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Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish
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."'"
The best quote I've heard is that true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner (usually attributed to Ben Franklin).
"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.
How about this one then:
"We are now in a period where there are mediocre men everywhere. People have opinions but no knowledge, and leaders are made in the image of the masses. Democracy is only tolerable because no other system is." --Dean Acheson
I'll take you seriously.
The Founding Fathers did an incredible initial job. The problem is that slowly corrupting forces withered away at those freedoms.
Take a deep breath:
"Average people are not smart enough to create a Darknet on Retroshare as Govt keeps banning more and more types of information sharing. Average people are not smart enough to actively log out of their accounts while Google gives them targeted ads in their email based on what they watched on Youtube. Politicians are not smart enough to vote against a bill labeled "Protect the Children From Internet Pornographers Act" because they're either dreading the instant Ad Hominem smeared in the papers (and indexed by Google remember?), or else they are already bought and want the powers for themselves."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The first and main advantage of democarcy over is that a government can be thrown out without a bloody revolution. This prevents common people being hurt by the political plays of violent social climbers, where previously they were used as literal pawns on the battleground.
It usually also has the benefit of keeping the current leader in check; a truly terrible elected government will have a quick fall, so they have to at least pretend to cater to the will of people. This is a small plus that too often can be subverted, but even without it I'd say that the first reason makes democracy worth every penny.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
A few thousand years ago, philosophers were already indicating that the inherent problem with Democracy was that the majority of people were never going to be smart/wise/informed enough to make appropriate decisions. The founders of the United States also identified this as a problem, and had many debates about how to mitigate the dangers.
But sometimes, you should vote for people because they are good liars! For example, I expect many atheists in America will vote for Obama, because they hope he lies about his faith. I expect many Republicans voted for Bush because they hoped that the pandering was just lies.
It is part of a politician's job to tell a convincing lie. I think we can never have enough transparency, but even then, it is illusory to hope for people to never lie. And there are cases that lies are necessary: I would not expect leadership to say anything about, say, military preparations...
The best quote I've heard is that true democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner (usually attributed to Ben Franklin)
And true liberty is when the sheep has a gun
I think the core problem with this discussion is that "smart" is such a loaded word. I know I'm pretty savvy with computers, and very clever with algorithms and design. I'm pretty well-read, and I know quite a lot about the world's history and its present situation. I know a lot about how things work, both natural and man-made. However, I have found that I'm a pretty bad judge of character, and can be somewhat gullible when my guard is down. Am I smart? Would Democracy do better or worse having had my participation?
E pluribus unum
And yet he has carried on and expanded most of Bush's policies.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of his intellect.
I don't think any political theorist has ever thought that democracy would create qualitatively better governments than other means of choosing governments (monarchies, autocracies, theocracies, etc.). It's advantage, as singular as it is, is that it creates an environment in which a government can be peacefully removed from power and another transitioned in its place. Of course most people are not equipped to judge which party's policies, which run the whole gamut from economics to foreign affairs to social policy, are better or worse. I doubt even most politicians are. Most people either just vote kneejerk for the "conservative" or the "liberal" or the "little guy" or the "wise-looking older fellow".
No, it's not about choosing leaders, it's about getting rid of them. That's where democracy, when coupled with a tradition of the rule of law, really shines.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have found it useful to let go of the pedantry (for lack of a better word) when judging other's speech based on the use of specific words. You clearly understand that smart can mean different things in different contexts, or in different people's minds. Rather than trying to figure out what this one specific person believes, ask yourself, does this person's general idea (i.e. "non-smart people aren't good at judging smart peoples' competency") hold up in most cases where you allow 'smart' to mean whatever you imagine it to mean?
You stated that you're somewhat gullible and not so 'smart' when it comes to people skills. (I'm still learning and am not a social butterfly myself.) Would it then follow that you are not so good at judging the competency of people who have excellent social skills? I submit you would be able to in general tell that a person is more competent than you, but you would have a hard time judging some nuances of just how good of a "player" someone is compared to others.
Likewise, one subject I have been trying to learn about lately is the economy. I know very little about it. My bullshit detector is top notch and honed from many years of active use. Most times I can spot dumb/misinformed people within minutes. But when it comes to a subject like this that I'm not too familiar with, I really have to put that thinking cap on to analyze what this person is saying and finally after a while decide if this person is either a complete moron talking totally out of his ass, or the second coming of Jesus in economist form.
Athens had a few cock-ups, but so has every other state. It's just that the eloquent (and somewhat egotistical) Socrates* hated the ignorant citizenry making decisions, and thought that it would be far better if people like himself were in charge. The Thirty Tyrants followed his suggestions, and took over; which led to Socrates being executed once their revolution had ended. Plato, a big fan of Socrates, then wrote the ultimate hatchet job on Democracy.
tl'dr - Athens screwed up a few times, so their system of government is seen as bad.
The best idea (and the one Socrates was least keen on) from Greek democracy was Sortition. It's essentially a jury system - a bunch of randomly selected citizens makes the decision. This is more representative than elections, and because the citizens on the jury know their vote will carry a lot of weight they have a big incentive to make a more educated decision (unlike most voters). They can also be given lots of resources (such as access to expert witnesses) to help make their decision; but they can rely on good-old common sense if they think the expert witnesses aren't putting the people's best interests first.
* Who never wrote anything down, so this is all arguable.
What I'd like to see is some kind of very tough civics test as a requirement for voting.
You raise some good points but the above is not really relevant. One can be uninterested in civics/politics while at the same time holding very valid points about an issue. Case in point, should the 'ruling' of the internet be left to the politicians/lawyers or to engineers who built it. If you exclude the latter because they are not involved 'enough' in politics, you'll break the internet. This applies to almost everything.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
causality expounded:
Voting is tougher. In the early days of the USA, only a small minority could vote. You had to be white, male, and you had to own land at a time when most people didn't. Obviously the requirement that voters be white was plain racism, though at the time the same racism meant only whites would be educated. The exclusion of women meant that what we now call "big government" proposals had less support automatically (this has been proven and I don't care how anyone feels about facts - women tend to look for security from an external source and the government is only too happy to offer it). The exclusion of anyone who didn't own land tended to mean the voters were educated and prosperous enough that they could devote time to being active in politics.
Oh and the fact that Senators were appointed by the states to represent the states meant you had one part of the legislature that didn't have to run campaigns, didn't have to worry about the way the wind was blowing, and could actually vote their conscience. Changing that was a bad idea. It was an important check against the soundbite-driven (well really headline-driven, back then) world we know today.
Actually, I've been reading The Gilded Age recently. In it, Twain and Warner keep politics in the age of buccaneer capital squarely in their sights. One of the supporting characters is Senator Dilworthy, who is up for re-election. He goes back to his home state of Missouri to campaign for reelection in the state legislature, and winds up losing in a landslide, when his widespread bribery of legislators is exposed.
It's fiction, not history, but it's indicative of at least one of the problems with having Senators elected by state legislatures, rather than by direct vote of the people - it's a lot easier to bribe a few dozen than an entire electorate.
Twain and Warner likewise rip the lid off of Washington politics of the time, when Dilworthy and his allies use bribery, coercion, and blackmail to ram through a bill to purchase 1200 acres of Tennessee land - ostensibly to benefit "the Negro", but actually for the benefit of a poor, but well-connected Missouri family, and the network of lobbyists, politicians, and infuence-makers who will "administer" the fund created by the measure.
The book is a lot of fun - and quite enlightening. Politics, it seems, is ever the same. The details change, the corruption remains consistent.
What I'd like to see is some kind of very tough civics test as a requirement for voting. It should be as openly and transparently administered as possible, so that anyone who wants to study and learn could pass it but very few who didn't care to study would stand a chance. In addition, anyone currently receiving some form of "entitlement" should not get to vote because what they're going to vote for is not difficult to guess and this situation is too exploitable and too dangerous for our long-term survival. The last thing I would change is that all campaigns be publically funded, each candidate gets a very generous amount, and any other "contributions" are treasonous bribery resulting in a death penalty for the candidate and 20 years in prison for the one "contributing" the money.
With something like that, we could have a nation again.
Mmm ... the civics test I could see. It would ensure an at least nominally informed electorate. Forbidding anyone who receives any kind of "entitlement" is a whole other issue. In fact, I'm really glad you put the term in quotes, because I don't think you've thought that restriction through.
And I mean I don't think you've thought it through at all.
For instance, your proposal - if it were implemented across the board - would mean that no one who receives Social Security or Medicare benefits could vote. Is that what you had in mind? Because it's senior citizens who have the most experience with the consequences of voting, as well as the leisure time necessa
Check out my novel.
A little humility would actually go a long way to addressing the problem. Unfortunately we have so many populist demagogues out there right now, telling people not to trust 'elites' (that is, anyone who knows more on a subject than the demagogue, which pretty much includes anyone who knows anything at all) that humility has been banished from our culture. Even amongst the educated, post-modernism teaches that all opinions have equal merit. The low-brow political bullshit seems to be a recurring feature of democracy, but the high-brow bullshit is new, and is often used to neutralize opposition to the low-brow stuff. This is what we have to get rid of.
So while there may be no such thing as Truth (with a capital T, the thing that ideologues and the clergy try to sell you) we need to bring that truth, you know, the sort of thing you need to get by everyday.
By the way, I'm obviously the best choice for leader, since I'm so intelligent that I have realized that I suck at everything, which obviously makes me the most competent person out there...