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You meant to misspell dumb right?
Scientists Say America Is Too Dumb For Democracy To Thrive
http://tinyurl.com/7hahgno
The United States may be a republic, but it’s democracy that Americans cherish. After all, that’s why we got into Iraq, right? To take out a dictator and spread democracy.
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” “One person, one vote.” We are an egalitarian society that treasures the mandate of its citizenry.
But more than a decade’s worth research suggests that the citizenry is too dumb to pick the best leaders.
They know what's best for the country.
Work by Cornell University psychologist David Dunning and then-colleague Justin Kruger found that “incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas,” according to a report by Life’s Little Mysteries on the blog LiveScience.
“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.
What’s worse is that with incompetence comes the illusion of superiority.
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.
In other words, stupid people are too stupid to know how stupid they are.
If this seems elitist to you, you are probably not alone. 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?
The scientists do say that the incompetent can be trained to improve, but only if they acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, which would seem to be a catch-22 since they are too ignorant to do so on their own.
Life’s Little Mysteries said that Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, ran a computer simulation of a democratic election based on Dunning and Kruger’s theories:
“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.”
It would appear then that democracy dooms us to mediocrity and misinformed choices. Not exactly encouraging news for the next round of California’s ballot initiatives.
You meant to misspell dumb right?
I don't agree with their reasoning, but i do agree that people are in general, incapable of making good candidate choices. I believe it has more to do with the general distaste for politics and then voting without really caring what the truth is. People trust the soundbites too much. people want to believe what they hear.
Still, in the long run, the worse thing about voting is that people place their votes based on the "what will they do for me" at ude rather than what is best for the nation, state, county, etc. in general.
Now when it comes to the process itself, my biggest gripe is that we don't have runoff elections. I believe is a candidate doesn't receive at least 50%+1 vote, there should be a runoff election. There is a general consensus that Bush 41 would have remained president if Perot wasn't in the race, or if a runoff election occurred. Yes, others disagree, but what is the truth if we could see into an alternate reality.
You meant to misspell dumb right?
i think you are the poster child of what they are talking about, Dr. Optics meets capacitors in the thermosphere so they can believe in bull .
wel then gud job.
Is this another one of your expert subjects?
If i am wrong on something then I am wrong. i do not claim to be expert at anything.
I wonder if Huey Freeman is related to Forest Gumb.
Why does Science have so much free time on such meaningless projects when there is supposedly a huge asteroid headed for earth?
What people think it's "best" for the nation, state, county, etc can vary greatly.
Ultimately, it's a representative system. There's nothing inherently wrong with voting for the candidate that you feel will represent your point of view the best. As a matter of fact, that's actually much more desirable than just voting because they have a (R) or a (D) next to their name.
You need look no further than our current president to back up the headline. Zero experience and got the gig. Crappy job, no surprise there but millions still want him back. Misinformed would be a nicer way to put it though.
"Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth."
Russia's Putin 'Discovers' Ancient Greek Urns on Scuba Dive
Russian may go down as a little misinformed than Americans though. God bless them.
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