“Conspiracy theorists manipulate all tangible evidence to fit their explanation, but worse, they will also point to the absence of evidence as… — Thomas M. Nichols Conspiracy Theorists Copy Share Image
“Today, by contrast, students explode over imagined slights that are not even remotely in the same category as fighting for civil rights… — Thomas M. Nichols Civil rights Copy Share Image
“And when voters lose control of these important decisions, they risk the hijacking of their democracy by ignorant demagogues, or the more… — Thomas M. Nichols Democracy Copy Share Image
“As the economic writer Ben Casselman pointed out in 2016, most college applicants “never have to write a college entrance essay, pad… — Thomas M. Nichols Writing Copy Share Image
“People do not come to the Internet so that their bad information can be corrected or their cherished theories disproven. Rather, they… — Thomas M. Nichols Internet Copy Share Image
“If the public has no idea about the substance of an issue, and will vote based on who they like rather than… — Thomas M. Nichols Democracy Copy Share Image
“The issue is not indifference to established knowledge; it’s the emergence of a positive hostility to such knowledge. This is new in… — Thomas M. Nichols American culture Copy Share Image
“At the root of all this is an inability among laypeople to understand that experts being wrong on occasion about certain issues… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“The requirements of a degree in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), a demanding foreign language, or a rigorous degree in… — Thomas M. Nichols Art Copy Share Image
“In 2015, a Massachusetts accountant named Stephen Pasceri lost his seventy-eight-year-old mother to cardiovascular disease. Mrs. Pasceri had a long history of… — Thomas M. Nichols Cardiovascular disease Copy Share Image
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a… — Thomas M. Nichols Fitness Copy Share Image
“The modern media, with so many options tailored to particular views, is a huge exercise in confirmation bias. This means that Americans… — Thomas M. Nichols Fitness Copy Share Image
“Americans no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong” from the phrase “you’re stupid.” To disagree is to disrespect. To correct another is… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“There aren’t enough pages in this or any other book to catalog the amount of bad information on the Internet. Miracle cures,… — Thomas M. Nichols Books Copy Share Image
“Populism actually reinforces this elitism, because the celebration of ignorance cannot launch communications satellites, negotiate the rights of US citizens overseas, or… — Thomas M. Nichols Communication Copy Share Image
“Just as we are not all equally able to carry a tune or draw a straight line, many people simply cannot recognize… — Thomas M. Nichols Straight line Copy Share Image
“This was the same warning José Ortega y Gasset gave when he wrote Revolt of the Masses in 1930: “The mass crushes… — Thomas M. Nichols Revolution Copy Share Image
“Students, well intentioned or otherwise, are poorly served by the idea that students and teachers are intellectual and social equals and that… — Thomas M. Nichols Young people Copy Share Image
“The American attachment to intellectual self-reliance described by Tocqueville survived for nearly a century before falling under a series of assaults from… — Thomas M. Nichols Daily life Copy Share Image
“Worse, what I find so striking today is not that people dismiss expertise, but that they do so with such frequency, on… — Thomas M. Nichols Internet Copy Share Image
“As it turns out, however, the more specific reason that unskilled or incompetent people overestimate their abilities far more than others is… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“Consider the various ways in which Trump’s campaign represented a one-man campaign against established knowledge. He was one of the original “birthers”… — Thomas M. Nichols American citizenship Copy Share Image
“Laypeople complain about the rule of experts and they demand greater involvement in complicated national questions, but many of them only express… — Thomas M. Nichols Ignorance Copy Share Image
“To faculty everywhere, the lesson was obvious: the campus of a top university is not a place for intellectual exploration. It is… — Thomas M. Nichols Nine months Copy Share Image
“Actually, this is an understatement: the public not only expressed strong views, but respondents actually showed enthusiasm for military intervention in Ukraine… — Thomas M. Nichols Lack of knowledge Copy Share Image
