People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say

http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html

by pwg • 14 years ago

116 157 14 years ago

news.yahoo.com

Democracy isn't about putting the best people in power. Its about being able to get rid of the worst ones.

btilly4• 14 years ago

Indeed this is what the article concludes. The last paragraph says, 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."

jonnathanson• 14 years ago

A republic is all about establishing a reasonably strong mean, back to which a succession of various administrations tends to revert.

Other forms of government allow for much higher variance. You might get a brilliant and benevolent monarch, for instance, but his son might turn out to be incompetent or tyrannical. In which case, sucks to be you. Hopefully the 30-year dice roll turns out better with the next heir.

afterburner2• 14 years ago

I would go on to say that, IMO, the most important feature of a democracy is the periodic and orderly transfer of power every X years. Or, to put it another way, the ability to easily get rid of a leader.

scarmig• 14 years ago

Hmmm. The PRC seems to have this down.

I'm not sure if that's a point against you or a point in the PRC's favor.

praxeologist• 14 years ago

That sounds nice, but put into practice is, at best, marginally effective.

Democracy is actually quite good on a small scale without the element of compulsion, like your chess club or picking the most able-bodied man to lead the local volunteer fire co.

People are both more familiar with the people being voted for and can see a payoff for voting. There's more chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the polls in the US than of your individual vote mattering though.

Democracy such as in US politics, in comparison, creates a perverse incentive structure where it is more often the most suave liars rising to the top. The millions spent on Super PACs or stroking the media is chump change compared such things as awarding gov't contracts or the power of politicians and unelected bureaucrats to shape industry-changing regulation.

Can we vote out the worst ones? I guess, as long as we are talking about a more legitimate democracy than Russia or Venezuela. Still, even in the US people are going to elect pretty much the same thing every time they switch. There's very little difference between a Romney (or clones) and Obama.

What needs "voted out" is democracy as a whole. I realize that this cuts to the core of most Americans' religious worship of democracy, but hopefully people can at least consider the options—I suggest libertarian anarchy—and educate themselves about some serious criticisms of the system we have. I suspect I am going to get more downvotes than coherent objections, but oh well. See Hans Herman Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed or Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter

TheAmazingIdiot• 14 years ago

Marx and Engels are a good place to start if you look for a comprehensive debate against capitalism.

Of course, I would expect Adam Smith and his disertation to say something akin to "we've not seen 'real capitalism'".

pnathan2• 14 years ago

One thing that I am reminded of in the current zeitgeist with respect to capitalism and democracy is the 1930s and its condemnation of democracy as outdated and how fascism was the progressive way forward.

rmc2• 14 years ago

Interesting. Got a link?

pnathan2• 14 years ago

Unfortunately not; the most recent book I read on the period was Gathering Storm, by W. S. Churchill (not the most unbiased observer, but very engaging reading).

synor• 14 years ago

Also, that time gave rise to the Technocracy Movement, which proposed an allegedly new way to run society other than by dictatorship or democracy.

swalsh2• 14 years ago

From this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy#Technocracy_movemen...

The idea of currency based on energy units is quite intriguing. It makes me wonder how our world would change.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

It might actually be, but we won't find out any time soon. Nazi Germany put such a stain on fascism, it will be quite a while before it is taken seriously.

gaius4• 14 years ago

The elephant in the corner of the room of course is that the ancient Athenians quite deliberately didn't have a universal franchise. Property-owning tax-paying full citizens who fulfilled their military obligations voted, because they were the ones that would pay for, implement and generally be responsible for whatever was voted for.

tlholaday• 14 years ago

And the property they owned included slaves, whose votes the owners did not want to count.

rmc2• 14 years ago

This was the dominant form of voting in most democracies until about 100 years ago. E.g. in the UK, only men who owned property could vote (can't let the common man vote!). This didn't always produce a good democracy.

gaius4• 14 years ago

Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

This is the one crucial defence of a restricted franchise - if the only people voting are the ones paying, they are much more resistant to this kind of corruption.

javert13• 14 years ago

This didn't always produce a good democracy.

Really? I think the British Empire was a high point in world history (for both the British and their colonies). So I don't see how your point is supported.

That said, I think a constitutional republic is the right solution, not democracy.

larrydag• 14 years ago

Most U.S. states adopted this form of voting power near when the U.S. was founded. Some states even allowed freed slaves that were property owners to vote.

brudgers• 14 years ago

The property owning ancient Athenians also condemned Socrates to death for raising questions in regards to the status quo.

d4nt2• 14 years ago

    "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be
    tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that 
    democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been
    said that democracy is the worst form of government 
    except all those other forms that have been tried from 
    time to time."

Churchill, 1947

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parli...

Sthorpe• 14 years ago

I honestly think this is the best piece of rhetoric to keep our old system in place.

The system is awful, but its the best we got. I'd prefer if we brought back our philosophers and started to have large debates on the writing of new law.

We are to afraid to change our old old system. Depressing.

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

The bigger problem is that the only folks who can improve the system(the people in charge), have an active self-interest not to do that since they are likely to lose power and influence with the changes.

That's why the US Congress has an approval rating worse than herpes [1] and still most people will keep their jobs thanks to lack of reform, redistricting and gerrymandering by the only people who can fix it.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress-fa...

random_ind_dude• 14 years ago

David Dunning and Justin Kruger - aren't these the guys who proposed the idea now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect?

jcarreiro• 14 years ago

Yes. The new research builds on that work.

ez77• 14 years ago

It is anarchy that requires real smarts, not democracy.

shingen4• 14 years ago

Constitutional Republic yes, Democracy no.

Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom.

America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument. The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.

3pt141592• 14 years ago

What about Peter Thiel wanting to make a sea-based libertarian country that doesn't have a democracy because people arn't smart enough to keep it libertarian? (Granted, they could leave by relocating somewhere else, but that is true of most countries anyways.)

shingen4• 14 years ago

Anytime someone lays out an argument by stating that some other group of people isn't intelligent enough to self govern, you should be suspicious of the character and intentions of the person making that argument.

Whether that applies to Thiel or not I have no clue, I haven't seen all his statement on the libertarian colony proposal (I've just seen brief discussions on it).

sidww2• 14 years ago

Not true. Immigration laws are a huge barrier, an insurmountable one for some.

jpadkins• 14 years ago

the seasteading institute is not only for libertarian countries. The point is to enable experimentation and competition in governments. One group of seasteadders can create a commune, one a voluntary society, one can create a dictatorship...

javert13• 14 years ago

I came here to say almost precisely this.

However, I do think it's true that people aren't smart enough for democracy, and that's a part of why we need a constitutional republic instead. Is there something wrong with that line of argumentation?

Shivetya• 14 years ago

Its not that they are too smart or not, it is that far too many are too greedy or too lazy.

shingen4• 14 years ago

Here's what's logically wrong with that line of argument:

Smart / dumb are relative scales, so there will always be smarter, and dumber, no matter what you do. If you filled a society with what we currently define as genius level intellects, there would be the equivalent to dumb people amongst them - the dumb people would have 145 IQ's and the smart people would have 180 IQ's --- you get the idea.

Majority rules will always allow one group to optionally eat the other, and violate the rights of the minority. Whether that minority is the dumber 49% or the smarter 49%, either scenario is equally morally reprehensible.

Peikoff would say: think in extrapolated principles. Look up the first serious conversations Peikoff had with Rand (she couldn't get him to think in principles). Whether you're dealing with smart people with 250 IQ's, and 'dumb' people with 160 IQ's, the smart people might decide they know what's best for the 'dumb' people (and proceed to violate their liberty). The principle remains whether you're dealing with 70 IQ's and 160 IQ's or much higher scales of intellect.

batista5• 14 years ago

However, I do think it's true that people aren't smart enough for democracy

What does that even mean?

The majority of the people are not to be trusted with judging how to run their country, so we have to put intermediaries and dilute the majority's will?

batista5• 14 years ago

Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom.

Really? And who said democracy == mob rule?

Mob is a weasel term, to imply "people when take decisions as a group are inherently bad".

Well, people taking decisions as a whole has been quite nice when it happened and while it lasted (or was allowed to last). I'm thinking the Athenian Democracy, various communes, etc.

And it's not like any other system of government is better. Besides true democracy, everything else is tyranny, including representational democracy. Democracy means "the people should be governed exactly how the majority of them likes to". No bait and switch representation, no BS.

toyg7• 14 years ago

Careful: democracy is not about majority, but rather (literally) "government by the people"; there is quite a difference. There are various types of "majority", and all of them fail at fully representing "the people" as a whole, unless it's a 100% majority where nobody abstains (and even then, one would have to argue about who was allowed to vote and how).

This is why any robust democratic system will have, on some subjects, "qualified" majorities (where the threshold is set much higher than 51%, or abstained votes are counted against, etc etc) or "relative" majorities (where the most popular option wins, even when it doesn't represent at least 50% of the votes) as well as the "simple" majority (usually 50% + 1 or 51% of the expressed votes). They're different ways of really interpreting "the will of the people" on different subjects. A proper democratic system recognises the importance of respecting minorities and the volatility (and gullibility) of popular sentiment, and safeguards itself against wrong decisions. Many fascist governments were democratically elected and survived re-election, but they were not democratic in nature.

If the majority of synapses in your brain should decide tomorrow that shooting yourself in the foot is a good idea, despite "a small but vocal minority opposed to the plan" (i.e. your foot), that doesn't mean that it'd be in your real interest to do so.

tkahn6• 14 years ago

> Democracy means "the people should be governed exactly how the majority of them likes to". No bait and switch representation, no BS.

Direct democracy without constitutional checks is tyranny. The majority would just vote the minority into slavery. This is such an obvious consequence of what it seems you're advocating that I must be misunderstanding you.

dataferret• 14 years ago

Athenian democracy was subject to bouts of mob rule - note the treasurer incidents. Courts were barbaric, and really amounted to popularity votes as jurors had little legal oversight. At the assembly level, for their credit, the criteria for citizenship required military training and voting for war generally meant you had to actually do the fighting - hence the level of peace.

Mobs form when there is no responsibility for their vote or actions. That's why in unrestrained democracies, the mob majority can disenfranchise the minority so easily and quickly.

kiba2• 14 years ago

The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument.

People are plenty smart, it's just that democracy encourage the worst kind of decision making.

The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.*

I prefer that you answer with substance, not accusation of having a domination complex.

derleth5• 14 years ago

Constitutional Republic yes

This is a form of Democracy.

3pt141592• 14 years ago

Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. From Ron Paul to Che, the entire spectrum says "no" to armed resistance until all democratic means are exhausted.

shingen4• 14 years ago

Che? He was a genocidal psychopath that hated gays and people that were religious. He personally oversaw the execution - murder - of thousands of innocent people that he regarded as undesirable or conflicting with his beliefs. Bloodthirsty, is the description he gave himself. He didn't start with democratic means, he started with sheer extreme violence.

Che is one of the greatest villains of the last century.

angersock2• 14 years ago

It's a lot easier to have a united democracy when you start with a unified populace culled of undesirables, yeah?

Sure, stacking the deck, but it can be made to work.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

Has a shockingly horrible track record as the "only way" to stop armed revolution

eurleif2• 14 years ago

>Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions.

You phrase that as a positive, but it could also be phrased as a negative: Democracy allows evil people to rise to power without having to fight anyone to do it. Hitler was elected democratically.

javert13• 14 years ago

Hitler was elected democratically.

That's not really the case. He got a fair amount of votes organically, but at some point he was just using violence and force to take power.

Despite what I see as a flawed example, I agree with your point.

atakan_gurkan• 14 years ago

I am surprised that a normal distribution was used for the distribution of "leadership skills". I imagine this could be similar to income distribution which has fat tails. I wonder if the result would change if such a distribution was used.

btilly4• 14 years ago

As long as you maintain the assumption that you cannot recognize relative abilities of better leaders than yourself, the result will remain the same.

If you relax that assumption even slightly (thus you do not reliably recognize relative abilities, but you tend to prefer the better leader), then the conclusion will change dramatically.

That is why this is a toy model. And people should not give it much weight.

btilly4• 14 years ago

This is what happens when one person writes an article, and another writes a link bait title.

Here is the concise version. The well-known Dunning-Kruger effect says that the less competent people are, the less they are able to recognize competence. Someone named Mato Nagel used this as the basis of a toy computer model of democracy. The result of his simulations is that the leaders selected by democracy are only slightly above average.

Of course there has been no testing of how accurate this model is. It is just a toy, and appropriate skepticism should be shown.

However I wouldn't say that evidence is against particularly against his conclusion. For instance 3 of the 4 remaining Republican candidates for President actively disbelieve the scientific consensus on topics such as evolution and global warming. (The exception is Mitt Romney, and even he is not convinced enough about global warming to say that we should spend any money on the issue.) Conversely surveys of Democrats find that most fail to accept basic economic theory on a number of subjects. For instance economists broadly agree that rent control decreases the supply of rental housing, but in surveys the majority of Democrats think that this is wrong.

I could start a debate by multiplying examples of widespread misconception on both sides, but these two are enough to support my point. My point is that it is easy to demonstrate that someone who actually understands and supports the best view of the world that experts from different fields have come to would be totally unelectable. That person might run the country very well, but will never, ever be selected by a democratic process.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

Original article is less Yahoo! http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2191-people-smart-democr...

flogic• 14 years ago

I think that article might disprove it's own headline. If a single iteration of a simple simulated democracy tends to choose slightly better than average that may be all you need. A common theme among distributed systems is the parts don't need to be perfect to achieve a decent hill climbing effect. Real democracy has several elections. Nor do people as a whole consider only a single variable.

d4nt2• 14 years ago

In certain other countries the majority would find the "average American voters'" perspective on issues like economics or climate change quite strange. I can think of countries where there seems to be an almost universal acceptance of global warming but a poor acceptance of free market principles, for example.

My hypothesis is that in the long run education systems have a big impact on what average voters think; and that America's High School system isn't very strong on the scientific method. That's not to say it's all bad. I think it is very strong on creating a sense of national identity, something the UK system seems quite poor on.

arethuza• 14 years ago

Actually, lots of schools in parts of the UK are very keen on promoting a "national identity" - just not a "UK identity".

When you have parts of the UK whose own (unofficial) national anthem is about a 700 year old war against other parts of the UK then it no wonder that a single "national identity" has never really caught on.

ChrisNorstrom• 14 years ago

And so we have come to realize that soon, very soon, we will have to pioneer another form of government. We humans have had kings and queens, dictatorships, anarchy, communism, socialism, republics, democracies, and now it's time to move on to the next one.

A few years ago when I was a young teenager who believed in the good of the world and the wisdom of people I would have thought the next government would naturally be more democratic than the last, taking more power away from individuals (who's human flaw is greed and control) and giving it to the masses (who's human flaw is stupidity and not knowing what to do with power in the first place). But after a few years of studying history, voting, reading, I've changed my mind. Democracy will never work because it can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity. We are also delusional greedy and evil by nature so dictatorships also do not work out for us.

I can't help but feel that the problem is us. Our human way of thinking is just too primitive. We have to constantly look for ways to prevent "us" from fucking everything up. This is why I await the zombie apocalypse with a smile. At least the zombies can work together to reach a common goal and the world will be a much more peaceful place after their rise to power.

kiba2• 14 years ago

Democracy can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity.

The human brain cannot decide on multiple complex issue, each requiring a PhD to understand, at once. This is not possible, not until we can begin enhancing human cognition.

Instead, we work around that limitation by specialization. This is how we advance our civilization anyway. We do not depend on one scientist, one genius. Rather, we build our civilization on the back of many genius and many supporting roles. Human beings doesn't have to know everything about making cars, making computers, etc. Somebody make the computer, I write a very specific application for it. Somebody else wrote the code so that I don't have to, etc.

Democracy doesn't take advantage of humans' knowledge specialties. Instead, we decide everything by popularity, tribalism, and other nonsense that doesn't predict expertise and wise decision-making.

saraid2162• 14 years ago

Democracy will never work because it can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity. We are also delusional greedy and evil by nature so dictatorships also do not work out for us.

See, for most people, this is a surrender. "Give up!" they say, "The world can never get better!"

To me, though, it's a challenge. I'm a hacker and an entrepreneur and "impossible" means "interesting".

derleth5• 14 years ago

Democracy will never work because it can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity.

And here is what thinking like that gets us:

http://www.archive.org/details/nazi_concentration_camps

yzhengyu• 14 years ago

Democracy will never work because it can only work if EVERYONE is educated enough and by default humans are notoriously stupid and unaware of their own stupidity.

In this case, I would not call it stupidity - I would call it inherent, (very human) instinctual biases and tendencies in dealing with contradictory thoughts in your mind.

Or what most of us understand as cognitive dissonance.

I would imagine this tendency probably arose from as a result of natural selection ranking flight or fight instincts very highly. Those who were not able to ignore or rationalize away what made them feel uncomfortable [which cognitive dissonance invokes in us] probably ended up dead very quickly out on the savanna while hunting or gathering.

However, on a personal note, I am actually very optimistic as more and more people become aware of our inherent human limitations, we can grow and become better individuals and create better social constructs to overcome our group tendencies.

Unfortunately, it would probably take a long time. Probably not in our generation.

ArbitraryLimits• 14 years ago

I agree with everything you've said, however I take issue with the broad idea that the purpose of democracy is to pick the best leaders. It's not, the purpose is to prevent any single leader from doing too much damage. A certain amount of fickleness and inconstancy on the part of the voters is actually a good thing, because the elected leaders know they have to stay on their toes.

chrischen• 14 years ago

It's also likely that candidates simply have to change their views in order to be able to gain support.

If I ran for president I'd probably have to at least pretend to be a Christian and align myself with the consensus views of either the democratic or republican party, which are already clearly established.

paulhauggis• 14 years ago

"global warming"

You can't just include global warming with something like evolution. Global warming (isn't it Global climate change now ;-)) may be happening, but I'm still not convinced it's as man-made as supports would like us to believe. Especially when there is so much money involved in it (many scientists will lose government funding if they don't support it) and all of those emails that came out that were immediately denied were just too suspicious to discount completely. Oh, and if you look at the climate of earth for many thousands of years, there are patterns of cooling and warming periods.

Global warming for the most part has all been about punishing people by forcing them to pay enormous amounts of money in taxes.

If there was evidence that it was not man-made, I can't see any of the supports (including governments) ever supporting it. Mostly because it would cut their funding. It reminds me of religious nuts. If you could prove that Jesus didn't exist, they would continue to deny this evidence.

"I could start a debate by multiplying examples of widespread misconception on both sides"

Oh? Then why did it seem like your rant was for the sole purpose of Republican bashing.

"That person might run the country very well, but will never, ever be selected by a democratic process."

My problem is that "smart" people want to force their views on the rest of us, even if it's only an opinion. I want someone who has not only is intelligent, but has good people smarts. This most likely won't be someone with a very high IQ..it will be someone above average.

freshhawk• 14 years ago

^-- Dunning-Kruger in effect

If you are actually in the climate science field then I appologize. I'm assuming that you don't have a rational reason to disagree with the widespread scientific consensus.

freehunter• 14 years ago

You are exactly the person this article and post was written about.

natep• 14 years ago

I'm curious, can humans have a long-term effect on a stream? On a river? On a watershed? On an ocean? On the planet? Where is the line, and why is that line there?

Which scientists would lose funding if they didn't produce data to support the idea of man-made climate change?

You say that money is corrupting climate scientists. Well, how much more money do you think they would get from oil companies, NewsCorp, etc if they were to manufacture data that supports their side? How come their side still hasn't been able to produce much of any good science?

I'm pretty sure that a climate scientist could get much more famous by disproving climate change (and 'saving the world') than by continuing to support it, so why hasn't anyone done this?

Yes, there are alternate theories on why this particular period of global warming is more rapid and extreme than previous ones (e.g. cosmic rays or solar activity), and climate scientists are still working to quantify how much warming we are getting from each source, but no model that I know of can account for all of the warming we're seeing unless it includes humans.

This playlist provides a good overview of the scientific aspects of the debate: http://www.youtube.com/potholer54#p/c/A4F0994AFB057BB8

And also, if it turns out that this very real global warming effect is not man made, and we can't stop it, then at least we tried, right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

btilly4• 14 years ago

Where to begin?

First of all, whether you accept it or not, global warming is an accepted part of the scientific consensus. It is not ridiculous for me to include it as an example.

Secondly, whether you think creationism is ridiculous or not, 3 out of 4 of the current Republican candidates have stated that they do not believe in evolution. Creationism is a mainstream belief among Republicans, and (according to polls) widespread among Americans in general. (But Creationists tend to vote Republican.)

Thirdly, I gave an example where Democrats do not accept what standard economics has to say about the effects of government regulation of various kinds of prices, including rents. This is literally economics 101, supply/demand curves show that price regulation results in reduced supply and the creation of a much more expensive black market. The inability to accept facts that do not agree with our world views does not just happen on one side or the other.

And last, as someone else pointed out, you've demonstrated my point. A person with knowledge of, and respect for, the facts we have the most evidence for will be unelectable. Even if you accepted that person's knowledge and ability (which you won't necessarily), you wouldn't want them to be in charge.

willyt2• 14 years ago

Perhaps to would be better to split governments up into areas of expertise. Foreign and Diplomatic. Health and social services. Transport. Justice and policing. Each has it's own remit and representatives from each region. They meet in a forum to discuss overall issues. Representatives are specialised in their field. Combine with continuous voting whereby you could withdraw your support for a representative and tag your decision with an issue. Something like that...

willyt2• 14 years ago

Oh. That wasn't popular, why? My thinking was that, say, a successful headteacher could stand for a place on a national committee which decides education policy. Which would lead to an elected committee of experts deciding education policy. Rather than the current situation in the UK where we have Micheal Gove deciding policy based on whatever dogma he thinks will get him respect from the right wing of the tory party so he can get a promotion.

flueedo• 14 years ago

We can't know for sure that said candidates really believe in what they're saying, politicians always try to express opinions that will resonate with the voters.

danmaz744• 14 years ago

Democracy isn't about selecting the "best leaders" - democracy is about self-determination and freedom.

rbarooah6• 14 years ago

How is democracy not about selecting leaders?

danmaz744• 14 years ago

Democracy means "rule of the people (demos)", and it was opposed to traditional Aristocracy, the "rule of the best (aristos)". Even if modern democracies are mostly representative, and not direct like the original Athenian democracy, they are still based not on the idea that we should elect "the best" leaders to make "the right" choices (as if there was an objective metric for any of the two), but on the idea that each citizen has the right of self determination even in collective matters - and that democracy (one head, one vote) is the best approximation of that.

So, my point is that measuring democracy ("power to the people") against the purposes of aristocracy ("power to the best ones") is pretty misguided...

throughnothing2• 14 years ago

Democracy isn't really about freedom at all. When the majority can overrule and extinguish the rights and freedoms of the minority, that is not freedom. It's more about mob-determination than self-determination.

chernevik2• 14 years ago

The point of electoral government is people's right to govern themselves, not the superiority of their decisions.

In the U.S. we mediate "democracy" through a republican government of divided and checked powers to guard against the dangers of any unified and unchecked political power. But the point of all that is to secure that right to self-government, not thwart it.

newman3142• 14 years ago

That may have been the intent but the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive.

Consequently, you lose unless you happen to be one of the few in charge.

chernevik2• 14 years ago

Consider the course of governments dedicated to "the poor" and you may see the problem.

I'd also point out that the intrusions of our current government aren't motivated by their advantages for the rich.

javert13• 14 years ago

the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate

That's just not accurate at all. You can still go to college and "make it" into middle class America, even if you come from a poor background. You can also go the entrepreneurial route and make it into rich America.

resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive.

That is the case, but it results from cultural philosophy, not from "the rich dominating".

DirtyCalvinist• 14 years ago

"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."

So we know incompetence even if we don't recognize competence. This appears to be good enough for government work.

popplebop• 14 years ago

>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."

No. Democracy is the best form of government discovered so far because it allows voters to remove incompetent leaders and bad policies without violence.

However competent a king or dictator is, most of his competence will be directed towards remaining in power through military force, rather than addressing his country's real problems. He cannot be removed without risking civil war, which is the worst kind.

However incompetent a prime minister or president turns out to be, and however dull voters are, incompetence is easier to recognise than competence.

Besides, one doesn't necessarily need to personally recognise it: one can be persuaded by other people. It's easier to reach agreement about things that aren't working.

darengb• 14 years ago

This is not a new idea, it's why almost nobody took Democracy seriously before the U.S. I like Jefferson's answer to this problem:

"if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is really the only reason that we have universal education in the first place. If the elite are forced to allow the people to make decisions, then they're going to make sure the people are educated enough not to do anything too dumb.

artsrc4• 14 years ago

Indeed, the whole theory falls down on this point. In areas where people are generally competent, they can judge to skill of others and can select the best leaders.

benmmurphy• 14 years ago

as long as stupidness causes people to vote randomly instead of being biased towards bad policies then it isn't harmful to democracy. the stupid peoples votes will cancel each other out and just leave the smart peoples votes. you need research which shows that people are systematically biased towards bad policies.

cjoh• 14 years ago

This is 15 year old research, sensationalized in a headline to sell advertising on Yahoo. Which, I mean, if you think about it, is kind of ironic.

Here's some good info on the Dunning-Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

orbitingpluto• 14 years ago

Critiques of this sort are incredibly daft.

Just like you or I can't possibly read every EULA and privacy policy that pertains to us, an individual in a democracy can't even begin to have sufficient knowledge to make the correct choices. Most politicians never even read the bills they vote for!

That imperfect knowledge will exist in every possible form of government. So, um, what's the argument? Are we arguing against scaling ignorance from small select groups to the population?

The conclusion is, "Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders?" Aggregating responsibility to narrow (and possibly wilfully ignorant) self-interests is not a solution.

Edited: removed references to a certain political candidate.

laic• 14 years ago

Democracy is not about choosing one "Great Leader" and everyone else just follow. If that was the case, we don't need the congress, the high court and free press. Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake in a way that everybody has a say.

In a democratic system, "Great leader" or not, it really doesn't matter that much in the long run, we will always get there. What important is the system makes sure that "Great leader" won't have the power to destroy our civilization.

On the other hand, "smart" leader may not always yield better outcome than an "average" leader. Complex policy from "expert" may bring more disaster than "no policy".

GFischer3• 14 years ago

"Democracy is about "putting power into cage" and splitting cake "

Well, no. What you're describing is a Republic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

It's often confused because most democracies are also republics.

artsrc4• 14 years ago

A constitutional monarchy does all those things.

And they are not republics, but can be democracies.

derleth5• 14 years ago

All republics that actually are republics are democracies; true republican government is a form of democracy.

mhd• 14 years ago

"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."

That seems like an utterly simplistic model. "Leadership"?

yaix• 14 years ago

>> Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."

Of course they don't elect the "best" leader. What is that, anyway?

Democracies exist only to have an obviously legitimate system to replace the current leaders by new ones every few years, and thus avoid corruption from growing too large and damage the society/economy.

The difference between the "best" or an "average" leader is much less than the difference between "little" and "a lot of" corruption.

maratd• 14 years ago

  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.

Unfortunately, the researchers in question aren't intelligent enough to realize the best form of government is a mediocre one.

A government that is competent enough to survive and incompetent enough to be unable to interfere in the lives of its citizens.

gersh• 14 years ago

If 90% of the population randomly picks between two candidates and 10% makes an informed decision, the better candidate will win. If the most informed are also the most engaged via volunteering, donating, etc. their influence will be amplified.

dgreensp• 14 years ago

I see fallacy upon fallacy here. In reality, political systems are complex; there often is no objectively "right" or "best" answer; it's not about smart vs. dumb.

Here are some other headlines we could run.

> Neurons Aren't Smart Enough for Brains to Flourish

The system as a whole either works or doesn't; the burden is not on each part. This is just an empty way to blame the parts for the functioning of the whole.

> Investors Aren't Smart Enough for Good Companies to Flourish

Maybe it feels that way sometimes (ha), but what is a "good" company or a "smart" investor? There are many kinds of investors, and they can make up their own mind how to spend their money. This is just an empty way to blame whoever is making the decisions for the outcomes; yet we could just as easily assume the decision-makers are doing the best they can, or even could do, depending on what we assume the goal (i.e. definition of "best") to be.

> Movie Critics Aren't Smart Enough for Good Movies to Flourish

Again, what makes a movie critic or a movie "smart" or "good"? Not that we don't each have our opinions about this, but it's not anything so objective as skill at tax accounting. More importantly, do movie critics even have that much influence in shaping what movies are made? We may be looking in the wrong place.

batista5• 14 years ago

Democracy isn't about putting the BEST people in power, or taking the BEST decisions.

It's about WHO choses what it's "the best".

The majority should choose, period.

Everything else is "I know better than other people what they SHOULD want".

Even if you "know better" by some objective criterium, it should not be up to you to decide.

Because government is about choosing what people WANT not what is BEST for them.

MetaMan5• 14 years ago

well said !

rbarooah6• 14 years ago

Why should the majority always have power over minorities?

batista5• 14 years ago

Only in cases where you can't have it both ways.

If the majority wants to build a bridge, and a minority doesn't, well, the majority gets their say.

For one, this makes the most people (the "majority", nudge nudge) get what they want.

For another, if it all comes down to raw power struggle, i.e hitting each other, the majority will win anyway. Voting is a way to ensure you get the above effect without the blood.

Consider also that for different courses of action, what is a majority and what is a minority changes. You can be pro "more taxes" and a majority, and also pro "legalize marijuana" (and a minority at that --just an example, doesn't mean the maj/min it talks about is accurate).

joejohnson3• 14 years ago

This is definitely true. Representative Democracy systems (and bodies like the Electoral College in the US) try to ameliorate the stupidity of the average voter, but ultimately add complexity and beauracracy to a simple idea (democracy).

Let's say I spend a lot of time prior to an election trying to understand the ballot measures and issues and candidates. Come going day, my decision is weighed just as highly as someone who watched Fox News the morning of the election, heard one of the candidates was the next Hitler and made an uninformed, fear-based decision. Ours votes are worth the same; why should I even do research then? (That's a different rant though).

I'm unfairly picking on Fox News. The vast majority of "news" is bullshit that is a distraction from the issues that an intelligent, informed electorate should care about. By turning news into entertainment, the purpose is no longer to inform and thus little of any substance is discussed by most news outlets.

So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Or what if it was not one person = one vote, but rather a system where people's relative intelligences are reflected in their say in the process.

Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc.

This seems like the rational successor to democracy. Of course this system I'm describing would need to be carefully crafted to remain fair, but I believe we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US.

joejohnson3• 14 years ago

I wish people would respond to this. Why did someone downvote me?

derleth5• 14 years ago

So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote?

Multiple reasons:

1. Because our ability to measure g (the general intelligence factor some psychologists think exists and others do not) is somewhere between marginal and nonexistent. Our attempts are better than they were but I don't know of anyone informed on the topic who would claim with a straight face that they're actually good.

2. Because intelligent people can be very, very wrong, and not just that, but wrong in more exciting ways than the average person. Libertarians tend to be intelligent, educated, and wrong about so many things it's barely worth debating them on politics or economics; doctrinaire Marxist Socialists are essentially the same way.

3. Because we're not starting from scratch, here; we're starting this system in an established political and social order, where opportunities for people to game this system as it's being born will be everywhere. If ensuring that my children have a berth on the deluxe class means redefining 'intelligence' to include them, I'll do it without looking back. Most people involved in politics now are like that, if not moreso.

This is so biased towards a certain subculture I don't know where to begin. It's almost tailor-written to cater to middle-class and rich people, predominantly White and Asian, especially those who are not gay or transgender or otherwise going to be effectively locked out of certain preferred careers or lifestyles, such as the military or top-flight schools. It is, in short, precisely what you would implement to turn America into Brazil or the Soviet Union or China, where there is no vertical mobility and birth absolutely determines outcome.

we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US

I bring Russia, China, and most of Africa to your attention.

throughnothing2• 14 years ago

This is just funny and ironic on so many levels. What exactly does it mean for Democracy to 'Flourish'? Does that mean that the 51% get to do whatever they want, and the 49% have to go along with it? The whole premise of the article seems to assume by default that Democracy is, somehow, a good form of government, and that if only people weren't so dumb, everyone would be happy under this tyrannical form of government.

Democracy is, by definition, a system wherein the minority suffers at the whims of the majority -- mob rule, if you will. Most people seem to think the United States is a democracy, but it is actually (supposed to be) a Republic. Our elected officials are not (supposed to be) able to do whatever the majority wants at the expense of the minority, but rather their actions are strictly limited and restricted by the constitution so as to prevent the majority from violating the rights of the minority -- which is virtually always what results from a true democracy.

motters• 14 years ago

This is a very old argument against democracy. It's also divisive in the sense that you have the "competent" folks on one side and the "incompetent" ones on the other. Who decides who is "competent" to vote? About a century ago it was believed that women were not competent to vote. Before then it was thought that people who didn't own land couldn't possibly be responsible enough to vote. Also, there is no such thing as an objectively "best leader". That way lies tyranny and ruin.

Democracy isn't about voting for candidates anyway. In general it's about having some say in decisions which affect your life, and as such I think it's still more of an aspiration than a reality.

rayiner• 14 years ago

"Democracy" is a fairly amorphous term. We don't have anything like a democracy in the United States. We have elements of democracy mixed with elements of republicanism mixed with elements of rule by a technocracy. Mediating all of these elements is a system of referees (the legal system) that is anything but democratic.

If you look at how hard governance is, and how badly most countries do it, it's actually a pretty great system. Baroque, complex, inefficient, sure, but there is little to suggest that any system of governance for 300 million people would be anything other than those things.

robomartin• 14 years ago

Maybe it is becoming clear that the age of the generalist government is over. In science and industry the age of the generalist ended a long time ago. While it was, at one time, possible for someone to know almost literally all that there was to be known, that didn't last too long. Specialization in various fields led to significant improvements and progress within those fields.

Could it be that a new form of government needs to emerge in this model? One where policy on a specific subject area is handled by those better equipped to understand it and, more importantly, with a good degree of isolation from others?

Wouldn't it be better if, say, education policy was crafted in total isolation from the political goals of any party, special interest group or unions? Or how about energy policy?

I firmly believe the basic premise of the article to be true: Most voters don't understand what the hell they are voting on. They are easily swayed by a barrage of numbers and pretend-facts and probably vote on what sounds good or believable far more so than what might have merit based on facts.

Take the arguments on manufacturing, for example. Everyone from the President on down to Congress and GOP candidates are talking about bringing manufacturing back. Both parties at all level do it. Now, there are two possibilities here: One, they know the truth and realize that the masses might not be able to handle the truth. Or, they actually don't understand what's going on.

Manufacturing, folks, isn't coming back to the US or Europe in massive numbers any time soon, if ever. The standard of living of the average manufacturing worker would have to be reduced to revolution-inspiring levels for this to happen. Environmental and worker safety laws would have to trashed by the thousands. Virtually all labor unions would have to be dissolved. And more. The loss of manufacturing jobs has taken place over sixty years of making the wrong decisions. This did not happen overnight. And this cannot be fixed overnight, if ever. Just try to manufacture a consumer good in the US and see how far you get. Sure, there are outliers that might buck the trend, but, for the most part, its a done deal: Mass manufacturing of consumer goods in the US is dead.

Anyhow, I believe that voters do tend to vote people into office for entirely the wrong reasons. From religious groups to unions and special interest sectors. All seek to place puppets in office that will protect and further their interests. Virtually none --due to the nature of their egocentric focus-- act with the long term interest of the country in mind.

Not an easy problem to solve as it would require a nearly complete change in the form of government we have known for so long. The problem is that the US Constitution does not provide for a mechanism through which these kinds of changes could be made. The only way is for a massive and very disruptive revolution to take place. This is unlikely to happen unless things get so bad that people are compelled to "take up arms against their oppressor". And, this is highly undesirable as well because it would probably result in half a century of uncertainty and turmoil before reaching a new stable state.

And this takes us full circle to an inevitable conclusion: As much as we might hate the fact that the lunatics are running the asylum, it is probably the best option we have. The job, then, is to try to be as creative as possible in bringing issues to the masses in order to make it easy to understand what can sometimes be very complex.

The day we elect politicians that, for example, laugh at the idea of rejecting something like the theory of evolution will be the day that we'll know that we are on the right path. That's because you'll have people in office that will be smart enough to consider evidence rather than indoctrinated ideological drones.

This is a big topic.

jfoutz• 14 years ago

I think, of all the manufacturing jobs available in the world in 20 years, a large fraction of them will be in the U.S. I'm talking like 5 or maybe even 6 of the 30 jobs will be here.

rickmb• 14 years ago

Is this new? To offset this somewhat, many democracies have few to no directly elected officials, just elected representatives. Officials are then appointed by those representatives, to ensure a better process of vetting and appointing public officials.

It's by far not a perfect solution (in fact, it sometimes leads to a serious democratic deficit), but it prevents ridiculous popularity contests like the US presidential elections.

praptak• 14 years ago

"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."

This seems to overstate the actual results of the experiments. More here: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k...

dimitar• 14 years ago

Democracy is flourishing when free elections occur. Hitler was democratically elected.

Democracy is not everything that is good about a state. Modern liberal democracies in Europe and North America also have traditions of rule of law, divisions of power, individual rights, collective rights, property protection, public education and welfare, etc., etc.

Fareed Zakaria has written very interesting things about illiberal democracies and why democracies sometimes produce populists or repressive governments.

_nist• 14 years ago

I've never consistently rated myself as "above average" on anything but a few things. Does that make my ignorance and knowing it half the battle?

People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say

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