Scientists say America is too dumb for democracy to thrive | Hacker News Reader

Scientists say America is too dumb for democracy to thrive

blog.sfgate.com

14 pointsmikeleeorg8 comments

"Let’s say a politician comes up with an ingenious plan that would ensure universal health care while decreasing health care costs.

According to Dunning-Kruger, no matter how much information is provided, the unsophisticated would 1) be incapable of recognizing the wisdom of such a plan; 2) assume they know better; and 3) have no idea of the extent of their inadequacy."

Jesus..biased much? I stopped reading here.

On the flip side, you could argue that if we do actually democratically(-ish) elect representatives, Dunning-Kruger would indicate that our currently-elected leaders are the product of a stupid voting base, and therefore can be assumed to not be the hypothetical "politician with genius healthcare" presented in the article, since the population is too dumb to elect the right guy in the first place.

(I track with you, though; the article seems to be a thinly-veiled jab at "those stupid rednecks who can't see the genius of Obama's healthcare proposals", and is rather offputting for what is allegedly scientific reporting.)

Since we're talking about gimmick phrasing already, let's just remember that half of all voters are of below-average intelligence. :D

Maybe we should only let Ph.D.’s, Mensa members and Jeopardy! champions vote? At least require a passing an IQ test before you get to cast a ballot?

This is where these type of ideas invariably fail. The author and everyone else has a different metric in which the gauge intelligence. Someone can be very strategic and have an average IQ as such the have a specific form of intelligence. Secondly just by the mention of a PHD as a requirement shows that little care was taken in such a flippant comment. Amount of schooling is not an indicator of intelligence, is any PHD good enough to qualify? from any school? The whole idea of requiring intelligence before and individual can cast their lot is absolutely backwards to the idea of freedom. Part of freedom is the freedom to be stupid. The solution is education, we should educate people on the issues and incentivize people for getting that education. The problem is there is no incentive for politicians to incentivize the education of the population.

What a bad article. Here's the original one: http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2187-incompetent-people-...

The original article basically claims that people who are incompetent at something will have a hard time recognising people who are competent and their own level of incompetence. Fine, that makes sense. But how on earth did this get turned into "Americans too dumb for democracy"? This is just taking some of the claims from the original article and blowing them out of proportion.

It is as if the author wants to use himself to prove his point.

Indeed. This is a big problem with the self-styled intelligentsia; they point to others who are not as smart as they are, and cite them as evidence that they cannot possibly be ignorant, because they aren't as ignorant as those they look down on.

Wisdom begins with recognizing that you don't know everything, can't know everything, and generally assuming that you're wrong or uninformed until you can prove otherwise. The immediate presumption that you're right, and arrogance or indignation when it's suggested otherwise is a huge indicator that you're probably suffering the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I don't think it requires decades of study to tell you that. It's not enough to say that something is broken. What you end up having to answer is how to fix it. So far consistent mediocrity seems to beat the other forms of government that came before it. (Disclosure: I haven't done a full study of human history, but so far thats the vibe I'm getting.) So a new form of government should provide consistent high-quality leaders if it wants to beat the democratic-republic model.

And I personally have no idea how to do that.

"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." - Winston Churchill

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