Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish 1276
cold fjord writes "The inability of the incompetent to recognize their own limitations is a story that has been covered before on Slashdot. But, what happens when you apply that finding to politics? From the article: 'The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. If people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments...democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."'"
Way to post a story that's 2700 years old. (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_Republic
Re:As Winston Churchill Said (Score:5, Informative)
He also said that the best argument against democracy is a 15-minute conversation with the average voter.
Re:Democracy: the averagest (Score:4, Informative)
Technically this is called aristocracy
Re:Why do I need to add a subject? (Score:3, Informative)
In Chile, Salvador Allende was the kind idiot who nearly sent the country into bankruptcy. He was murdered by the supporters of Pinochet, the cruel genius, who then established a ruthless dictatorship but (atypically for a dictator) built the basis for a transition to democracy. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony, as Morpheus would have put it...
Well, it's sorta like this (Score:5, Informative)
The first problem is that most people just aren't knowledgeable of advanced theory and precedents in any domain. That's not to say they're "dumb" or "stupid", just that they don't know everything, because nobody can know everything.
Basically, unless you're a physicist, imagine that you had to pick which form of energy supply should you back for interstellar travel. Should we pursue producing anti-matter (which can store incredibly much energy, but is so ridiculously ineffective to produce that we'll need several breakthroughs before it's even feasible to use like in Star Trek) or should we go with micro-black-holes and Hawking radiation, basically harnessing the incredible energy released as a small enough black hole evaporates? Both actually pack the same joules per kilogram, because at the end of it, both will have converted mess into energy as per e=mc^2. Maybe the black hole promises a bit less losses.
But anyway, imagine you had to vote on which of the two should get a trillion dollars in research grants to get us off this piece of rock before some mass extinction event gets us.
Now that's not to say that you're dumb or anything. You're a smart and educated person, and perfectly capable of rational thought and logical decisions. But unless you're a physicist, you won't know enough to understand what the choices are, much less to pick the best. They get a physicist proponent of each of the two to explain until they're blue in the face, but chances are even after a year you still won't know enough to make an informed choice.
Now worse yet, imagine that it's not just YOU who gets a vote, but also that hippie chick who only heard of "quantum" in some bogus quantum chi crystal pendants she wears. And that dude who actually believes that the universe is less than 6000 years old and less than 6000 light years across, because the bible says so. Yeah, I wouldn't rely on him to estimate the amount of energy for star travel correctly, when he literally believes that everything is three million times closer than the scientists think. And millions of other woefully unqualified people.
You probably see how the result of that vote will be no closer to picking the right one, than flipping a coin.
And those are probably the worst, because, quoth Bertrand Russell, "[i]The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.[/i]" YOU, if you're not a physicist, and are all that smart and educated, will probably realize, "wait, why are they asking me? I don't know enough to judge that." Whereas the guy who thinks "quantum" is the mystical force in his new crystal pendants he bought from some dodgy site, will actually be more likely to think he knows enough about it.
In effect, it's just Dunning-Kruger in action. The less you actually know, the more you'll grossly overestimate what you know.
And it's really getting worse for topics where everyone thinks they know something about, like economics. You'll find very few people who actually understand what, say, Keynesian vs Austrian School economics say. Or to what extent they even make testable predictions. Or to what extent they were ever actually tested.
But you'll find a LOT of people who think they know EXACTLY which theory will fix the economy, and furthermore, which candidate has the best grip on it, and exactly what they should do differently about it too.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with letting people vote on it.
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:2, Informative)
... Or the limitations of the Yahoo! story in not citing its sources.
Mato Nage (2010) "A Mathematical Model of Democratic Elections". Current Research Journal of Social Sciences:
http://maxwellsci.com/print/crjss/v2-255-261.pdf [maxwellsci.com]
Why is this news?
Re:Easy (Score:5, Informative)
"incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people"
Not sure why it took "research" to understand this. I thought everyone knew this.
The idea of the effect they showed was that this:
- Competent workers estimate e.g. effort for a project more correct, and conservatively. They understand difficulties and feel less sure about difficult projects. They are more competent in evaluating the work of others, and understand what they don't understand about a project.
- Incompetent (less experienced) workers underestimate the effort for a project and feel sure of their abilities to achieve it (more than they should). They are less good in evaluating others, and don't see any areas where they don't have the expertise to make judgements.
Combining the two, incompentent or simple untrained workers (e.g. secretaries) will not delegate problematic areas to experts. The chain of judgement/delegation ends at incompetent people. here is the previous research [lifeslittlemysteries.com]
There is a danger in governments that "small" officials think they can solve issues without consulting experts because of this effect, and a half-assed solution is the result.
Of course it is difficult to judge for an outsider whether a politician will be a good leader and can work well once elected into a certain position. But that's why we vote for parties and directions, and not for individual people.
Re:Why do I need to add a subject? (Score:4, Informative)
I think the situation in Chile may have had something to do with the fact that the U.S. used every weapon in its economic arsenal against Allende, and propped Pinochet up with billions in aid.
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:5, Informative)
He could have been right at the bottom of his class, and taking the easiest classes possible, for all we know.
For all you know, I don't think you graduate magna cum laude being bottom of your class. And as relevant to the topic: QED.
Big bang has nothing to do with it (Score:4, Informative)
Big bang has nothing to do with it. According to Genesis 1:14-19:
14. And God said, âoeLet there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years,
15. and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.â And it was so.
16. God made two great lightsâ"the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.
17. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth,
18. to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19. And there was evening, and there was morningâ"the fourth day.
The stars were created on the 4'th day of creation, about 3 days after the Earth itself. Hence if Earth is no older than 6000 years, the stars themselves cannot be older than 6000 years. Any light we receive today CANNOT have started more than 6000 years ago. Hence, If the speed of light didn't change, everything we see must be within a 6000 light year radius.
Mind you, technically the Bible also doesn't say that the creation was 6000 years ago. There's a different reason why everyone calculated about 6000 years old in the 3'rd century, and in the 11'th century, and in the 18'th century, now it's still about 6000 years.
The reason is basically that the idiots want to have a rapture any day now, instead of dealing with the rest of their lives. And they wanted a rapture any day now at just about any point in the history of Christianity.
So the reasoning which appears IIRC around the 2'nd-3'rd century is basically this: God worked for 6 days, and the 7'th day was God's day. And for God it is said that 1000 years are like a day. Hence it makes sense (bear in mind that these are not scientists, but theologians, so get used to pulling stuff out of the ass and handwaving it as making sense to them therefore being true) that the world from that point on would be based on the same 6+1 pattern, with 6000 years of toil and hardship, and the 7'th "day" of 1000 years being God's reign on Earth.
So they're not actually doing some real maths to get that 6000 years, but fudge the numbers to get the 6000 they want.
There's a lot of false accuracy involved. Think: there are 28 generations between David and Jesus in Matthew, a generation is 40 years, therefore there are EXACTLY 1120 years between Jesus and David. Down to the day. No, seriously, the reason we got Xmas on 25 December was because a 3rd century lemming added generations with such amazing accuracy as to get precision down to the day between Jesus's birth and the creation of Earth, which had already been postulated by Philo to have happened on a spring equinox. The thought of error bars and human reproduction not being that predictable, tends to not occur to these people.
And there's a lot of generously applying Flannagan's Finagling Factor, i.e., "That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you got, gives you the answer you should have gotten."
Because that's basically what it's about. it's not about actually calculating an unknown result, but about fudging the maths to give them the result they already decided they want. One which says that their precious judgment day will come any day now.
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:3, Informative)
His transcripts are sealed, so we don't have his individual grades, true. But it is in public that he graduated magna cum laude. He was also picked to be an editor and then president of the Harvard Law Review. If none of those those count for anything, I'm not sure why his grades would.
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:3, Informative)
We are rapidly approaching the reverse of the above where those whom are wholly reliant upon the government for their subsistence will continue to vote to retain (and in fact, increase) that subsidy without regard for the financial feesibility of such a vote.
Which is why the states that are net consumers of federal funds vote republican and the states which are net producers of federal funds vote democrat. [politifact.com]
Do you have a mortgage or employer health care? (Score:4, Informative)
If you do, then you are receiving an entitlement from the government, in the form of the mortgage interest deduction, or in the form of your health benefits being paid with pre-tax income.
Do you have children? You might be receiving an entitlement referred to as the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:2, Informative)
Wrong. Not all left lanes are passing lanes. Plenty are turning lanes. Turning lanes, by definition can't be passing lanes, because the traffic patterns for turning vehicles kills any chance so safely passing anything.
The grandparent comment was clearly not talking about the uncommon scenarios you're describing above. They were talking about the 99%+ of average left lane scenarios, where a big or slow vehicle cruises along in wingman formation and makes no effort to be a polite driver and move if someone wants to get by. Many of these high lane drivers are simply making an honest mistake, usually oblivious to the pain they're causing behind them. Others, however, are as selfish as the faster drivers who dangerously tailgate, looking down their noses, buoyed up by, "I'M going below the speed limit. What's YOUR problem?"
Also, your gripes infer that people just aren't going as fast as you want to go.
Of course... It's not about rare exceptions for the left hand lane and their legal driving protocols, is it.. You just want people to "just slow down" and drive like you, and/or to leave you alone no matter what lane you occupy. You're "in the right" by going slower or "just going the speed limit, unlike you criminal speeders," right? Which one are you? The one who's oblivious of the trouble you cause others (speeders or not), or are you the vengeful, "screw you - I'm the righteous one" driver?
Are you sure that you aren't the problem?
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:5, Informative)
before spouting off about it. [ca.gov]
There are other parts that apply but this is pretty specific:
(a) Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits, any
vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal
speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be
driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable
to the right-hand edge or curb, except when overtaking and passing
another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing
for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or
driveway.
I'm not entirely sure but you may have just demonstrated the Dunning-Kruger Effect nicely. :)
Re:Not smart Enough? (Score:5, Informative)
They pay sales tax on everything they buy.
They pay property tax on any land they own or rent and most pay some form of property tax on any vehicle they own too.
They also pay income tax in the form of employer-side SSI.