Monday, November 25, 2024

The state of American ignorance/misunderstanding; About echo chambers

Lots of Americans are ignorant or misinformed about a lot of important things. Tom Nichols posted this bit of data on Bluesky. It's from a 2022 YouGov poll.





Nichols wrote the 2017 book The Death of Expertise (book review here). His key points include (i) there is a growing belief that everyone's opinions are equally valid, regardless of expertise or knowledge, (ii) many people are increasingly resistant to learning and hostile towards established knowledge, despite having unprecedented access to information, and (iii) metacognition, the ability to recognize one's own limitations and lack of knowledge in certain areas, is important to understand for democracy to survive in the face of toxic social media and dark free speech generally. He argues that rejection of expertise poses significant risks to society and democratic institutions.
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AOC posted this interesting thought about echo chambers on Bluesky:

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