmos. He worked on it for a year. And one of the people who just blew up all this bogus science about how gmo will turn you into the incredible hulk. He said how many people can silt there with a story for a year and be a really determined kind of bloodhound on a story. That doesnt happen anymore. Why . Because people arent patient enough to wait for it. So, big unfortunately the consumer is getting what it wants. Journalists article aware of the problem but dont know what to do about it either because thats the major of the market. The nature of the market. Doug brooks. I used to read your arguments on h yes. Brilliant stuff. A great callback. That was stuff where you could read a long argument between several people on key issues. Let me clarify for everything else. The other thing whats interesting is it hatgate gate keep everred if was as list of 2,000 or so scholars and diplomatic history and International Affairs, and it was a free for all. We would have long email exchanges and there was ed doctors so you had to kind of get through the gatekeepers to join and it wasnt that high. Almost anybody could aim an independent scholar and want to join but you couldnt be mean to each other. Your messages would get reject for being rude. But other than that it was great. It was a lot of really hard elbows thrown politely. Go ahead. Now i only follow you on twitter. You still make some very good arguments, as do a lot of people, and its but on twitter leaning mortareds mortared the d the humorror comment. But i in a way ill cop to this. Im crimed oflet kind of lazy about it. Sometimes im just been clever and snotty. Ill cop to it. But partly because i also think, what made hdiplo so interesting if you put a lot of energy into writing a post, people would read it with the same attentiveness so sometimes twitter or facebook get frustrating because you say ill try make this point and then people say, so, youre just a globalist schill. And im like, okay, fine, i am. Im sorry i just spent an hour of my life trying to explain something extremely complicated to you, but i still think twitter im on twitter in part not going to lieenjoy it. A lot of fun where people on twitter but i also am on there because i think of it as part of my responsibility as a public intellectual to be out there and available and answer questions. Questions that i think posed miami say you dont answer my question. Well, i answered the one its thingposed sincerely, somebody who wants a real answer and i do my best to do that. Think thats part of what being a public intellectual is be about. And i do chide experts and theres a chapter on what experts need to own and when theyre wrong. And i think we are open to the charge that we tend to want to kick kitty litter over our mistakes and say they didnt happen. We do lack empathy sometimes because with live in that world of data and an an extraction but we have to tame our lumps and speak the truth to public and to power. Sounds similar to what science has been dealing with. All is the demarcation problem, science versus pseudo science, and the bridge falls, you can actually measure a weight, and you have a broad kind of principle if it makes a difference what country you died it in or your religion, it isnt science, but its still i mean, theres been many, many pages and many books written about it, some i think on the whole the best that people have is theyhave bread crumbs, humoris lists of if you see capital letters letters and funs of something things that look more pseudo science even real but theres less clarity about it, and the other thing the thing i think makes your probable policemen more difficult is you have values also going into it. Yes. Science i not going solve this problem for us. No matter what Neil Degrass Tyson tells you. Some issues of social science, which i still believe in the science but that is about the problems of how we live together as a community of people. Are not amenable to a scientific answer wedge not weigh democracy. We can try to see it and know when its working. We cant weigh the kind of things we work on. When do we know deterrence is not operating . When it fails. When theres a war. I guess deterrence isnt operating anymore. But the other problem for science is that i think this is where experts make a mistake. Scientific exerted. They say the science is clear and, therefore, my the policy choice i advocate is equally clear. I said no, no, science is science and policy is policy. Climate change. I hate this whole subject. Makes give monday a migraine. Dont want to argue about science of Climate Change but i want to establish the point that if the people in boston want to make the crazy decision to let the city slide into the harbor in 70. Thats 70 years thats their choirs. A scientists cant say this will happen and therefore you must not. Think experts i will cop to this expertspresent advice prejudicially. The joke about how Henry Kissinger presented options with dealing with the soviet union. Option a. , surrender immediately, option b. , met launch of a theme mow nuclear war, option c, my idea. Well, yeah, experiment does that and i think scientific experts have a tendency to mobilize science to do that even with even greater gusto and i think people have in a democracy, people have a right to be wrong. Experts i making this very clear the end of the book experts are servants, not the masters. Our client is society. Not ourselves. Not our own discipline. We are here to serve the rest of society not their make decisions. Their make the people who are supposed to make the decisions smarter about the problems. So, i worry that the left, which claims itself to be the party of science, says, well, here, my answers are obvious but i worry equally that the right says, science doesnt matter if it happens to conflict with things i dont like. This is the dialogue of the death and we have to stop violating those basic rules. Think one thing we can take from science is not the conclusions but the rules and the process. And argue with each other in according to agreedupon rules and standards and evidence and thats something that no one seems to know how to do anymore. Talk a lot about confirmation bias which know one seems to understand. Its other problem and someone says i knew a guy once so, its a problem. Ted broman, Heritage Foundation good, to see you again. Can you talk about temperature mentioned Neil Degrass Tyson and other folk word operating in same sphere. Stephen hawking, bill gates, awful play the role now of public expert and intellectual on, insert any subject and social conscience. Ing can you talk about the question of bounded expertise, youre an expert on deterrence, russia, the sovietunion, and Nuclear Weapons. I dont think you claim any special expertise ons stro physics but astro astro physics but wheel who get a license in one area, use that license in everything. Let me chide the public. The public plays into this in a way i find it so paradoxical and so frustrating. The public says you experts and your credentials. Then somebody says, im Neil Degrass Tyson. What do you think about child care . Who cares what he thinked about child care. Or doctors. This happened during the cold war for those old enough to remember it. A gadfly in the nuclear Arms Community named helen cal decot and i talk talk about her in the book. She had very serious ideas about Nuclear Weapons, silos, she used to talk about the ability of silos to withstand a first strike, our Civil Defense she was a pediatrician. But she had doctor in front of her name. People said, shes a doctor. Well, americans swing wildly between these. They say youer and idea your credentials, take that nonsense and tell your story walking. Then somebody says but im a doctor and they say, go ahead. About anything but medicine. A doctor says i want to talk about vaccines. People say forget i want to talk about social justice in america. Now you got me, doc. Its insane. One of the people i spent a lot of time with, lawrence freedman, who spent a lot of time talking about this maddening problem of cross expertise violations and die it, too. I say, im a im a smart guy. Generically a smart person and i have deep thoughts about healthcare. I was expounding about health care and i learn a lesson we should also learn and this person says, tom, youre on. He said ive worked in this field for years the thing you believe i wont go about the now messed memory the ryan bill that has gone he said youre just wrong. And thats a great idea, or he said,or just wrong. Ive worked on this for years. I did what think other people should do. I said this is a Good Opportunity for me to shut up. And to listen for a change, because i really am not an expert in health care, and by closing my trap and listening i learned a lot of things. Most people are not comfortable doing that. If you say, youre just wrong, im an experiment. They say, yeah, well, who do you think you are . And people said to me, who do you think you center i said i think im an expert. I knowabout this. But, yes, experiment does this all the time and public intellectuals, the science guy, and hawking and the rest of them, say because im smart you should listen to me on any number of issues. Part of the argument here i would say is that happens because so many other public intellectual to alls have cleared the field and dont go out there anymore. Would like to see that public space filled up again with people who responsibly talk about things like health care, child cair, drug abuse, and pull the issues away from a physicist. But again, experts have pulled back to say i just its too difficult to talk to the public therapy. Too ewassible, the temper is too short. I dont want to take this nonsense itchll write my position papers opioids and the rust belt and not deal with the angry moms and dadses and let some physicist in inning england talked about it instead. Its unhealthy. Again, i understand it. Most intellectualsmost people with deep background on things are not naturally stro voted. Not the extroverted and not the time to wait in these wholes mott toy motto is, not come at me, bro, and its difficult, and i think more and more of them have to do it. Over to this side of the room here. Hi. Kate. So, my question is, one thread that goes through your discussions talk can about the roll on consumer choice, that people are approaching dealings with expertise and authority from the lens of consumers who are entitled to have their wants met rather than from the point of view of learners or anything else. And could you talk about if or how you see the role of this is on market force playing into that . You were talking about early in the discussion the consumer lens of the students and i know that in the medical profession, for example, theyre finding that outcomes in hospitals where the Customer Service element of Peoples Hospital stays are rated more highly tend to come out worse actually because people are get what it want rather than want the neat. Like pain killers. Right. If you could talk about if we know that the invisible hand of the market is not working in favor of necessarily the best outcomes in all these cases, how do we address that . Im concerned about that because the trap that conservatives can follow into is to say these Market Forces arent working, dont give people what they want and i think our colleagues on the left will say thats why we need a much more regulatoriy nanny state. And and you send into a bear trap. Want to be more cooperative and talk to people about hike health care and they say give me more pain killers until theyre addicted and the conservative says, dont do that. And the liberal says, now i have to regulate doctors. Im not a quite sure what to do about it in every field because youll notice im getting away from medicine because i dont now anything about medicine. In my own classroom i have students say, are we going to talk about x . Because i really want to talk about that. And i say, oh, no. Well, dont you think we ought to study what we are all interested in . I said, no, were going to study what im interested. Thats because its my class. What i found is that people after they get over that initial response to it, theyve say, yeah, maybe i dont want to have a million choices that i cant make sense of and i need somebody to help guide me through this. The danger in that is that it does lead to deference to expert which is i dont argue for. The minute the cam race off and i step off the podium my tweeter feed will be full and saying you and just do what experts say. Of course not. If my dour walks into an office with miss needle i dont say, anywhere you think is go, just mitt he. Dont demel what is in it. Of course i ask those questions. And i want other people to ask those questions. But this its not just a market problem. Its this overemphasis on egalitarianism, on cooperativeness. We have to make you a partner. We cant all be partners in everything. Sometimes the doctor is going to say, here are the things i have to do. Sometimes the teacher says, here are the thing is believe we have to cover to the exclusion of other things. And i think that this issue of cooperativeness and peer to peer two situation common american are froisms. Its agree disagree, an expression i hate to the very fiber of my being. And the other is teachersive had a scrum with each evers who say, i learn as much from the students as they learn from me. If thats true you stink as a teach ever. Thats an Unfair Exchange of knowledge from the classroom. It should be a lot more in this direction than the other. I think that professionals just have to put that marker down and i can tell youve one ething bestest constituencies for the book was doctors, who were coming out the woodwork to contact me. A surgeon said i interviewed a top flight sports surgeon help said ive gotten to the point where i want to put all the stuff on a tray, on the instruments on the tray push it across the table and say, youve do it. You figured out. You contention sufficiented doctor google, go ahead. Fix your own knee. I think the world might be better if a few more doctors did that. And took that approach. But a lawyer who said know, yeah, people sitting in jail because they said i got this. Maybe not in front of the judge. No, no, dont do this. Okay, there you go. How many of you have seen the disturbing movie, classic character study, the people versus layer larry flint where Woody Harrelson larry flint fires his open lawyer right in the courtroom. This has happened to other lawyers. He fire his open lawyer and the judge starts says youre in cop tempt, and harrelson alongs at his lawyer and says, what do i do now . And lawyer says, ask for bail, counselor, i dont know. That happened in courtrooms where people say ill handle this and they end up in jail. Other people who ended sick in jail miseducated. Broke, whatever it is, because they somehow because a professional didnt say to them, listen you need listen to me on this and if you dont trust me, talk to another professional and check my work and see how you feel about it there. But were not doing enough of that. That is what i think we should do but dont know if the market will toll tolerate that. Youve see the medical ad. You come from the medical profession . Im always worried about these ads that i see for medical institutions that basically amount to, hey, is arch else told you no . Well tell you yes. Then the small print, these are totally untypical results, this will never happen to you, totally imposh possible, a one in a million shot. We have time for one or two more questions. One more question. Somebody in the back. Debra jones, recently retired from the department of state. Serving as ambassador twice. Im sorry i waslate. Got misdirected to another room and had to sneak out. Perhaps you address this already. How do you deal with the thorny muddy divide on expertise between career civil sir vans who have a regulatoriy expertise and a experiencal expertise and the policy and the bumps and grinds where the people feels this is a democracy how much do you know anything more than i do . I have a right. Vote. And it gets into what you were saying earlier. Say to people i would never climb bee the come pivot of an f16 and say ive flown on enough planes. Tell me how to move the switch. But there is a difference between the technical fields where people do respect a good surgeon, or or the sports. Where they actually can see the physical competence, and kind of a i dont know what you call it its not a policy competence but a different kind of expertise i would call it that, ambassador. Its a policy competence and its invegetable. A how many old expressions but people treat Foreign Policy like the plumbing. Dont see it. Dont know how it works and only Pay Attention between it breaks. The comment about not climb neglect cockpit. Work month senior military officers and theres a joke there be retired general says when i retired id like too be an ambassador and the ambassador says, when i retire i think id like to be a general. And the general says, what, that takes years of training and you have to be a captain and a major and have to go to school and war college and diplomat says, exactly. And i think people look at things like diplomacy and because it mostly works all the time they say, how hard could this be . How hard can it by . How hard can it be to talk to mexico. This election, just tell them to get their act together and stop sending us drug and keep their people and well iron it out. One way to explain this to lay people i take them through the process of how many experts are involved in what it takes to mail a letter. Something everybody takes for granted. They write a letter, they address it to a friend in pick a country and say belgium. Two or three days. Be in brussels no problem. Well, wait a minute. There were a lot of people, not just Airline Pilots 0 the people who investmented the glue on the stamp. Not just the guys that decided a size x1 2 is the right side. It took diplomats negotiating a postal union, takes embassies, people allowing travel through each others air spaces and i think that usually by the time im din people say, waugh issue can get all that for 50cents and im like, yes, its a bargain, you stick it in a box for half a buck and goes across the world and you dont even think about it. Ill just close with this. Think part of our problem is that this depth of expertise issue ive been talking about is a problem thats going this is going to rub a lot of people at home the wrong way. Its a disease of affluence. Its the kind of thing you do when things are going right, not when things are going wrong. And part of the problem is that people are convincing themselves that experts dope know what theyre doing because they convinced themselves that things are going wrong, and i push become on this all the time. My students, younger students, professor, i you dont understand, this is the worst time ever. And i just miseyes bulge. Okay, its okay but its the its the worst economy ever. Im like when when i grated waited from College Unemployment was 11 . And they look at me as they give my this side eye he might me lying. And i think we have convinced ourselves that the world doesnt work, that everything is terrible, that experts are to blame for our lives, what are felon our live wiz dont like, and its the kind of thing we can only do when things are actually going pretty well and i think, again issue dont want to see is go back to Something Like then 1930s where this kind of populist response to a real crisis, the depression, deepens the depression. Leads us into world war ii and then experts have to rereconstruct the whole world order in 1945 and i dont want to end up back. This wrote the book in throw a grenade out there to get people to talk about it, think about wife they question something they rely on every day, all around themselves, without any thinking about it, and why they have become so hostile to it and i dont ash im not sure if have an answer but i have definedded the problem and hope i defined the debate. Thank you so much. The book is available outside for purchase and professor nichol will we signing it. Thank you for coming to heritage and please join me in thanking him. [applause] [inaudible discussion]

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