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BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2012-03-03 04:54
The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. 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, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, 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.
As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries.
He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills. Whether the researchers are testing people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess, the duo has found that people always assess their own performance as "above average" — even people who, when tested, actually perform at the very bottom of the pile. [Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It]
We're just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. "To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for grammar skill. "We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students." Essentially, they didn't recognize the correct answer even when they saw it.
The reason for this disconnect is simple: "If you have gaps in your knowledge in a given area, then you’re not in a position to assess your own gaps or the gaps of others," Dunning said. Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers.
The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.
Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.
Nagel concluded that 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."
http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html;_ylt=AhKHf88n1.Zx1xYnqVh37bwjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTNqZW9iNms5BGNjb2RlA2N0LmMEcGtnA2E2Y2Q3NjU0LTJiNmItMzlmOC04YzczLTc3MGI4M2YyYzdmMgRwb3MDNQRzZWMDbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHZlcgNkYmVjMjk0MC02MjNkLTExZTEtYmZkZi1iNzgxZDM3N2FiZTY-;_ylg=X3oDMTFvaGJsMzhmBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAN0ZWNoBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25zBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3
this is sadly true
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-5-2011/california-s-direct-democracy-troubles
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Lan wrote on 2012-03-03 04:57
“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.†-Sir Winston Churchill.
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Cynic wrote on 2012-03-03 05:00
Which is why I wish the semi-intelligent people who always whine about the Republicans would actually get off their arses and vote.
But seeing as the only people who actually do vote tend to be either idiots and/or dinosaurs, it's no wonder Santorum's leading in the GOP.
I can only hope things will turn around and if we really have to get a Republican, that it's not that dipshit.
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Kollin wrote on 2012-03-03 05:10
Tl;dr a majority of people are stupid, which is obvious.
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2012-03-03 05:21
I don't think people are stupid, Americans are no less intellegent than rest of the world, it's the culture in American society that stagger more progessive policies promoted by democrates.
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Bakuryu wrote on 2012-03-03 05:26
(First I'll just say I TL;DR this, not in the mood) I always thought this was kind of the problem with democracy, but rather than stupidity, I'd call it ignorance, which are different things, one can be smart and have no knowledge of certain topics. I think political knowledge is not very high among the population, and that's the problem, the politicians take advantage of ignorance, they NEED the ignorant to win.
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Cucurbita wrote on 2012-03-03 05:41
Quote from Cynic;794505:
Which is why I wish the semi-intelligent people who always whine about the Republicans would actually get off their arses and vote.
This is also true. I see people who are capable of comprehending politics usually don't get riled up enough to vote.
But I always see hordes of people who don't know the names of the party they've chosen to vote for beforehand line up burning with their passion to save America from the evils of the party they're against.
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Yoorah wrote on 2012-03-03 05:43
Stupid people are also the reason those scientists got funding for this stupid study.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
-Sir Winston Churchill
If you look at the bigger picture, the US has still been doing pretty darn well over the many years. It's just that they hit a retarded period recently. While I'm no expert on US history, I think it would be safe to assume that this happens once in a while and eventually people get over it and get back to being productive. If for some reason this trend gets broken, perhaps they should switch to a more effective Parliamentary system of government.
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Cynic wrote on 2012-03-03 05:53
Quote from The Hero Luka;794566:
This is also true. I see people who are capable of comprehending politics usually don't get riled up enough to vote.
But I always see hordes of people who don't know the names of the party they've chosen to vote for beforehand line up burning with their passion to save America from the evils of the party they're against.
Yup. I've seen tons of people complain about politics and even say they hate it, but really, I hate it just as much as the next guy. Only I know that I can't afford
not to vote once I turn 18 this year.
Hating politics is all the more reason to go out and vote for the best available candidate so you don't get screwed over. I can't stand people who do nothing and then wonder why things turn out the way they do.
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Cucurbita wrote on 2012-03-03 05:53
Quote from Yoorah;794567:
If you look at the bigger picture, the US has still been doing pretty darn well over the many years. It's just that they hit a retarded period recently. While I'm no expert on US history, I think it would be safe to assume that this happens once in a while and eventually people get over it and get back to being productive. If for some reason this trend gets broken, perhaps they should switch to a more effective Parliamentary system of government.
I have a wild and unresearched theory about how the workings of the government is outdated and unable to accompany the fast changing technology leading the world to work very differently than it has just 20 years ago.
That aside, no one really said democracy isn't working. As the title said, it isn't "flourish[ing]". I really like the writer's choice of word on that one.
It could stand to do much better. If you stood at a voting line for a few hours you'd start wondering why most of the people there are allowed to vote at all. Many of them often go in without even a clue as to what the names of the candidates are, or what they represent.
I only wish that we could phase out these people through a basic test or screening of some sort. Then even if the candidate I vote for loses, I can accept the loss knowing know hordes of retards weren't involved in the choosing of the opponent candidate.
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Yoorah wrote on 2012-03-03 06:11
The choice of word is still bad, because if you look at the big picture, democracy has indeed flourished. Saying that the system would work better if people were smarter is also stating the obvious, haha.
"... imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies."
While it's easy to judge it like that, again, evidence shows that in the end, things balance out and work out quite well most of the time.
The problem with tests idea is how will you ensure that the tests are impartial?
Some say that China is an example of a system of government that isn't based on democracy, and claim that its economic growth is evidence that their system is working well. But they forget that China was, in a sense, built by the West (ie. countries based built on democracy) and not the Chinese themselves.
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RebeccaBlack wrote on 2012-03-03 06:13
Ugh, the biggest problem is that a lot of people think they're smarter than they really are and others are just completely out of the loop. It seems like people often get pulled into one side or the other and aren't willing to take a reasonable middle ground when it's often the best option.
I've just learned to deal with it. I just don't care anymore. I mean, I do, and it actually means a lot to me, but the only way to get anything done would be to do it on a large scale and it doesn't bother me nearly enough to warrant that, or at least not at this point in my life. If I ever got involved in politics, and even was to just vote, I would instead go all the way. I mean that in the sense of speaking in front of groups of people and actually trying to convince others why such and such is a good idea. If I have to speak to 1,000 people over the course of 3 hours to get 50 to change their minds, I've done 50 times as much in 3 hours as I ever could've alone.
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2012-03-03 06:15
Quote from Yoorah;794594:
The choice of word is still bad, because if you look at the big picture, democracy has indeed flourished. Saying that the system would work better if people were smarter is also stating the obvious, haha.
"... imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies."
While it's easy to judge it like that, again, evidence shows that in the end, things balance out and work out quite well most of the time.
The problem with tests idea is how will you ensure that the tests are impartial?
Some say that China is an example of a system of government that isn't based on democracy, and claim that its economic growth is evidence that their system is working well. But they forget that China was, in a sense, built by the West (ie. countries based built on democracy) and not the Chinese themselves.
Built by the west?
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Yoorah wrote on 2012-03-03 06:22
Indeed. From an economic, technological and scientific point of view, they are getting what's essentially a massive free ride right now. The real test of their system of government will come when they are independent. Kinda off-topic, though. Perhaps someone should start a new thread if they are interested in this stuff. xP
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TLCBonaparte wrote on 2012-03-03 06:53
Quote from Yoorah;794597:
Indeed. From an economic, technological and scientific point of view, they are getting what's essentially a massive free ride right now. The real test of their system of government will come when they are independent. Kinda off-topic, though. Perhaps someone should start a new thread if they are interested in this stuff. xP
It's hardly a freeride, but I do agree current chinese economic model is quote similar to western economy. I don't believe there is such thing as technological freeride though, West is trying the hardest to keep China from obtain cutting edge technology, besides origins of some very essential ancient technology west had were from China.