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Comment by christina97 | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure “brainy” people are that much more likely to think they can make good decisions than any other politician. So why do you feel this would exacerbate the hubris politicians already have?

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Many if not most career politicians have education in their domain: law, civics, economics, political science, or similar. On the other hand it’s a common failure mode of STEM people in particular to assume their expertise can be directly applied to more "human" fields and indeed to dismiss those fields as unscientific hand-waving.

> Many if not most career politicians have education in their domain

They don't have "domains", they are career politicians. It is nice when a politician has some experience in the topic they're legislating on but the system works by having generalists who bow in whatever direction winds are blowing the most money from.

It is not possible to be an effective career politician by having firm principles or technical expertise. It requires a near total dedication to politicking. If they happen to have knowledge of a topic it is coincidence because the number of political topics is large and the number of politicians is comparatively small.

My point was that politics IS their domain, as evinced by the examples I gave.

Can you remind me why Yvette Cooper [1], who's been trained as an Economist, is Secretary for Health and Social Care, after being Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary?

Literally the first name I clicked on from the UK government.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvette_Cooper

That one is pretty easy.

Running NHS (or any other health care system) is literally an economics problem.

Economics is a lot more than just money.

To expand on that, the way economics was defined to me in school can be roughly translated as:

"The science that studies how a society uses their limited resources to meet its needs."

Which sounds a lot like the main problem of any healthcare system.

Or the other way around: money is just a proxy unit for any kind of actual value that you want to represent.

That would be news to me. Which country are you referring to?

i mean even in the US politicans frequently have a JD? Whether you consider that a valid credential in this case for 'law background' is another thing

Yes, many US politicians have a JD. That helps them become 'smart' politicians, that is to become corrupt while being legal. That legal training helps what to say, how to keep layers between them and the money, etc.

But saying the conclusion seems out of touch, but it's not necessarily limited to STEM formatted people. Everyone and their dogs think they have the most apt representation and whoever disagree ever miss information or the ability to act accordingly.

Have politicians ever been voted en masse for their ability to navigate the domain they will be deployed to work on? It's a combination of popularity and (stated) opinion overlap.

Maybe they are just less experienced in politics. I wonder if their education includes much about the problems they need to solve for society in that country. On the plus side a PhD is good at research and can probably get up to speed damn quick and read a lot. As long as they don't have the hubris!

Honestly, its not the hubris. Politicians are a pretty arrogant group of people. Its the lack of life experience and lessons learned from negative consequences that they lack. The hubris just makes it more galling and thus makes for better sound bites.

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