Summary of Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In the dialogue Theaetetus, Plato imagines a conversation between Socrates and a young man named Theaetetus. Socrates attempts to determine whether the young man is also a philosopher, and whether philosophical puzzles are dizzying to him. Theaetetus protests that he is not a great intellect.
#2 Theaetetus is a dialogue about knowledge, and it is not easy to acquire. It demonstrates the spirit of rigor and humility, which are the foundations of the truth-seeking attitude. It teaches us that knowledge is not just something we have, but something we share together.
#3 I was a journalist because I was forced outside of myself. I could do nothing on my own. Facts were gathered from interviews and sources, and analysis was checked with experts. Every sentence was edited and copy-edited, and I was constantly being challenged on my claims.
#4 The American marketplace of ideas is a good metaphor, but it is incomplete. Ideas do not talk directly to each other, and the entire system relies on a foundation of values: a shared understanding that there are right and wrong ways to make knowledge.

Sujets

• Censorship

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669392026
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In the dialogue Theaetetus, Plato imagines a conversation between Socrates and a young man named Theaetetus. Socrates attempts to determine whether the young man is also a philosopher, and whether philosophical puzzles are dizzying to him. Theaetetus protests that he is not a great intellect.

#2

Theaetetus is a dialogue about knowledge, and it is not easy to acquire. It demonstrates the spirit of rigor and humility, which are the foundations of the truth-seeking attitude. It teaches us that knowledge is not just something we have, but something we share together.

#3

I was a journalist because I was forced outside of myself. I could do nothing on my own. Facts were gathered from interviews and sources, and analysis was checked with experts. Every sentence was edited and copy-edited, and I was constantly being challenged on my claims.

#4

The American marketplace of ideas is a good metaphor, but it is incomplete. Ideas do not talk directly to each other, and the entire system relies on a foundation of values: a shared understanding that there are right and wrong ways to make knowledge.

#5

Trump's response to the CNN incident was to call the network corrupt and fake, and to praise the fake news awards. He knew his attacks on the media were false, but he did it to discredit the media and make it seem like they were all corrupt.

#6

Trump warned us about this in 2004 when he was interviewed by NBC News’s Chris Matthews. He said the Republicans did a great job at the convention, but the greatest spin he’d ever seen was that Bush was a war hero while Kerry wasn’t.

#7

Trump said that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack on Kerry was brilliant. He said that Bush was not serving when he was. The American people would get attacked if they elected Kerry, according to Vice President Dick Cheney.

#8

Many commentators and academics believed that the threat to the underpinnings of the liberal order came not just from Trump and his political allies, but from a whole industry of trolls and foreign actors.

#9

The cancel culture, which was the result of the spread of misinformation and disinformation by Trump and his troll armies, also affected those on the left who were policing speech and weaponizing shame.

#10

Some figures in academic life led and justified canceling campaigns, and their most frightened targets were often their academic peers.

#11

In the late 1980s, when campus free speech became a national issue, challenges came from professors and bureaucrats defending speech codes with elaborate theoretical rationales. But by the mid-2010s, the problem had changed. Students were more afraid of social pressure than censorship.

#12

Even world-famous professors are afraid to speak their minds, for fear of being attacked by angry students.

#13

The Left’s attempt at silencing the Right backfired and helped elevate figures like Trump and Breitbart News.

#14

The Constitution of Knowledge, liberalism’s epistemic operating system, is explained and defended in this book. It was not assembled by some automatic social magic, but by hard-fought battles and hard-won norms and institutions.

#15

Modern liberalism is defined by three social systems: economic, political, and epistemic. They handle social decisionmaking about resources, power, and truth. The epistemic system is analogous to the economic system, through the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas.

#16

Troll culture and cancel culture are two examples of how digital media have been used to spread disinformation and alternative realities. They are techniques of information warfare, and they have captured commanding institutional heights. But they have also engendered pushback.

#17

The liberal epistemic order, which relies on the full-hearted embrace and full-throated defense of its principles by ordinary members of the reality-based community, has always found a way forward.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Americans waited anxiously in 2018 for answers. A special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, was digging into the activities of a president, Donald Trump. The president’s future seemed to hang in the balance. But some people waited anxiously, while others already knew the result.

#2

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes delivered a jolt to political philosophy in the mid-1600s. He argued that humans are essentially self-interested and warlike, and that the state of nature is a state of constant competition and rivalry. The state of nature, he argued, is a state of war.

#3

Reasoning, the pride and joy of Homo sapiens, is actually a form of persuasion. It was developed to help us win the approval of our tribe and secure resources for ourselves and our children.

#4

Reason is not useless. It is useful for persuading others, and it is also useful for persuading ourselves. But it cannot be used to twist reality infinitely, and we must not give up on it.

#5

The tendency to react emotionally to emotionally charged issues is easy to exploit and manipulate. For example, politicians can hype nonexistent crime waves, and voters will believe they are reacting rationally based on those issues.

#6

Cognition suffers from all sorts of distortions. For example, optimism bias, the tendency to overestimate our chances of success, is a common one. We also tend to believe things which are easy to understand and assimilate.

#7

Our biases guide us in certain directions, away from others. They do not result in randomly distributed errors, but rather lead us down predictable pathways. Terrorists, who are skilled psychologists, exploit our hard-wired overreaction to spectacular acts of violence.

#8

confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and accept information that supports your beliefs, while neglecting to seek out and accept information that might contradict them.