🎓 The Crisis of Expertise

Dismissing populists as 'stupid' misses the point. The rejection of expert authority is often less about facts and more about pride, status, and the refusal to be talked down to — a performance of dignity. 'You cannot fact-check your way out of status competition.' Drawing on Dostoevsky and anthropology, Dan Williams frames 'epistemic charity' — knowledge handed down from on high — as something that can feel less like help than humiliation, and argues the knowledge class suffers its own failure of curiosity.