Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

Twitter is such an unusual phenomenon.  Highly unrepresentative of Americans but incredibly influential among those who do use it.  Functionally a fantastically effective means of democratizing knowledge but astonishingly oblivious of free speech values and very sympathetic to repressing knowledge and interpretations of facts. 

And sometimes it just produces singular, oddly funny, exchanges.  For instance:

oh my

I'm just going to leave this here for a moment and let it shine https://t.co/hdsEGjwqfH

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 28, 2021

Tom Nichols:

Thomas M. Nichols (born December 7, 1960) is an academic specialist on international affairs, currently a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School. His work deals with issues involving Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs. He was previously a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Dr. Asatar Bair:

Professor of economics. Meditation teacher. YouTuber. Pronouns: he, him #Communist.

It feels embarrassingly rude to dwell on the chasm of educational and professional attainment between the two.  Credentials have relevance to the possibility of accurate information but are certainly not a reliable indicator.  Plenty of people with deep credentials also spout nonsense.  It just seems such a glaring mismatch.

As a self-declared communist, Bair's critique:

I suppose you think your knowledge of the Soviet Union is far greater than mine because of what you recall from high school social studies class

seems to imply that he has no awareness of one of the nation's leading researchers on the Soviet Union.

I guess what is so striking to me is that Bair does not have an argument.  He is merely attempting to be disparaging.  But his ignorance of whom he is disparaging renders his attempted disparagement moot and instead ends up making himself appear to be the fool.

It is in some ways a small tragedy played out on the tawdry stage of Twitter.  I guess it is also an example of the downside of democratizing knowledge and communication.  It increases the opportunities for people to make fools of themselves.

Brings to mind Proverbs 17:28 (KJV).

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

 Variously rendered in the vernacular along the lines of 

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.