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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
I'm confident that we'll implement "brain uploading" in the next 200 years, and this greatly opens up the upper limits of knowledge. Humans are very I/O bound, but a few of my friends have been trying out a thing where we both talk at once, since we can talk and listen at the same time. Other interesting ideas to hacking communication: add "metadata" by using hand signals during verbal communication, combine the most efficient aspects of different languages to "compress" conversation, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.