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AR 23:3 - Why apologetics is ineffectual without authority
In this issue:
TRUST - Are we at "the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history"?
+ What killed expertise?
Apologia Report 23:3 (1,369)
January 31, 2018
TRUST
Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart, by Rachel Botsman [1] -- the publisher explains: "From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. ... In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman <rachelbotsman.com> reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history - with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their home to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of 'distributed trust', a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship. If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape - and explores what's next for humanity."
Kirkus (Oct 1 '17) adds that "technology is changing our attitudes toward trust. At a time when trust in institutions - Congress, the church, the media, etc. - is in great jeopardy, another form of trust is quickly becoming the glue that keeps society together. It is called distributed trust, and it involves 'people trusting other people through technology,' writes business consultant Botsman.... [T]he author makes clear that distributed trust - a 'confident relationship with the unknown' - now powers such disparate enterprises as Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites; social media platforms; peer-to-peer lending; online education courses; and Wikipedia and other information-sharing sites. In the case of self-driving cars, we now trust 'our very lives to the unseen hand of technology.' Examining trust and its various types (local, institutional, distributed), Botsman explains that we have been making 'trust leaps' of one kind or another for centuries; a current example is entering credit card details into an internet site for the first time. She details the mechanisms that encourage the popularity of these transactions and the stories behind the success of such companies as Jack Ma's Alibaba, where 80 percent of all goods are bought and sold online in China, whose people demand proof of trustworthiness. Other sections cover trust and money, the risk of overtrusting robots, and the importance of reputation on the darknet. As the author notes, trust is 'society's most precious and fragile asset,' and we should all take a 'trust pause' before deciding who to put faith in. A sharp, thoughtful, sometimes-surprising account of how we build trust with strangers now."
Writing for the Wall Street Journal (Nov 20 '17), Philip Delves Broughton's review notes: "Rachel Botsman, a visiting scholar at Oxford's Saïd Business School, has studied trust for several years and defines it as 'a confident relationship with the unknown.' ... 'The real disruption' going on right now, Ms. Botsman argues, 'is not technology itself, but the massive trust shift it creates.' ...
"A 2015 survey by Harvard's Institute of Politics <www.goo.gl/H7QHuv> ... found that 75% of millennials 'sometimes or never' trust the federal government to do the right thing, while 88% 'sometimes or never' trust the media. Now trust is more 'distributed,' Ms. Botsman says, littered across social networks and Yelp reviews, flowing more 'horizontally, in some instances to our fellow human beings and, in other cases, to programs and bots.'
"Ms. Botsman gives three reasons for the recent collapse of trust in institutions: the increasing number of people in positions of power caught abusing our trust and then escaping punishment; the expanding power of digital technology and its effect of 'flattening hierarchies' and eroding our faith in the 'elites'; and the increasingly isolated 'cultural ghettoes' and 'echo chambers' - pockets within social media, for instance - that focus our trust mainly toward the like-minded. The recent spate of allegations of sexual aggression by powerful men and the diverse responses to them are one example of trust being eroded by a lack of accountability.
"[T]here does seem to be a strong link between the narcissism fed by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., and mistrust. Two-thirds of people now get their news from social media. ...
"There's no question that tech giants like Facebook and Google are on the front lines of modern trust. But the author is suspicious. She calls Mr. Zuckerberg's company a 'system that makes it easy for almost a third of the world's population to gossip and gripe, share and like, even if the content is false, and without proper checks and balances or any real redress.' ...
"She reports on the Chinese government's plan to create a Social Credit System, in which people are given trust scores based on their daily activities: where they shop, their social activities, how long they spend watching television or playing video games, their spending habits, their health. It's horribly Orwellian, but China's plan is to 'accelerate the modernization of governmental governance capacity,' turning it into a sharper, more personalized tool. ... There will no longer be any dividing line between what people choose to do in private and what they do in public. Everything will be watched and rated." <www.goo.gl/Y2PkCW>
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, by Thomas M. Nichols [2] -- reviewer James Patrick Holding emphasizes that "Without the recognition of some kind of authority, apologetics becomes ineffectual." To support this, he explains that "According to Nichols <www.goo.gl/PjU9Ga>, 'experts' (whom he [Nichols] defines as 'people who know considerably more on a subject than the rest of us') are losing, at an an alarming rate, the respect they formerly possessed. The result is an expert-free epistemology, which Nichols believes is leading to tragic consequences. ...
Nichols considers the question: "What Killed Experts?" He finds that the "first factor" is the human ego, "which fosters attitudes that result in defensiveness." This, in turn, leads to "mental errors such as confirmation bias....
"A second factor is described as "the commodification of education." Here "college students are insulated and coddled, having an inordinate sense of entitlement. [This is happening concurrent with] an epidemic of low-quality colleges that are little more than 'glorified high schools' at the undergraduate level, while their doctoral programs are so bad that 'they themselves [the college] would never hire their own graduates.' ...
"A third factor is the ease of spreading misinformation by way of modern communications media." Nichols mentions the example of The New York Times having "mistakenly described Easter as a celebration of Jesus' resurrection directly into heaven. <www.goo.gl/6Ycycn> ...
"A final and arguably most important factor ... is that the Internet has acted as a great leveler that has fostered the illusion that experts and nonexperts are on equal footing." In describing "a distressing trend toward intellectual leveling," Nichols gives us the impression that for many it becomes a contest of popularity vs. credentials.
Nichols concludes with a discussion of "Lessons for Apologists" in which he affirms that "Expert authority is the gunpowder in the arsenal of the apologist. ...
"Is there a way to revive faith in expertise?" For starters, "the public must be taught to recognize the difference between failure and fraud." Next, the public needs to "become better educated" while at the same time "become more critical" and consequently "question experts' assumptions." Christian Research Journal, 40:5 - 2017, pp56-57.
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart, by Rachel Botsman (PublicAffairs, 2017, hardcover, 336 pages) <www.goo.gl/AnojTo>
2 - The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, by Thomas M. Nichols (Oxford Univ Prs, 2017, hardcover, 272 pages) <www.goo.gl/DLz21Z>
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