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Comment by logicalmonster | Hacker News Reader

> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so

This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.

I remain a supporter of democracy but do have serious doubts regarding the ability of the majority of humankind to maintain a sufficient understanding of the increasingly complex world they control.

Large portions of the US population seem to have problems with basic reasoning skills. I'm not sure the school system or western culture is capable of rectifying that anytime soon.

> Alvin Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change overwhelms people. He argues that the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock

Representative democracy helps in this regard.

It also makes it easy for charlatans to take the helm by appealing to nonsense.

I think the bigger issue is that everyone feels they need to be an expert on every subject. Look at any of these conversations on nuclear and/or climate. Climate is the most complex problems humans face today yet we all pretty much act like we're experts and all pretend it's purely political will to solving the problem. Even on a tech forum where the average person is much more tech literate these beliefs and actions are common.

The problem isn't that the world is getting more complex. The problem is that we're unwilling to admit it.

> I think the bigger issue is that everyone feels they need to be an expert on every subject.

I think people tend to view the world through the lens of their experiences. Lots of us are basically technicians these days, even a good percentage(the majority maybe) of software "engineers". I think it's easy for people to achieve some mastery in a domain and begin to believe that other aspects of the world are also similarly mastered. I'll say that most of my life I fell into that camp. I'm somewhat gifted with technology and I let my successes in the simplistic world of programming(and it really is pretty simple if you're just following recipes and calling libraries) bias my view of the world. I think my descent into libertarianism in the 00's was largely fueled by that erroneous thinking.

It's only after working on harder problems that I've come to appreciate the limits of my thinking, and the limits to which I can step into another domain and outthink the experts within it.

I think there are a lot of folks who have never worked on something subtle and complex, and to them the world is just so simple. Certain people/substances/ideologies are just purely good and others are purely evil, with no thought to the complexity of the actual world we inhabit.

> The problem isn't that the world is getting more complex. The problem is that we're unwilling to admit it.

Exactly. We better learn quick or we'll be like a toddler holding a hand grenade.

I think that's kinda the path I followed too. Once I started working on really hard problems that racked my brain (problems that take months to solve _after_ I've gained expertise in the area) I started thinking about the world differently and seeing how nuanced it is. That first order approximations weren't enough to make even remotely reasonable approximations. I remember in one of my jobs my friend told me "there's a book on o-rings that's over a thousand of pages. O-rings. Just one simple device." Nuance matters a lot. It's the difference between a space shuttle exploding and not.

In a way, it is also liberating. I don't have to know everything. I can know to trust experts in the field. I know how to vet experts in fields adjacent to mine. And importantly, I know how to ask nuanced questions to people outside my field and to lean on them for help understanding problems I'm not an expert in.

Not that I don't also get egotistical and overstep my bounds. I definitely do. But it no longer hurts (as bad) when someone calls me out on it. It is more about the passion to learn now and getting rid of bad habits. Being called out now is an opportunity to learn.

Maybe the deepest point is that if the voters are ignorant about this they can't be trusted on anything.

But a shallow perhaps more practical take away is that voters shouldn't be asked about implementation details, only values.

Democracy is probably not what's it said to be, it's a necessary emotional escape valve. People are too random to be heard with 100% equal value as you point at. The hierarchy filters through knowledge to steer.

Or at least the success and role of schools and the media.

And long term emergent structures of society. Not to step too much in conspiracy but an economy first system might naturally steer toward medium level education so that money flows without people thinking too hard or be able to be independent from the usual marketing tricks. It's almost a natural order, smart and cynical will be rewarded by high ranks, while the clueless mass will be spun to fuel the system.

Reminds me of this optimized city in SimCity:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU

https://www.neatorama.com/2010/10/16/magnasanti-the-largest-...

Why do you assume that the average politician is better informed than the average citizen?

The average politician at least has reports prepared for them by government scientists and engineers, while the average citizen only hears about things after they've gone through the telephone game of the media.

The average politician also has reports and diners prepared by lobbyists and others that want to influence his or her judgement. Not sure if that is a net gain for objectivity.

Although it is an poll with a weird and surprising result from a nuclear lobby group with a strong interest in depicting the general public as "in need of education" on nuclear issues.

As far as I can see there are no details about who ran the poll.

As it has been said democracy is rubbish, the only thing going for it is that it is better than the alternatives.

A horrifyingly large portion of the population believes all sorts of stupid things. The sad thing for democracy is most people don't understand policy or even civics well enough to make an informed decision on a candidate. Even then, most candidates don't either, and they end up relying on advisors and lobbyists. The fun implication of campaign finance reform is it implies elections can be bought (just ask Michael Bloomberg), and people can't sort out political messages for themselves.

Oh, the good news about two-party democracy is it mostly keeps 20% views out of politics entirely. 58%/46% is a problem, though.

I'd go one step further and say that we all believe in all sorts of stupid things. It's just that we are unaware of our own misconceptions because they aren't often disproven.

Democracy works when the population is generally educated because the mean opinion (or the opinion held by the most people) should converge to the "right" one.

The population has to have access to the truth though.

One bellend (idiot) spouts lies in front of a bus, supported by media magnates. A couple of years later we have fuel and food shortages, myriad supply chain issues, broken off from a treaty that gave us relatively stable local peace for 50+years, etc.. Now COVID has plummeted us into a place where the exchequer has been exploited to the hilt for 'contracts for the boys' (nepotistic corruption) because the oversight of our former arrangements have been stripped away.

Our representatives are actively conning the population into voting against their own (the populations) best interests.

Just having generally good education levels isn't seemingly protecting us from powerful ruling classes who simply don't care and are willing to use their power to exploit the population.

how so?

It seems like a pretty big problem when the electorate is this misinformed on an issue that's so straightforward, and important.

In the data provided, the majority believes that burning coal does not cause climate change, while nuclear power does. In fact, it is the reverse--coal's impact on climate change is exponentially more than nuclear.

Thus, if the data is accurate, and if the majority rules directly, from these viewpoints it suggests that investments would be made into coal, and reduced from nuclear, which is aligned with creating more climate change, not less.

So, this implies that, for these data, democracy and taking action against climate doom are compatible.

Aren’t* ;)

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