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Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture
Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet—where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them—has contributed to the rampant spread of “intellectual arrogance.” In this culture, we have come to think that we have nothing to learn from one another; we are rewarded for emotional outrage over reflective thought; and we glorify a defensive rejection of those different from us.
Interweaving the works of classic philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Bertrand Russell and imposing them on a cybernetic future they could not have possibly even imagined, Lynch delves deeply into three core ideas that explain how we’ve gotten to the way we are:
• our natural tendency to be overconfident in our knowledge;
• the tribal politics that feed off our tendency;
• and the way the outrage factory of social media spreads those politics of arrogance and blind conviction.
In addition to identifying an ascendant “know-it-all-ism” in our culture, Lynch offers practical solutions for how we might start reversing this dangerous trend—from rejecting the banality of emoticons that rarely reveal insight to embracing the tenets of Socrates, who exemplified the humility of admitting how little we often know about the world, to the importance of dialogue if we want to know more. With bracing and deeply original analysis, Lynch holds a mirror up to American culture to reveal that the sources of our fragmentation start with our attitudes toward truth. Ultimately, Know-It-All Society makes a powerful new argument for the indispensable value of truth and humility in democracy.
Interweaving the works of classic philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Bertrand Russell and imposing them on a cybernetic future they could not have possibly even imagined, Lynch delves deeply into three core ideas that explain how we’ve gotten to the way we are:
• our natural tendency to be overconfident in our knowledge;
• the tribal politics that feed off our tendency;
• and the way the outrage factory of social media spreads those politics of arrogance and blind conviction.
In addition to identifying an ascendant “know-it-all-ism” in our culture, Lynch offers practical solutions for how we might start reversing this dangerous trend—from rejecting the banality of emoticons that rarely reveal insight to embracing the tenets of Socrates, who exemplified the humility of admitting how little we often know about the world, to the importance of dialogue if we want to know more. With bracing and deeply original analysis, Lynch holds a mirror up to American culture to reveal that the sources of our fragmentation start with our attitudes toward truth. Ultimately, Know-It-All Society makes a powerful new argument for the indispensable value of truth and humility in democracy.
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 13, 2019
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1663 people want to read
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August 22, 2019
If you had to summarize the main problem with our political culture in one sentence, you might borrow the line from Yeats that reads, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Or, if you prefer, you could go with Bertrand Russell's formulation: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.”
Michael Lynch’s latest book is a timely elaboration on this phenomena, including the psychological, sociological, and technological reasons for its perpetuation.
Here’s a quick outline of the problem: those that know the least are the most certain, because, unlike those who know the most, they are blissfully unaware of the extent of their own ignorance and of the true complexity of the world. This is the psychological origin of overconfidence and intellectual arrogance and is confirmed by the much-replicated research on the Dunning-Kruger effect and the “illusion of explanatory depth.”
Further, our technology and culture make things much worse. Most people get their information online, and from a small sliver of the web that caters to the views they already hold (resulting in rampant confirmation bias). Once online, people encounter the most passionate, dogmatic personalities that create the impression of infallibility and expertise, while the more knowledgeable—and therefore more modest personalities—are ignored or labeled as “meek” or “ineffectual.”
The dogmatists therefore attract the most followers, likes, and shares, spreading information that is superficial, simplistic, and emotionally volatile. People then argue, not to get at the truth of an issue that is far beyond their own knowledge or expertise, but to flaunt their identity as a member of whatever tribe is most closely associated with that particular belief.
Lynch brilliantly elaborates on these points using timely examples and the wisdom of several prominent philosophers including Socrates, Montaigne, Bertrand Russell, Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, and others. He shows how beliefs lead to convictions and then to contempt for all those who don’t share the same convictions. Politics then becomes a game of identity for everyone, as the search for truth is replaced by the accumulation of badges of identity that are then shared via social media.
Is there a way out of this? The final chapter of the book presents a solution: the embodiment of the most underrated political virtue of them all—intellectual humility. Strip away the passion and we are left with glaring deficiencies in our knowledge. The world is more complex than we suppose and our knowledge and intelligence are less impressive than we suppose—as repeatedly confirmed by psychological research. This doesn’t mean that we should abandon the concept of truth; it means we should pursue it with more humility and rigor.
Lynch provides us with an example to emulate—Socrates. Socrates recognized the nature of his own wisdom in that he had no pretensions to knowledge and sought to challenge every one of his beliefs. In many ways, Socrates represents the ideal of a solution: a dispassionate and humble pursuit of the truth using rigorous logic and respect for evidence, dialogue, and discussion. This is what makes the institutions of science, academia, and the press so critical for the continuation of rational dialogue and mutual respect that must be present for any democracy to work. What matters most, in the long run, is not the conclusions we reach, so much as the manner in which we reach them. If we abandon the concepts of truth, fallibility, civility, and rational debate—in service to short term political gains—all hope is lost.
Michael Lynch’s latest book is a timely elaboration on this phenomena, including the psychological, sociological, and technological reasons for its perpetuation.
Here’s a quick outline of the problem: those that know the least are the most certain, because, unlike those who know the most, they are blissfully unaware of the extent of their own ignorance and of the true complexity of the world. This is the psychological origin of overconfidence and intellectual arrogance and is confirmed by the much-replicated research on the Dunning-Kruger effect and the “illusion of explanatory depth.”
Further, our technology and culture make things much worse. Most people get their information online, and from a small sliver of the web that caters to the views they already hold (resulting in rampant confirmation bias). Once online, people encounter the most passionate, dogmatic personalities that create the impression of infallibility and expertise, while the more knowledgeable—and therefore more modest personalities—are ignored or labeled as “meek” or “ineffectual.”
The dogmatists therefore attract the most followers, likes, and shares, spreading information that is superficial, simplistic, and emotionally volatile. People then argue, not to get at the truth of an issue that is far beyond their own knowledge or expertise, but to flaunt their identity as a member of whatever tribe is most closely associated with that particular belief.
Lynch brilliantly elaborates on these points using timely examples and the wisdom of several prominent philosophers including Socrates, Montaigne, Bertrand Russell, Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, and others. He shows how beliefs lead to convictions and then to contempt for all those who don’t share the same convictions. Politics then becomes a game of identity for everyone, as the search for truth is replaced by the accumulation of badges of identity that are then shared via social media.
Is there a way out of this? The final chapter of the book presents a solution: the embodiment of the most underrated political virtue of them all—intellectual humility. Strip away the passion and we are left with glaring deficiencies in our knowledge. The world is more complex than we suppose and our knowledge and intelligence are less impressive than we suppose—as repeatedly confirmed by psychological research. This doesn’t mean that we should abandon the concept of truth; it means we should pursue it with more humility and rigor.
Lynch provides us with an example to emulate—Socrates. Socrates recognized the nature of his own wisdom in that he had no pretensions to knowledge and sought to challenge every one of his beliefs. In many ways, Socrates represents the ideal of a solution: a dispassionate and humble pursuit of the truth using rigorous logic and respect for evidence, dialogue, and discussion. This is what makes the institutions of science, academia, and the press so critical for the continuation of rational dialogue and mutual respect that must be present for any democracy to work. What matters most, in the long run, is not the conclusions we reach, so much as the manner in which we reach them. If we abandon the concepts of truth, fallibility, civility, and rational debate—in service to short term political gains—all hope is lost.
October 31, 2019
Reviews – Know-It-All Society by Michael Patrick Lynch
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is a sad book. It is sad because the author, Michael P. Lynch, thinks he is showing us how to avoid the traps of cognitive dissonance but all he manages is to show how cognitive dissonance is done. Lynch says quite a bit about humbly seeking truth and listening to both sides, but in practice, he stacks the deck like a crooked cardsharp. Thus, while he acknowledges that not all conservatives are racist, he treats all conservatives as if they were. Similarly, while he acknowledges that liberals are not Simon-pure in their goodness, he quickly explains that their positions are misunderstood and not all that bad. It is all very reassuring for those who are part of the cultural, bicoastal elite.
The book is even sadder when we consider the agony that Lynch had to go through to make even the tame criticisms of the left that he makes.
Lynch’s brief is to explain the current cultural moment. He finds that the current state of mind of the politically involved is arrogant and dogmatic. He points out that it seems that the “tenor of our political discourse” communicates that we are to believe as “dogmatically as possible.”
That was page 2 of the book, and by page 3 the book was going off track in a silly direction. On page 3, Lynch takes the obligatory shot at President Trump because “we were told crowds were bigger than they were.” I had just finished the Pop Culture and Philosophy book on “1984” where this statement had been repeatedly offered as the sine qua non of Orwellian doublespeak, so I decided to look into it. It turns out that Trump’s statement was made from his perspective at the podium where one might charitably think that the speaker would judge crowd sizes as very large. It’s a trivial point, actually, but making this trivia so important seems “dogmatic.”
In addition, Lynch makes sneering references to “fake news” which he defines as “news that one doesn’t like,” but this is question-begging, particularly after the last three years where Washington and New York media have repeatedly reported false news. For example, in the same stories that carried Trump’s claims about “crowd sizes,” the media falsely reported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. in order to paint Trump as a racist. That story is not “news we don’t like” – many New Yorkers loved the story – it was patently false and is part of a pattern of false to fact stories being printed without editorial control. Sharyl Attkisson has done a yeoman job of collecting a list of 95 fake news stories about Trump.
So, the book starts off with so many things going wrong at the same time.
With that unpromising start, the second chapter on “Montaigne’s Warning” was good and is a useful incentive to read some of Montaigne’s essays for self-improvement. Montaigne’s warning is against arrogance and the sense of superiority that “we see…in the marches of neo-Nazis on college campuses.”
At which point, we have to wonder about the author’s grip on reality. We don’t see Neo-Nazis marching on college campuses. What we see on college campuses, we mostly see leftists “deplatforming” conservatives and even running insufficiently woke college professors off campus. (Google “Evergreen College/Brett Weinstein.”) The only neo-Nazis who get close to college campuses are the fabrications of hate crime hoaxes. (See Hate Crime Hoax by Wilfred Reilly.)
Good heavens, but this is painful. I assume that Lynch has to sell books to his tribe.
The problem, of course, is that we are incentivized to be confident. We want the flattery of agreement. We associate facts.
All of which is nicely illustrated by the fantasy of Neo-Nazis marching on college campuses.
The third chapter is the “Outrage Factory” in which Lynch explains Dunning-Kruger. People think they know more than they do because they can Google when they want, but they don’t do the hard work of understanding things. People are more prone to conspiracies. They are more prone to emotions and outrage. Lynch’s example is, of course, someone who showed up at a pizza restaurant to check out a claim that a pedophile ring was being run out of the basement. (Lynch, of course, doesn’t touch the much larger bit of conspiracy chasing about Trump being a Russian mole since that fabrication was one adopted by this tribe.)
Honestly, so far, the analysis is superficial and obvious. All the reader gets is a rehash of cognitive theory being used occasionally to reinforce some dodgy political point that Lynch believes in, which is ironic because in chapter four, Lynch shares that “the hard truth is that while we all like to think of ourselves as open-minded and intellectually humble, most of us find uncomfortable, or even morally problematic, the prospect of changing our mind about something that matters.”
In chapter four- “Where the Spade Turns” – Lynch makes some worthwhile observations about how our convictions play a role in our self-identity. Lynch observes that “A conviction is a commitment that reflects the kind of person we want to be.” Interestingly, this seems like a completely different perspective than the classical Thomistic understanding. Lynch is making one’s virtue depends on one’s propositional commitments. In Thomism, virtue is act dependent: choices make habits make virtues make character.
Reflecting on the polarization of the modern age, it seems that this may be the heart of the polarization. If convictions make virtues, then those who have the right commitments are virtuous and those without the right commitments are base and ignoble. This seems an apt description of the attitude we see which induces physical attacks on Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats and hysterical efforts to deplatform conservative speakers on college campuses.
Lynch then turns to politics. He first takes on the “Arrogance and the American Right.” Naturally, he starts with Hannah Arendt and a discussion of the Nazis, because, you know, Nazis and conservatives, jada, jada. Then, there is Trump who is nasty and unseemly. Finally, we have “status threats”; conservatives didn’t support Trump because he validated their attitudes but because they are are “frustrated with an economic system rife with inequalities.” Apparently, conservatives have false beliefs that they refuse to revise because of their needs to maintain their mythic past, etc.
Frankly, the whole chapter is an exercise in bafflegab that makes no effort to do anything but link conservatives to Nazis, such as the Neo-Nazis who chanted about “Jews will not replace us.” This seems like yet another good example of what Lynch warned the reader against earlier in the book than any kind of real discussion of real people. There are many far more serious book about the conservative mindset after 2016. Check out White Working Class by Joan C. Williams, who is a liberal and far more perceptive than Lynch.
When we turn to “Liberalism and Identity Politics,” we don’t see the linkage to extremists. Instead, we get a lot of tender loving care. This introductory section is unintentionally funny:
“Google this topic, or roam around social media, and you’ll find lots of pieces that talk about liberals as intolerant, smug and disdainful. And those are the polite words.
Most of my fellow liberals are apt to shrug their shoulders at this. Sticks and stones, they say: after all, reflection and open-mindedness are core liberal virtues. The fact that others don’t appreciate our virtuousness, or project their own arrogant attitudes onto our values, is their problem, not ours.
Indeed, but one might wonder whether that reaction is part of the problem.”
I love that “indeed.” It’s like Pepe Lepew saying “A skunk? Moi???”
Lynch allows that liberals may have a problem with identity politics and that this may lead to some tribalism, but he assures his friends that this is a misunderstanding. Liberalism is all about “Identity as Recognition,” not “Identity as Tribalism.” Unless, of course, it involves a “conservative provocateur defending the idea that “it is okay to be white,’” to which Lynch archly says “Which seems, frankly, like getting up to defend that idea that it is okay to like ice cream. No one really has been worrying about that have they?”
Good grief, where has this guy been? This week, Michelle Obama accused all whites of fleeing minorities in fear, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez implied in questions to a witness that “whites” were responsible for “climate change,” and a professor explained to the New York Times that when Indians beat up on blacks they were “enacting whiteness.” He has never heard about “white privilege”?
His next book should involve something about “living in a bubble.”
The chapter was painful in so many ways.
Speaking of bubble, Lynch offers this insightful observation on his own standing within the bubble. After acknowledging "liberal dominance" in university faculties - actually, the percentage is more like the numbers that Totalitarians role up in fixed plebiscites - Lynch suggests that the problem is that liberals are tempted to believe that conservatives just can't measure up to scholarship. In a footnote he offers the following:
"The solution, I think, is not going to be as simple as calling for more "viewpoint diversity" on faculties (a term I don't really understand) or as drastic as calling for affirmative action policies for the hiring of conservative academics. These latter proposals, while setting off alarms around liberal academy, are particularly unserious, since (1) it is not clear that they would be constitutional; (2) they are deeply impractical, since, ironically it would fall largely on liberal professor to judge whether a colleague is "conservative" or not; and (3)conservatives largely oppose them anyway." (p. 181.)
A few observations:
First, he doesn't understand the meaning of the term "viewpoint diversity"????? Deliberate obtuseness is never a good look.
Second, it is weird that he finds constitutional problems in not discriminating based on First Amendment grounds, but I assume he thinks racial discrimination in the form of "affirmative action" is non-controversial.
Third, obviously, there are no problems in deciding who is "Black" or "Hispanic." No one games that system, ever.
Fourth, conservatives oppose discrimination because they champion individual merit. For a liberal to make this argument is deeply hypocritical.
The reason that liberal professors oppose a rule that would end "viewpoint discrimination" - actually, retaliation for exercising First Amendment rights - is that it is their sinecure that is threatened. They are more than happy to act like social planners when it is merely the children of working-class whites being aced out of college slots in favor of the children of their professional-class peers. They are also willing to live with the "mismatch effect" that condemns those same students who they have acted as fairy godmothers with being forced to compete out of their league.
In short, this footnote is a classic example of unthinking, uncritical, arrogant, group-think.
His observations about the contempt that liberals feel toward conservatives seemed accurate, however.
Toward the end, Lynch suggests that “reflective practices” should be institutionalized. He advises “the news media can combat arrogance by reminding us of the fallibility of the powerful.
Indeed. The problem is that the media went completely AWOL during the Obama years. We had pictures of President Obama with a halo. Obama was hailed as the lightworker. Problematic stories about Obama were killed.
The last three years have shown the media completely in the tank for one side of the political equation. The media hardly covered itself in glory over the Mueller Investigation/Report. We’ve seen journalists explaining that they are excused from journalistic ethics because Trump is so very bad. We have also heard the owner of the Washington Post tell his reporters after the Mueller Report misfired that they needed to make every story about Trump being a “racist.” It is not surprising that the media is polling lower approval numbers than Trump.
Ultimately, the problem with this book is that it is written from within the bubble. If it had taken a fair an objective book that challenged leftism from the inside, it would have been honest and worthwhile and would have made the critique of conservativism more believable. But, instead, it is obvious that the author wants the applause of his peers and has the arrogance of his convictions which renders him unwilling to listen to anything outside the bubble he inhabits.
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is a sad book. It is sad because the author, Michael P. Lynch, thinks he is showing us how to avoid the traps of cognitive dissonance but all he manages is to show how cognitive dissonance is done. Lynch says quite a bit about humbly seeking truth and listening to both sides, but in practice, he stacks the deck like a crooked cardsharp. Thus, while he acknowledges that not all conservatives are racist, he treats all conservatives as if they were. Similarly, while he acknowledges that liberals are not Simon-pure in their goodness, he quickly explains that their positions are misunderstood and not all that bad. It is all very reassuring for those who are part of the cultural, bicoastal elite.
The book is even sadder when we consider the agony that Lynch had to go through to make even the tame criticisms of the left that he makes.
Lynch’s brief is to explain the current cultural moment. He finds that the current state of mind of the politically involved is arrogant and dogmatic. He points out that it seems that the “tenor of our political discourse” communicates that we are to believe as “dogmatically as possible.”
That was page 2 of the book, and by page 3 the book was going off track in a silly direction. On page 3, Lynch takes the obligatory shot at President Trump because “we were told crowds were bigger than they were.” I had just finished the Pop Culture and Philosophy book on “1984” where this statement had been repeatedly offered as the sine qua non of Orwellian doublespeak, so I decided to look into it. It turns out that Trump’s statement was made from his perspective at the podium where one might charitably think that the speaker would judge crowd sizes as very large. It’s a trivial point, actually, but making this trivia so important seems “dogmatic.”
In addition, Lynch makes sneering references to “fake news” which he defines as “news that one doesn’t like,” but this is question-begging, particularly after the last three years where Washington and New York media have repeatedly reported false news. For example, in the same stories that carried Trump’s claims about “crowd sizes,” the media falsely reported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. in order to paint Trump as a racist. That story is not “news we don’t like” – many New Yorkers loved the story – it was patently false and is part of a pattern of false to fact stories being printed without editorial control. Sharyl Attkisson has done a yeoman job of collecting a list of 95 fake news stories about Trump.
So, the book starts off with so many things going wrong at the same time.
With that unpromising start, the second chapter on “Montaigne’s Warning” was good and is a useful incentive to read some of Montaigne’s essays for self-improvement. Montaigne’s warning is against arrogance and the sense of superiority that “we see…in the marches of neo-Nazis on college campuses.”
At which point, we have to wonder about the author’s grip on reality. We don’t see Neo-Nazis marching on college campuses. What we see on college campuses, we mostly see leftists “deplatforming” conservatives and even running insufficiently woke college professors off campus. (Google “Evergreen College/Brett Weinstein.”) The only neo-Nazis who get close to college campuses are the fabrications of hate crime hoaxes. (See Hate Crime Hoax by Wilfred Reilly.)
Good heavens, but this is painful. I assume that Lynch has to sell books to his tribe.
The problem, of course, is that we are incentivized to be confident. We want the flattery of agreement. We associate facts.
All of which is nicely illustrated by the fantasy of Neo-Nazis marching on college campuses.
The third chapter is the “Outrage Factory” in which Lynch explains Dunning-Kruger. People think they know more than they do because they can Google when they want, but they don’t do the hard work of understanding things. People are more prone to conspiracies. They are more prone to emotions and outrage. Lynch’s example is, of course, someone who showed up at a pizza restaurant to check out a claim that a pedophile ring was being run out of the basement. (Lynch, of course, doesn’t touch the much larger bit of conspiracy chasing about Trump being a Russian mole since that fabrication was one adopted by this tribe.)
Honestly, so far, the analysis is superficial and obvious. All the reader gets is a rehash of cognitive theory being used occasionally to reinforce some dodgy political point that Lynch believes in, which is ironic because in chapter four, Lynch shares that “the hard truth is that while we all like to think of ourselves as open-minded and intellectually humble, most of us find uncomfortable, or even morally problematic, the prospect of changing our mind about something that matters.”
In chapter four- “Where the Spade Turns” – Lynch makes some worthwhile observations about how our convictions play a role in our self-identity. Lynch observes that “A conviction is a commitment that reflects the kind of person we want to be.” Interestingly, this seems like a completely different perspective than the classical Thomistic understanding. Lynch is making one’s virtue depends on one’s propositional commitments. In Thomism, virtue is act dependent: choices make habits make virtues make character.
Reflecting on the polarization of the modern age, it seems that this may be the heart of the polarization. If convictions make virtues, then those who have the right commitments are virtuous and those without the right commitments are base and ignoble. This seems an apt description of the attitude we see which induces physical attacks on Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats and hysterical efforts to deplatform conservative speakers on college campuses.
Lynch then turns to politics. He first takes on the “Arrogance and the American Right.” Naturally, he starts with Hannah Arendt and a discussion of the Nazis, because, you know, Nazis and conservatives, jada, jada. Then, there is Trump who is nasty and unseemly. Finally, we have “status threats”; conservatives didn’t support Trump because he validated their attitudes but because they are are “frustrated with an economic system rife with inequalities.” Apparently, conservatives have false beliefs that they refuse to revise because of their needs to maintain their mythic past, etc.
Frankly, the whole chapter is an exercise in bafflegab that makes no effort to do anything but link conservatives to Nazis, such as the Neo-Nazis who chanted about “Jews will not replace us.” This seems like yet another good example of what Lynch warned the reader against earlier in the book than any kind of real discussion of real people. There are many far more serious book about the conservative mindset after 2016. Check out White Working Class by Joan C. Williams, who is a liberal and far more perceptive than Lynch.
When we turn to “Liberalism and Identity Politics,” we don’t see the linkage to extremists. Instead, we get a lot of tender loving care. This introductory section is unintentionally funny:
“Google this topic, or roam around social media, and you’ll find lots of pieces that talk about liberals as intolerant, smug and disdainful. And those are the polite words.
Most of my fellow liberals are apt to shrug their shoulders at this. Sticks and stones, they say: after all, reflection and open-mindedness are core liberal virtues. The fact that others don’t appreciate our virtuousness, or project their own arrogant attitudes onto our values, is their problem, not ours.
Indeed, but one might wonder whether that reaction is part of the problem.”
I love that “indeed.” It’s like Pepe Lepew saying “A skunk? Moi???”
Lynch allows that liberals may have a problem with identity politics and that this may lead to some tribalism, but he assures his friends that this is a misunderstanding. Liberalism is all about “Identity as Recognition,” not “Identity as Tribalism.” Unless, of course, it involves a “conservative provocateur defending the idea that “it is okay to be white,’” to which Lynch archly says “Which seems, frankly, like getting up to defend that idea that it is okay to like ice cream. No one really has been worrying about that have they?”
Good grief, where has this guy been? This week, Michelle Obama accused all whites of fleeing minorities in fear, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez implied in questions to a witness that “whites” were responsible for “climate change,” and a professor explained to the New York Times that when Indians beat up on blacks they were “enacting whiteness.” He has never heard about “white privilege”?
His next book should involve something about “living in a bubble.”
The chapter was painful in so many ways.
Speaking of bubble, Lynch offers this insightful observation on his own standing within the bubble. After acknowledging "liberal dominance" in university faculties - actually, the percentage is more like the numbers that Totalitarians role up in fixed plebiscites - Lynch suggests that the problem is that liberals are tempted to believe that conservatives just can't measure up to scholarship. In a footnote he offers the following:
"The solution, I think, is not going to be as simple as calling for more "viewpoint diversity" on faculties (a term I don't really understand) or as drastic as calling for affirmative action policies for the hiring of conservative academics. These latter proposals, while setting off alarms around liberal academy, are particularly unserious, since (1) it is not clear that they would be constitutional; (2) they are deeply impractical, since, ironically it would fall largely on liberal professor to judge whether a colleague is "conservative" or not; and (3)conservatives largely oppose them anyway." (p. 181.)
A few observations:
First, he doesn't understand the meaning of the term "viewpoint diversity"????? Deliberate obtuseness is never a good look.
Second, it is weird that he finds constitutional problems in not discriminating based on First Amendment grounds, but I assume he thinks racial discrimination in the form of "affirmative action" is non-controversial.
Third, obviously, there are no problems in deciding who is "Black" or "Hispanic." No one games that system, ever.
Fourth, conservatives oppose discrimination because they champion individual merit. For a liberal to make this argument is deeply hypocritical.
The reason that liberal professors oppose a rule that would end "viewpoint discrimination" - actually, retaliation for exercising First Amendment rights - is that it is their sinecure that is threatened. They are more than happy to act like social planners when it is merely the children of working-class whites being aced out of college slots in favor of the children of their professional-class peers. They are also willing to live with the "mismatch effect" that condemns those same students who they have acted as fairy godmothers with being forced to compete out of their league.
In short, this footnote is a classic example of unthinking, uncritical, arrogant, group-think.
His observations about the contempt that liberals feel toward conservatives seemed accurate, however.
Toward the end, Lynch suggests that “reflective practices” should be institutionalized. He advises “the news media can combat arrogance by reminding us of the fallibility of the powerful.
Indeed. The problem is that the media went completely AWOL during the Obama years. We had pictures of President Obama with a halo. Obama was hailed as the lightworker. Problematic stories about Obama were killed.
The last three years have shown the media completely in the tank for one side of the political equation. The media hardly covered itself in glory over the Mueller Investigation/Report. We’ve seen journalists explaining that they are excused from journalistic ethics because Trump is so very bad. We have also heard the owner of the Washington Post tell his reporters after the Mueller Report misfired that they needed to make every story about Trump being a “racist.” It is not surprising that the media is polling lower approval numbers than Trump.
Ultimately, the problem with this book is that it is written from within the bubble. If it had taken a fair an objective book that challenged leftism from the inside, it would have been honest and worthwhile and would have made the critique of conservativism more believable. But, instead, it is obvious that the author wants the applause of his peers and has the arrogance of his convictions which renders him unwilling to listen to anything outside the bubble he inhabits.
November 7, 2019
Though I think the book could have been clearer and better written, I think this idea is crucial to understanding the breakdown of dialogue: people’s ideas and opinions have become their identities and thus cannot be changed. Signing up to be part of a political tribe means buying the whole range of ideas that tribe ascribes to. The tribal part isn’t anything new but the centering of politics is.
March 11, 2024
4th:
I’ve read this book about once per year since I first picked it up a few years ago. Whenever I get to a point of getting extremely frustrated by people who practice 0 intellectual humility, I read this book and it helps chill me out. Michael P. Lynch explains why we think we know more than we do, how our tribalism gives us a massive blindspot, and much more. Fantastic book.
3rd read:
This was my annual read of this book, and I believe this was my third time reading it. It’s an amazing book that everyone should read. I always find myself reading it when I’m fed up with dealing with irrational people who believe weird things and fall victim to group think. Lynch’s book helps me understand what’s going on with them and have a bit more compassion because a lot of the irrationality and tribalism is just part of human nature.
2nd read:
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is one of the most underrated books of recent years, and I’m totally willing to die on that hill. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the lack of intellectual humility as I watch people argue over political and social issues, so I wanted to re-read this book by Michael Lynch. I loved this book 10x more than the first time I read it now that I better understand the ideas from this book. The book is such a perfect blend of philosophy, psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Lynch breaks down how we wrap our opinions up with our identity and group membership, and it completely distorts how we engage with others. This book is a must read, and I wish I could do more to promote it. So, if you’re reading this, go buy it right now.
I’ve read this book about once per year since I first picked it up a few years ago. Whenever I get to a point of getting extremely frustrated by people who practice 0 intellectual humility, I read this book and it helps chill me out. Michael P. Lynch explains why we think we know more than we do, how our tribalism gives us a massive blindspot, and much more. Fantastic book.
3rd read:
This was my annual read of this book, and I believe this was my third time reading it. It’s an amazing book that everyone should read. I always find myself reading it when I’m fed up with dealing with irrational people who believe weird things and fall victim to group think. Lynch’s book helps me understand what’s going on with them and have a bit more compassion because a lot of the irrationality and tribalism is just part of human nature.
2nd read:
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is one of the most underrated books of recent years, and I’m totally willing to die on that hill. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the lack of intellectual humility as I watch people argue over political and social issues, so I wanted to re-read this book by Michael Lynch. I loved this book 10x more than the first time I read it now that I better understand the ideas from this book. The book is such a perfect blend of philosophy, psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Lynch breaks down how we wrap our opinions up with our identity and group membership, and it completely distorts how we engage with others. This book is a must read, and I wish I could do more to promote it. So, if you’re reading this, go buy it right now.
October 18, 2019
Review title: Truth, belief, and conviction
The Trump era in American politics has generated shelf-fulls of books explaining the incivility in American politics today, usually starting from the premise of the total incorrectiness of those on the side opposite the author's viewpoint. I know, because it seems my small local library has bought a shelf-full, from both sides. So when I picked this one up and saw that it's author was in fact an academic philosopher, that it didn't seem to tack on one side or the other of the political windstorm., and that the purpose was to understand how we know what we know and particularly what we don't know, I brought it home. It's slim 170 pages also helped; I didn't have to invest a huge amount of time in dross if I didn't like what I read.
What I read was thought-provoking if not stunningly revealing. Lynch really is interested in the philosophical roots of knowledge, starting with the Greek philosophers and referencing Montaigne, Hume, Dewey, and many other well known thinkers since. As it turns out, humans have a philosophical and psychological tendency to think we know more than we do, and in fact ascribe "social knowledge"--the things "everybody" knows--to our personal knowledge stash. This gives us an intellectual arrogance that we are right and don't need to question what we know or believe.
The problem in the internet age is the ready supply of boundless knowledge that we can selectively claim for "us" (vs "them") as evidence to support the truth of our beliefs. When "us" vs "them" hardens into tribalism (think Fox News vs CNN) then our arrogance takes on a moral component that becomes dangerous: of course we are right because we are name your identity group here (white not black, liberal not conservative, female not male, Christian not Muslim....) and therefore we are right by rights because we are superior to "them" in the other tribe, so we needn't listen to them, consider if their beliefs and convictions are right, or even respect their right to believe them or express them politically. The danger is a path that ends as in Hitler's Germany at the terrifying end that we need not, indeed should not because of "their" innate inferiority, respect "their" rights to political participation, home and occupation, or life itself.
After a couple of brief chapters setting the philosophical stage, Lynch takes a couple of chapters to give examples from both the conservative and liberal tribes, then concludes with a call for intellectual humility: "to see your worldview as open to improvement from new evidence and the experience of others." (p. 149). The approach is reasoned and reasonable. The problem is that given the philosophical, psychological, and political forces Lynch has documented weighing on the side of intellectual arrogance it is hard to see how and where the change will come.
This can easily be read in a couple of sittings over an hour or so. It is footnoted and Lynch provides a bibliography of sources and additional reading for those who want to understand the intellectual arguments for truth, belief, and conviction. But will it make a difference?
The Trump era in American politics has generated shelf-fulls of books explaining the incivility in American politics today, usually starting from the premise of the total incorrectiness of those on the side opposite the author's viewpoint. I know, because it seems my small local library has bought a shelf-full, from both sides. So when I picked this one up and saw that it's author was in fact an academic philosopher, that it didn't seem to tack on one side or the other of the political windstorm., and that the purpose was to understand how we know what we know and particularly what we don't know, I brought it home. It's slim 170 pages also helped; I didn't have to invest a huge amount of time in dross if I didn't like what I read.
What I read was thought-provoking if not stunningly revealing. Lynch really is interested in the philosophical roots of knowledge, starting with the Greek philosophers and referencing Montaigne, Hume, Dewey, and many other well known thinkers since. As it turns out, humans have a philosophical and psychological tendency to think we know more than we do, and in fact ascribe "social knowledge"--the things "everybody" knows--to our personal knowledge stash. This gives us an intellectual arrogance that we are right and don't need to question what we know or believe.
The problem in the internet age is the ready supply of boundless knowledge that we can selectively claim for "us" (vs "them") as evidence to support the truth of our beliefs. When "us" vs "them" hardens into tribalism (think Fox News vs CNN) then our arrogance takes on a moral component that becomes dangerous: of course we are right because we are name your identity group here (white not black, liberal not conservative, female not male, Christian not Muslim....) and therefore we are right by rights because we are superior to "them" in the other tribe, so we needn't listen to them, consider if their beliefs and convictions are right, or even respect their right to believe them or express them politically. The danger is a path that ends as in Hitler's Germany at the terrifying end that we need not, indeed should not because of "their" innate inferiority, respect "their" rights to political participation, home and occupation, or life itself.
After a couple of brief chapters setting the philosophical stage, Lynch takes a couple of chapters to give examples from both the conservative and liberal tribes, then concludes with a call for intellectual humility: "to see your worldview as open to improvement from new evidence and the experience of others." (p. 149). The approach is reasoned and reasonable. The problem is that given the philosophical, psychological, and political forces Lynch has documented weighing on the side of intellectual arrogance it is hard to see how and where the change will come.
This can easily be read in a couple of sittings over an hour or so. It is footnoted and Lynch provides a bibliography of sources and additional reading for those who want to understand the intellectual arguments for truth, belief, and conviction. But will it make a difference?
September 14, 2019
"There's nothing certain except that nothing is certain"- Montaigne
"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.", Mark Twain
"Reason is the slave of the passions" - David Hume
How did we get to this point? As a species, we know more about our world and everything in it, yet we lack any sense of awe or humility about all of the things we don't know. The Dunning Kruger effect has shown that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. We tend to overvalue our mastery of any field after learning just a bit, and have no idea what lies between the lines of everything we think we know. Things like the Iraq war, 2008 financial crisis, and Vietnam all came from the minds of people who assumed they had the world figured out only to be shocked at how everything went all wrong.
Michael Lynch tackles this thorny question with the help of a bevy of top thinkers and philosophers in this new book. The author takes a deep dive into the outrage factory he calls the internet, and the vast echo chamber there that rewards emotions over reflection. Outrage feels good and sanctimony makes us feel better than others.
The problem starts when our beliefs turn into convictions. Those convictions become integral to our very identity. Once that happens, our brain sees evidence that conflicts with our viewpoints as an existential threat. We demonize the evidence and those who present it in a desperate act of self-preservation. Our brain seeks out others who confirm our biases, and rejects those that threaten them.
Lynch dives a bit into politics, pointing fingers at viewpoints both left and right of the spectrum, accusing both sides of a tribal arrogance that has them believing in their own superiority and cleverness.
Unfortunately, the author has no easy solutions to this dilemma, other than to encourage others to be more intellectually humble. We must have room in our worldviews for new evidence, and be willing to admit they can be improved, sometimes from sources that we don't much like. We need what he calls a space of reasons, where honest discussions about issues can take place. His main example is the Socratic method, a cooperative exercise in asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking, looking for basic values and assumptions.
American politics has evolved into a screaming match of know-it-alls, with a president who claims that "Nobody knows more about ____ than me." This book points the way to a better way of valuing truth and humility over gut feelings and certainty.
"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.", Mark Twain
"Reason is the slave of the passions" - David Hume
How did we get to this point? As a species, we know more about our world and everything in it, yet we lack any sense of awe or humility about all of the things we don't know. The Dunning Kruger effect has shown that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. We tend to overvalue our mastery of any field after learning just a bit, and have no idea what lies between the lines of everything we think we know. Things like the Iraq war, 2008 financial crisis, and Vietnam all came from the minds of people who assumed they had the world figured out only to be shocked at how everything went all wrong.
Michael Lynch tackles this thorny question with the help of a bevy of top thinkers and philosophers in this new book. The author takes a deep dive into the outrage factory he calls the internet, and the vast echo chamber there that rewards emotions over reflection. Outrage feels good and sanctimony makes us feel better than others.
The problem starts when our beliefs turn into convictions. Those convictions become integral to our very identity. Once that happens, our brain sees evidence that conflicts with our viewpoints as an existential threat. We demonize the evidence and those who present it in a desperate act of self-preservation. Our brain seeks out others who confirm our biases, and rejects those that threaten them.
Lynch dives a bit into politics, pointing fingers at viewpoints both left and right of the spectrum, accusing both sides of a tribal arrogance that has them believing in their own superiority and cleverness.
Unfortunately, the author has no easy solutions to this dilemma, other than to encourage others to be more intellectually humble. We must have room in our worldviews for new evidence, and be willing to admit they can be improved, sometimes from sources that we don't much like. We need what he calls a space of reasons, where honest discussions about issues can take place. His main example is the Socratic method, a cooperative exercise in asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking, looking for basic values and assumptions.
American politics has evolved into a screaming match of know-it-alls, with a president who claims that "Nobody knows more about ____ than me." This book points the way to a better way of valuing truth and humility over gut feelings and certainty.
August 1, 2019
No one likes a know-it-all. They can quickly turn a pleasant conversation into a tedious affair. Despite their annoying propensities, they remain relatively harmless. A know-it-all society, however, can be downright dangerous to the democratic fabric of the country. So says Michael Patrick Lynch in his slim yet deeply considered study of society’s growing problem of intellectual arrogance in Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture.
Lynch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and the director of the Humanities Institute, has previously written about the nexus of technology and human knowledge in The Internet of Us. He expands here on another side effect of our 24-hour information superhighway—intellectual arrogance—and how it is poisoning our politics, our communities, and our minds.
Lynch describes in readably academic prose how the information pollution we subject ourselves to everyday has increased the incivility of our discourse, most appallingly epitomized by the present occupant of the White House. Instead of debate, the polarized Left and Right stand on opposite sides hurling insults, a shared intellectual arrogance calcifying their beliefs into a tribal arrogance that speaks in dialectically dangerous terms of “we” and “them” and places ego above truth. People have stopped listening to others’ ideas, Lynch says, and instead rest in the false security of believing they know everything there is to know. As a result, our democracy is impoverished and stunted by bias and dogmatism.
How did we arrive at this troubled state of affairs? Look no further than society’s over-reliance on the internet and social media to communicate ideas and information. When the most arcane piece of information (not always true) is a mere Google keyword search away and the “outrage factory” of social media encourages people to emote and virtue signal to their respective tribes then…Houston, we have a problem. Much of our “Google-knowing,” as Lynch puts it, revolves around the daily, shallow intake of information that requires zero intellectual discipline in its acquisition and makes no demands for a deeper contextual exploration. As a result, we’ve become a society where people believe they know more than others but actually know less than they think.
This is where we all need to step back and, as Lynch puts it, “own our limitations.” In other words, exercise intellectual humility. “Our tendency to overestimate our knowledge isn’t just a phase; it is part of human nature,” Lynch writes, and a panoply of some of the greatest philosophical minds are his best sources to attest to that. Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century nobleman, politician, and superb essayist, took a break from politics and retreated to a tower (literally, a tower) to escape the intellectual arrogance of his day and age. He believed there was a plague on Mankind, “the opinion that he knows something.”
We still suffer the symptoms of that plague in varying degrees, but the wisdom of those who’ve come before can offer some remedy. Lynch threads other great thinkers throughout the fabric of his argument: Hume, Locke, Hobbes, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Arendt, and of course, Socrates, dance onto Lynch’s pages with their insights and warnings. (Philosopher Pro Tip: We’re all stumbling in the dark, but the wisest people know that they are.)
Lynch’s audience would be those open to questioning their assumptions, or at least wondering why so many people today posture as experts on everything. If you pick up this book looking for reinforcement of your political position, just know the author employs powerful and contemporary examples of the ways intellectual arrogance has dirtied the political climate on both the Right and the Left. No one gets out of this book unscathed.
This is where the value of reading Lynch’s book becomes apparent: it holds up a shiny mirror to our face and tells us, in the words of Ayn Rand, to check our premises. Do we really know what we know? What is “knowing”? Have we built our beliefs on solid reasoning and evidence? Do we seek dialogue with others of differing opinions to listen and perhaps even learn? Are we operating out of good faith in our social media practices? Lynch invites us to consider these and other questions in the spirit of the Socratic method, which encourages a quest for knowledge by constant inquiry. After all, dogmatism and intellectual humility cannot share the same space. Learning is an infinite act, and it behooves us as a culture and a democratic society to acknowledge what we know and, more importantly, what we don’t.
Lynch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and the director of the Humanities Institute, has previously written about the nexus of technology and human knowledge in The Internet of Us. He expands here on another side effect of our 24-hour information superhighway—intellectual arrogance—and how it is poisoning our politics, our communities, and our minds.
Lynch describes in readably academic prose how the information pollution we subject ourselves to everyday has increased the incivility of our discourse, most appallingly epitomized by the present occupant of the White House. Instead of debate, the polarized Left and Right stand on opposite sides hurling insults, a shared intellectual arrogance calcifying their beliefs into a tribal arrogance that speaks in dialectically dangerous terms of “we” and “them” and places ego above truth. People have stopped listening to others’ ideas, Lynch says, and instead rest in the false security of believing they know everything there is to know. As a result, our democracy is impoverished and stunted by bias and dogmatism.
How did we arrive at this troubled state of affairs? Look no further than society’s over-reliance on the internet and social media to communicate ideas and information. When the most arcane piece of information (not always true) is a mere Google keyword search away and the “outrage factory” of social media encourages people to emote and virtue signal to their respective tribes then…Houston, we have a problem. Much of our “Google-knowing,” as Lynch puts it, revolves around the daily, shallow intake of information that requires zero intellectual discipline in its acquisition and makes no demands for a deeper contextual exploration. As a result, we’ve become a society where people believe they know more than others but actually know less than they think.
This is where we all need to step back and, as Lynch puts it, “own our limitations.” In other words, exercise intellectual humility. “Our tendency to overestimate our knowledge isn’t just a phase; it is part of human nature,” Lynch writes, and a panoply of some of the greatest philosophical minds are his best sources to attest to that. Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century nobleman, politician, and superb essayist, took a break from politics and retreated to a tower (literally, a tower) to escape the intellectual arrogance of his day and age. He believed there was a plague on Mankind, “the opinion that he knows something.”
We still suffer the symptoms of that plague in varying degrees, but the wisdom of those who’ve come before can offer some remedy. Lynch threads other great thinkers throughout the fabric of his argument: Hume, Locke, Hobbes, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Arendt, and of course, Socrates, dance onto Lynch’s pages with their insights and warnings. (Philosopher Pro Tip: We’re all stumbling in the dark, but the wisest people know that they are.)
Lynch’s audience would be those open to questioning their assumptions, or at least wondering why so many people today posture as experts on everything. If you pick up this book looking for reinforcement of your political position, just know the author employs powerful and contemporary examples of the ways intellectual arrogance has dirtied the political climate on both the Right and the Left. No one gets out of this book unscathed.
This is where the value of reading Lynch’s book becomes apparent: it holds up a shiny mirror to our face and tells us, in the words of Ayn Rand, to check our premises. Do we really know what we know? What is “knowing”? Have we built our beliefs on solid reasoning and evidence? Do we seek dialogue with others of differing opinions to listen and perhaps even learn? Are we operating out of good faith in our social media practices? Lynch invites us to consider these and other questions in the spirit of the Socratic method, which encourages a quest for knowledge by constant inquiry. After all, dogmatism and intellectual humility cannot share the same space. Learning is an infinite act, and it behooves us as a culture and a democratic society to acknowledge what we know and, more importantly, what we don’t.
January 17, 2020
There are a lot of great points here, and a few things that could be considered more deeply.
As a person on the internet I have come to dread the fact that everybody seems to have become an insufferable know-it-all, at least in their online interactions (I am not entirely immune to this tendency myself). Lynch does a great job diagnosing the problem and some of its causes. Like Lynch, I find this problem to be pervasive on both the political right and left. Although it takes different forms at opposing ends of the political spectrum, the phenomenon is annoying in both forms (although I think far more dangerous on the right these days). I was honestly a bit worried to see discussion of "identity politics," but it turned out to be a nice surprise when Lynch not only defined what he meant but distanced himself from the problematically dismissive ways in which that term gets used by the right and even by some on the left. I was also pleasantly surprised by Lynch's incorporation of philosophy (especially epistemology) in a relatively jargon-free, accessible way (I have a few quibbles with his understanding of ancient skepticism, but I have those quibbles with almost all contemporary philosophers, so I'll let it go).
For all his insights, I found it odd that Lynch never questioned who this "we" is that he refers to constantly. American intellectuals? Upper middle class white people? Coastal elites? Philosophers?
I was also disappointed by his constant use of the word "tribalism." I'm sure he didn't intend it this way, but it does have the unintended consequence of reinforcing the idea that Indigenous people are "primitive" or "uncivilized." Why not use the word "factionalism" instead? It's more precise and doesn't have that connotation.
Maybe some of these imprecisions are a function of Lynch's mostly successful attempt to write for a popular audience rather than an academic audience who would expect more pedantic qualification.
As much as I am a fan of open and honest discourse between people who disagree with each other and as much as I want to wholeheartedly agree with Lynch's prescriptions in the final chapter, I have to admit that the last five years or so have made me a bit more cynical. Certainly some--I would like to think most--people who are leftist elitist know-it-alls or white men suffering from imaginary status threat are at least in principle capable of open democratic dialogue, as much as they may seem to be disinclined to engage in it. But lately I have come to suspect (non-dogmatically, of course) that some people may be too far gone. What do you do when democratic dialogue is no longer possible, and when some partners in dialogue seek the disenfranchisement or outright destruction of other partners? And how do you tell who is and who is not too far gone, anyway? And what do you do when the avenues of dialogue and epistemic authority are unequally distributed in a society?
I have no idea how to answer these questions (so I guess I did learn some of that intellectual humility after all!). But I would maybe have liked to see Lynch at least seriously ask them. Perhaps it is enough for the reader to do so, prompted by this interesting book.
See my blog! https://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/2...
As a person on the internet I have come to dread the fact that everybody seems to have become an insufferable know-it-all, at least in their online interactions (I am not entirely immune to this tendency myself). Lynch does a great job diagnosing the problem and some of its causes. Like Lynch, I find this problem to be pervasive on both the political right and left. Although it takes different forms at opposing ends of the political spectrum, the phenomenon is annoying in both forms (although I think far more dangerous on the right these days). I was honestly a bit worried to see discussion of "identity politics," but it turned out to be a nice surprise when Lynch not only defined what he meant but distanced himself from the problematically dismissive ways in which that term gets used by the right and even by some on the left. I was also pleasantly surprised by Lynch's incorporation of philosophy (especially epistemology) in a relatively jargon-free, accessible way (I have a few quibbles with his understanding of ancient skepticism, but I have those quibbles with almost all contemporary philosophers, so I'll let it go).
For all his insights, I found it odd that Lynch never questioned who this "we" is that he refers to constantly. American intellectuals? Upper middle class white people? Coastal elites? Philosophers?
I was also disappointed by his constant use of the word "tribalism." I'm sure he didn't intend it this way, but it does have the unintended consequence of reinforcing the idea that Indigenous people are "primitive" or "uncivilized." Why not use the word "factionalism" instead? It's more precise and doesn't have that connotation.
Maybe some of these imprecisions are a function of Lynch's mostly successful attempt to write for a popular audience rather than an academic audience who would expect more pedantic qualification.
As much as I am a fan of open and honest discourse between people who disagree with each other and as much as I want to wholeheartedly agree with Lynch's prescriptions in the final chapter, I have to admit that the last five years or so have made me a bit more cynical. Certainly some--I would like to think most--people who are leftist elitist know-it-alls or white men suffering from imaginary status threat are at least in principle capable of open democratic dialogue, as much as they may seem to be disinclined to engage in it. But lately I have come to suspect (non-dogmatically, of course) that some people may be too far gone. What do you do when democratic dialogue is no longer possible, and when some partners in dialogue seek the disenfranchisement or outright destruction of other partners? And how do you tell who is and who is not too far gone, anyway? And what do you do when the avenues of dialogue and epistemic authority are unequally distributed in a society?
I have no idea how to answer these questions (so I guess I did learn some of that intellectual humility after all!). But I would maybe have liked to see Lynch at least seriously ask them. Perhaps it is enough for the reader to do so, prompted by this interesting book.
See my blog! https://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/2...
October 20, 2019
Good read. The main argument is that most of us think we know more than we do, and therefore lock into tribal positions in our politics. He goes on to describe the social and psychological reasons why we exhibit such confidence and hubris. It's interesting reading. I've read variations on this in numerous other places, so it wasn't new to me. But if you don't follow politics or social psychology as avidly as I do, you might find it more insightful.
May 22, 2022
hopefully just common sense for most people, agreed with almost everything said & mainly read it to excuse my indecisiveness on some political issues- and that that’s a good thing.
October 9, 2024
updating my rating now that i'm reading through line by line: this doesn't make any sense. it feels like he's just slapping together buzzwords and never proves or describes any kind of meaningful point throughout the whole thing.
September 26, 2019
I little preachy toward the end
March 29, 2021
Professor Michael Lynch tries to explain in this short volume why Americans have become "intellectually arrogant" in political discourse. Intellectual arrogance is the operative term that connects the chapters in this book together. Put simply, someone who becomes intellectually arrogant "knows it all" and refuses to listen to contrary opinions about their political or moral convictions. This erosion of conversation and the increasing rise of intellectual arrogance across both sides of the political divide has done much to contribute to polarization and groupthink in the United States, Lynch contends.
The advent of social media has fueled the rise of intellectual arrogance. Lynch suggests this happens because social media channels raw emotion and outrage rather than contemplative reflection on current events. For example, 60% of people do not read the content they share on social media. Thus, while it would appear that sharing an article was a communicative act of passing along information, social media has turned that into a way for people to communicate their reaction or outrage at a shared article. Although we are more saturated with information than we ever have been in the past, we have simultaneously become far more ignorant and narrow-minded. Lynch is also correct in identifying how our current social climate promotes those who are self-confident and dismissive of their ignorance.
We've become far more parochial because, as Lynch explains, many of our "beliefs" have morphed into "convictions" that are morally entangled with our perceptions of how the world should work, who we self-identify as, and how we perceive others. When people adopt numerous convictions, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to separate the ideas from who they are as individuals. Eventually, the idea of modifying some of these convictions also means potentially altering how we think of ourselves. Add to that the fact that social media and our interconnectedness with the larger society has politicized almost every act/action—anything ranging from the kind of coffee we drink to the t-shirts we wear all outwardly project our self-identification and make a conscious or semi-conscious political statement about who we are.
This is all useful information. The only problem is that other authors have walked over the same ground in a far more robust way. The brevity of Lynch's writing becomes a major flaw when he begins talking about "identity politics." He rightly indicates that "identity politics" has two meanings. In the classical liberal sense, "identity politics" means advocating for the recognition of minority to marginalized interest groups within a democratic society to increase the breadth of freedom. In a darker sense, "identity politics" can promote tribalism, or the advocacy on behalf of a specific social group to take a larger share of finite resources in a society. After giving these basic definitions (which I would say Francis Fukuyama lays out in far better detail in Identity), he proceeds into case studies of how identity politics functions on the Right and the Left in the United States.
This is where I began to have major issues with Lynch's work. Although he positions himself in the opening chapters as a political moderate who wants to call out the BS on both sides of the aisle—the "Know-it-all Society" seems to broadly encompass all of us—he proceeds to hammer the Right for promoting "Identity Politics as Tribalism" and exculpate the Left for being misunderstood in their quest to promote "Identity Politics as Recognition." He goes so far as to say Mark Lilla, in his far superior work The Once and Future Liberal, conflates these two definitions of identity politics. By extension, I suppose he would accuse Jonah Goldberg, Sam Harris, Francis Fukuyama, and many others of the same offense. Apparently Lynch sees something here that all of these other respected scholars cannot see....
While he correctly condemns "Far Right/Alt-Right" identity politics as an insidious force in our national discourse, he only really incorporates examples from the Right throughout the book that involve Neo-Nazis or other extremist groups. Meanwhile, he suggests that Leftists in academe or in the public are misunderstood, benign forces that promote identity politics to receive "recognition" but who are constantly maligned by the Right for promoting "identity politics as tribalism." I will concede that Fox News and other Right news sources constantly attack Black Lives Matter and other organizations through this prism of "tribalism" while ignoring the sins belonging to their own side. However, if Lynch is going to argue that "intellectual arrogance" in our political discourse has made certain "truths" unassailable and inclined people toward ignoring the "facts," he needs to engage with Sam Harris and others here who make a persuasive case for how BLM and other police reform organizations fail to grasp the complex and messy reality of police-involved shootings in the United States.
Lynch's analogy between fascist movements of the 1930s/1940s and the American Right is laughably simplistic and generalized. Anyone would be better served by reading Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom.
Finally, Lynch calls for us all to adopt the "Socratic way" by cultivating "intellectual humility." This does not mean disregarding your convictions, especially if those convictions are correct (Lynch seems to readily identify or imply that many convictions shared by those on the Left are righteous), but at least showing a willingness to have conversation with someone across the aisle. This is an idealistic hope and one I would agree with. We have to be able to have conversations about facts openly and honestly in this nation to see real progress and unity. In the end, though, I doubt that Lynch's work will help us see the light in that regard. His own biases come to the foreground in this brief treatise and he is not able to even engage with an open and honest assessment of the Right and the Left in the United States.
If you want a far better treatment of these ideas, see any of the following works:
Francis Fukuyama, Identity
Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal
Amy Chua, Political Tribes
Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society
Tim Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom.
The advent of social media has fueled the rise of intellectual arrogance. Lynch suggests this happens because social media channels raw emotion and outrage rather than contemplative reflection on current events. For example, 60% of people do not read the content they share on social media. Thus, while it would appear that sharing an article was a communicative act of passing along information, social media has turned that into a way for people to communicate their reaction or outrage at a shared article. Although we are more saturated with information than we ever have been in the past, we have simultaneously become far more ignorant and narrow-minded. Lynch is also correct in identifying how our current social climate promotes those who are self-confident and dismissive of their ignorance.
We've become far more parochial because, as Lynch explains, many of our "beliefs" have morphed into "convictions" that are morally entangled with our perceptions of how the world should work, who we self-identify as, and how we perceive others. When people adopt numerous convictions, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to separate the ideas from who they are as individuals. Eventually, the idea of modifying some of these convictions also means potentially altering how we think of ourselves. Add to that the fact that social media and our interconnectedness with the larger society has politicized almost every act/action—anything ranging from the kind of coffee we drink to the t-shirts we wear all outwardly project our self-identification and make a conscious or semi-conscious political statement about who we are.
This is all useful information. The only problem is that other authors have walked over the same ground in a far more robust way. The brevity of Lynch's writing becomes a major flaw when he begins talking about "identity politics." He rightly indicates that "identity politics" has two meanings. In the classical liberal sense, "identity politics" means advocating for the recognition of minority to marginalized interest groups within a democratic society to increase the breadth of freedom. In a darker sense, "identity politics" can promote tribalism, or the advocacy on behalf of a specific social group to take a larger share of finite resources in a society. After giving these basic definitions (which I would say Francis Fukuyama lays out in far better detail in Identity), he proceeds into case studies of how identity politics functions on the Right and the Left in the United States.
This is where I began to have major issues with Lynch's work. Although he positions himself in the opening chapters as a political moderate who wants to call out the BS on both sides of the aisle—the "Know-it-all Society" seems to broadly encompass all of us—he proceeds to hammer the Right for promoting "Identity Politics as Tribalism" and exculpate the Left for being misunderstood in their quest to promote "Identity Politics as Recognition." He goes so far as to say Mark Lilla, in his far superior work The Once and Future Liberal, conflates these two definitions of identity politics. By extension, I suppose he would accuse Jonah Goldberg, Sam Harris, Francis Fukuyama, and many others of the same offense. Apparently Lynch sees something here that all of these other respected scholars cannot see....
While he correctly condemns "Far Right/Alt-Right" identity politics as an insidious force in our national discourse, he only really incorporates examples from the Right throughout the book that involve Neo-Nazis or other extremist groups. Meanwhile, he suggests that Leftists in academe or in the public are misunderstood, benign forces that promote identity politics to receive "recognition" but who are constantly maligned by the Right for promoting "identity politics as tribalism." I will concede that Fox News and other Right news sources constantly attack Black Lives Matter and other organizations through this prism of "tribalism" while ignoring the sins belonging to their own side. However, if Lynch is going to argue that "intellectual arrogance" in our political discourse has made certain "truths" unassailable and inclined people toward ignoring the "facts," he needs to engage with Sam Harris and others here who make a persuasive case for how BLM and other police reform organizations fail to grasp the complex and messy reality of police-involved shootings in the United States.
Lynch's analogy between fascist movements of the 1930s/1940s and the American Right is laughably simplistic and generalized. Anyone would be better served by reading Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom.
Finally, Lynch calls for us all to adopt the "Socratic way" by cultivating "intellectual humility." This does not mean disregarding your convictions, especially if those convictions are correct (Lynch seems to readily identify or imply that many convictions shared by those on the Left are righteous), but at least showing a willingness to have conversation with someone across the aisle. This is an idealistic hope and one I would agree with. We have to be able to have conversations about facts openly and honestly in this nation to see real progress and unity. In the end, though, I doubt that Lynch's work will help us see the light in that regard. His own biases come to the foreground in this brief treatise and he is not able to even engage with an open and honest assessment of the Right and the Left in the United States.
If you want a far better treatment of these ideas, see any of the following works:
Francis Fukuyama, Identity
Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal
Amy Chua, Political Tribes
Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society
Tim Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom.
July 15, 2019
We are currently living in an age of extreme political polarization, where those on opposite sides of our political spectrum no longer trust those on the other side, and it seems that each side has its own, mutually exclusive, version of the truth. Many people point to a lack of civil discourse as feeding this polarization, but this book argues that the real roots are found in intellectual arrogance. The bulk of this book is devoted to explaining the psychological and social influences that lead us to embrace tribal convictions and to presume that 'we' know better than 'them'. It also explores the manifestations of this intellectual arrogance on both sides of the political divide. But the most important part of the book is the final chapter, when the author argues that we need to embrace an intellectual humility if we are break out of this polarization and make our politics functional again. He argues that there are two components to this humility: honestly recognizing what you don't know, and a willingness to learn from evidence and the experiences of others. Intellectual humility makes us willing to engage in civil discourse and strive to find common ground, perhaps even to compromise. And those are all good things that we need to be able to do again.
October 10, 2024
TLDR be intellectually humble, follow Socratic method, and trust in institutions that aims to keep your knowledge in check
January 3, 2023
الكثير مما نعرفه "يعرفه Google". الإنترنت هو مصدر معلوماتنا الأول حول أي موضوع تقريبًا. إنه ما نتحقق منه أولاً - وما نتحقق منه أخيرًا ، لتسوية نزاعاتنا المبتذلة والعميقة على حد سواء. كم مرة تحدث فيها زميل لك عن حقيقة ما وتسابق الآخرون في الغرفة على هواتفهم للتحقق من ذلك؟
نستخدم جوجل بشكل روتيني للتغلب على أشكال أخرى من الاستفسار ، وحتى لاستجواب الخبراء. بينما نعلم جميعًا أن البحث في Google يمكن أن يضللنا ، فإن هذا لا يمنعنا من استخدامه بشكل روتيني ، أو اعتباره موثوقًا بشكل أساسي في مجموعة واسعة من الموضوعات. في الواقع ، بالنسبة لمعظمنا ، يحدث البحث عبر الإنترنت دون الكثير من التفكير. إنها مجرد الخطوة الأولى الواضحة والفورية للإجابة على أي سؤال حول العالم الاجتماعي تقريبًا ؛ نحن نثق به.
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Michael Lynch
Know It All Society
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
نستخدم جوجل بشكل روتيني للتغلب على أشكال أخرى من الاستفسار ، وحتى لاستجواب الخبراء. بينما نعلم جميعًا أن البحث في Google يمكن أن يضللنا ، فإن هذا لا يمنعنا من استخدامه بشكل روتيني ، أو اعتباره موثوقًا بشكل أساسي في مجموعة واسعة من الموضوعات. في الواقع ، بالنسبة لمعظمنا ، يحدث البحث عبر الإنترنت دون الكثير من التفكير. إنها مجرد الخطوة الأولى الواضحة والفورية للإجابة على أي سؤال حول العالم الاجتماعي تقريبًا ؛ نحن نثق به.
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Michael Lynch
Know It All Society
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
January 13, 2022
Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture is both an engaging and a thoughtful book. Michael Patrick Lynch has written a wonderfully percipient book about the thought process of having to be right at all costs. It is a great metaphor for what is happening with politics today. Yet, that is selling the book short. On the surface, Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture is about politics, however what underlies is really about human thinking and the fallacies thus contained. Before you get to politics, you have to have and idea formed and this is how the thinking happens.
What comes across incredibly well is how one side of the debate demonizes the other and yet suffer from the very same fallacies of ignorance and arrogance. Michael Patrick Lynch uses examples from both political sides and skewers both sides for their failures. This is close as I have come to an evenhanded approach in political discourse in a very long time. Make no mistake, this book is going to be uncomfortable to the reader at some point. You will see the failures of the other, but not want to see your failures in the bright light and yet there it is to plain to see.
If you want to start with a primer on political thought, start with Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture as a starting base.
What comes across incredibly well is how one side of the debate demonizes the other and yet suffer from the very same fallacies of ignorance and arrogance. Michael Patrick Lynch uses examples from both political sides and skewers both sides for their failures. This is close as I have come to an evenhanded approach in political discourse in a very long time. Make no mistake, this book is going to be uncomfortable to the reader at some point. You will see the failures of the other, but not want to see your failures in the bright light and yet there it is to plain to see.
If you want to start with a primer on political thought, start with Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture as a starting base.
January 4, 2025
From the National Council of Teachers of English: Michael P. Lynch has been named the winner of the 2019 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language for Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture. The Orwell Award emphasizes the importance of honesty and clarity in public language, and Michael Patrick Lynch’s book reminds us that honesty and clarity is more than just listening to speakers behind a podium; honesty and clarity in public language also refers to how we interact every day with those around us. Lynch accessibly explores aspects around and within public language, including the ideas of how our convictions affect both our worldview and the resulting discourse, and how intellectual arrogance and intellectual humility shape our interactions with others. Relying on the frameworks of philosophers from Dewey to Montaigne to Socrates, Lynch offers us a path to consider for how we speak with and listen to others in our 21st century political landscape. For more information, please go to the W.W. Norton website. The Orwell award was established in 1975 by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). This award recognizes an author, editor, or producer who has made outstanding contributions to the honesty and clarity in public language through critical analysis of public discourse. He will be announced as the recipient of the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language at the NCTE Awards Presentation Session on Saturday, November 23, during the 2019 NCTE Annual Convention in Baltimore, MD. https://ncte.org/wp-content/uploads/2...
October 19, 2019
“Know-It-All Society” is a tight tour de force analysis of tribalism and associated ‘tribal arrogance’ (intellectual arrogance of tribal groups) in modern American culture. Author Michael Lynch takes a quite dispassionate and objective approach (despite his self-admitted liberalism) to the subject of misplaced and dangerous intellectual arrogance as it relates to tribal partisanism, on both side the spectrum. As Lynch makes clear, with his objective and philosophical approach, ‘tribal arrogance’ is not limited to liberal or conservative, but is a plight of human nature and communal living. As he also makes clear there are paths to correct for the ‘know-it-all’ society we find ourselves in however; and such altered paths of behavior can both diminish tribal arrogance (and intellectual arrogance in general) and tribalism broadly if applied. At 170 pages of text, Lynch has packed some deep and thought-provoking stuff into a compact read. It’s a quick and engaging read that will make the reader think about ones own intellectual and tribal arrogance (we all have it). I can not recommend this book enough. 5 hearty stars.
October 18, 2023
Rating: 3.75 / 5 ⭐
I really enjoyed the first section that addressed how the internet and the wide availability of knowledge and facts has changed how we feel about our own intelligence and how that changes how we think of ourselves and others.
In the end his call to intellectual humility is much needed for all of us in these times.
The middle section turned into a post-Trump retrospective and focused a lot on the 2016 election and the... uh... mess that it was. Little did this guy know how much worse the 2020 election would be. I am a bit tired of these Trump era retrospectives and I feel like most of these thoughts are overly worn and don't tend to age super well at this point being written so close to the events in question (this came out in 2019). I Get that this all provides a ripe material for this kind of discussion, I'm just tired of it. So, I might not have picked this book up had I known. Had I picked up this book right when it was published, I likely would have been more interested in this section, though. Fortunately, this retrospective section was not overly long.
I really enjoyed the first section that addressed how the internet and the wide availability of knowledge and facts has changed how we feel about our own intelligence and how that changes how we think of ourselves and others.
In the end his call to intellectual humility is much needed for all of us in these times.
The middle section turned into a post-Trump retrospective and focused a lot on the 2016 election and the... uh... mess that it was. Little did this guy know how much worse the 2020 election would be. I am a bit tired of these Trump era retrospectives and I feel like most of these thoughts are overly worn and don't tend to age super well at this point being written so close to the events in question (this came out in 2019). I Get that this all provides a ripe material for this kind of discussion, I'm just tired of it. So, I might not have picked this book up had I known. Had I picked up this book right when it was published, I likely would have been more interested in this section, though. Fortunately, this retrospective section was not overly long.
January 13, 2024
This is a book that addresses an important topic - the rise of "intellectual arrogance" in American society. It's a useful phrase that captures something beyond the typical complaints about fake news, political bubbles and the like. But I don't think Lynch gives us much insight into why this has risen, or what we can do about it. He points to the internet, but not particularly convincingly. He does some hand waving toward intellectual arrogance being a problem across the political spectrum, but struggles to come up with examples of liberals doing this, which seems to undercut the seriousness of his argument. His distinction in identity politics between "identity as representation" and "identity as tribalism" is a useful one, but overall I think the book is at its strongest laying out its claims in the first ten pages, rather than in an exploration of its reasoning in the subsequent 200 pages.
September 19, 2019
A philosophically-astute, yet highly-readable, and insightful diagnosis of our cultural moment. Lynch deftly works through concepts like "what separates a belief from a conviction?" how to understand the role of identity politics, self-identity, tribalism, and especially intellectual arrogance. He takes both the political-right and the political-left to task, as well as the undeniable role of the internet and social media.
It's a short book, and a quick read, but still quite thought-provoking, and absolutely worth the time for anyone concerned about our cultural landscape (and, really, who isn't concerned right now??). I actually found it a bit convicting on a personal level, which makes it an easy recommendation.
It's a short book, and a quick read, but still quite thought-provoking, and absolutely worth the time for anyone concerned about our cultural landscape (and, really, who isn't concerned right now??). I actually found it a bit convicting on a personal level, which makes it an easy recommendation.
January 31, 2020
This book is kind of interesteding, I mean the cover sells itself, but I was not that interested in the way the author laid out his studies and finding on why we think we know everything, and listen I'm not saying what the author is stating is false because by god he is 100% right about our society and just everyday people thinking they know everything, everyone now days is a grand Pantomath!! I'm almost positive not 1% of our population knows what that word means yet they are the exact definition, and the author should of atleast learned good vocabulary words like so to put into his book to give it more depth and intelligence in a weird way!!
December 29, 2020
Know It All Society rates 3.75 stars. The book provides a lot of thought provoking arguments on the polarized political world we live in using philosophers from Socrates to present. The valuable nuggets were the application of Lynch’s views to the current political situation including Trump’s supporters reflecting more on their status culture than on traditional rationales as well as how liberals are viewed by non-liberals. This could easily be a higher rated book if you love the intersection between politics and broader philosophy or lower rated if you find philosophy to be rather dry. In sum, this is a book that I am glad I read and its messages and analysis will factor into the way I think about things going forward.
June 30, 2020
While the author's liberal bias certainly shines through, long before he explicitly states that is his camp, I still found the book very interesting and informative, as well as thought-provoking in a self-examining sort of way. I am not politically active or interested, so much of this was somewhat new to me, and I found it a good introduction. I was more drawn to the social aspects of the discussion of intellectual arrogance than the political aspects, and in that respect, I think the author did a fine job.
February 14, 2025
I was surprised to find this book filled with a scholarly & philosophical rendering of our current political culture. Given the scholarly nature of this book, the arguments are quite complex and I personally found them difficult to comprehend at times. But the author nevertheless highlights a significant problem driving our political climate: many of us think we know a hell of a lot more than we actually do. The book then explores how this intellectual arrogance arises in many of us, from wildly liberal to staunchly conservative.
November 8, 2019
Solid book. Didn't personally learn much since much of it comes from my philosophy undergrad readings, but well put together for those less familiar. Also, great call to action, though classic. Be intellectually humble, actually listen and communicate with others across all aisles so that we can all learn from one another, and respect truth as an inherent good that all communication should aim towards with the knowledge that we likely will never hit the target.
November 14, 2020
The book gives a great insight into why America has become so polarized. The biggest takeaway for me is that if we all had the humility to know what we don’t know, and be OK with that, the country would be much better off. But we double down on what we don’t know because we don’t want to look dumb or *feel* like we’re dumb, and social media and targeted algorithms send everybody down a feedback loop of information that only supports what we already *feel*
August 15, 2024
A short book that looks at familiar (to me) topics in a different, more critical light. Lynch provides a nuanced view to our current 'post-truth' landscape. You can tell by the tone and examples that this book was written for small 'l' liberals, but I think many would benefit from reading it. If I had read it right when it came out, I might have enjoyed it more, but that's my own fault. Quality work.
September 9, 2025
This was a really interesting book in a way but I feel like it wasn't quite long enough. I think it touched on the surface of a lot of issues that I wish they'd discussed more and had more nuanced conversations about.
That said, I think there were some very relevant points in this regarding how people cling to their convictions and beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
That said, I think there were some very relevant points in this regarding how people cling to their convictions and beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
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