The Death of Experts
A strange thing developing in pseudo-intellectual circles is the defense of expertise, by which is meant the defense of credentialism. People long on credentials, but short on practical knowledge and experience, are demanding they get the respect they deserve as experts in their respective fields. Nathan Cofnas is the latest to get in on the issue by demanding we respect his authority as an expert. Dick Hanania has also used to the issue to get attention online.
It is not a new issue nor one exclusive to the sorts of people who seek attention online as “influencers.” Credentialism produces a class of people who have no practical knowledge, so they have no experience. The lack of experience means they have no tangible results to back up their claims to expertise. This produces a class of people who defend credentialed experts. The anti-Trump crank Tom Nichols is a good example of the type. He even wrote a book defending credentialed experts.
Credentialism itself is a sign the system has entered its denouement. It signals the capture of the system by people who are motivated by class consciousness rather than a genuine expertise in a specific field. The group of people devoted to genuine expertise are shouldered aside by those devoted to defending the privileges that come from claiming expertise. To solidify their hold, they create arbitrary barriers of entry into the domain of expertise, which are called credentials.
This is the flaw in Peter Turchin’s concept of elite overproduction, at least as far as it applies to the managerial state. It is not that there are too many elites for the available positions, but that the nature of elite degrades over time. The builders give way to maintainers who are then displaced at the top by people who are good at institutional politics, to the exclusion of practical knowledge. The definition of elite then changes from practical things to the abstractions we see within credentialism.
That aside, for those interested in seeing how the defense of credentialism manifests with the next generations, this video is a good start. Dave Greene, the man behind the YouTube channel The Distributist, debated Nathan Cofnas, the person who gained some notoriety attacking Kevin MacDonald a half dozen years ago. Cofnas is now trying to create a new career defending credentialism. Cofnas then defended his performance with former pornographer Luke Ford.
Without knowing it, at least as a front brain process, Cofnas is engaging in a group activity in his defense of credentialism. He is appealing to the people who may or may not allow him to remain in the expert class. He is not trying to convince the rubes to respect his authority. He is signaling to his betters that he is a reliable candidate for admission into the club. His thumbless way of doing it is his undoing, but it the behavior elicited by the selection mechanisms of credentialism.
A more nuanced example is this post on Zero Hedge about the plan circulating in the West to cut themselves off from cheap energy products. The origin of the post is the site OilPrice.com, which is a clearing house of postings about the energy markets. The author of the post is someone calling himself Cyril Widdershoven. That is not a fake internet name, but a real person. Here is his CV on LinkedIn. He is an anthropomorphized example of credentialism.
If you read the postings of Cyril Widdershoven at that site, what you see is that he is usually wrong in his predictions. His analysis in the case of the pending energy sanctions rests not on an understanding of oil markets but on an understanding of the prevailing opinions in the expert class. That is the key to his wrongness. He is always wrong in the same way everyone else in the expert class is wrong. In managerialism, being wrong along with everyone else is better than being right.
That is the thing about credentialism. It selects for people who preternaturally understand the prevailing attitudes within the group. It is why the range of opinions is so narrow in every field. Once any group hits a critical mass of people whose instinct is to be in the center of the group, the group is then defined by the fights to be as close to the center as possible. The expert class becomes a collapsing star. This is why our expert class now sounds like a chorus rather than a debate.
You see the problem in that video of Cofnas debating Greene. Cofnas cannot distinguish between error and a lie or understand why one is better than the other because for him they are not moral issues. Both are simply means to an end, much in the way a sociopath views the truth and a lie. In the case of credentialism, error and lying only matter insofar as they move you closer to the center. The practical impact is of no importance to the people inside the expert class.
Managerialism, of which the expert class is a part, rests on the social capital of the people over whom it rules. The accumulating errors of the expert class, which contributes to the dysfunction of the managerial system, is eroding the social capital of society and thus we see the collapsing trust in experts and the state. Counterintuitively this is seen as proof within the expert class that they are not just experts, but members of the elect, chosen to rule over the non-experts.
This explains the prevailing madness in our politics. The motivations inside the system are now divorced from practical necessity. The rooms where decisions are made are full of people with resumes littered with the word “consultant” or letters indicating admission to various subgroups in the expert class. Nowhere is there anyone who knows how anything works. The only thing they know for sure is that you should respect their authority as experts.