People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say

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.

    "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."

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parli...

Here are some other headlines we could run.

> Neurons Aren't Smart Enough for Brains to Flourish

The system as a whole either works or doesn't; the burden is not on each part. This is just an empty way to blame the parts for the functioning of the whole.

> Investors Aren't Smart Enough for Good Companies to Flourish

Maybe it feels that way sometimes (ha), but what is a "good" company or a "smart" investor? There are many kinds of investors, and they can make up their own mind how to spend their money. This is just an empty way to blame whoever is making the decisions for the outcomes; yet we could just as easily assume the decision-makers are doing the best they can, or even could do, depending on what we assume the goal (i.e. definition of "best") to be.

> Movie Critics Aren't Smart Enough for Good Movies to Flourish

Again, what makes a movie critic or a movie "smart" or "good"? Not that we don't each have our opinions about this, but it's not anything so objective as skill at tax accounting. More importantly, do movie critics even have that much influence in shaping what movies are made? We may be looking in the wrong place.

So we know incompetence even if we don't recognize competence. This appears to be good enough for government work.

"if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is really the only reason that we have universal education in the first place. If the elite are forced to allow the people to make decisions, then they're going to make sure the people are educated enough not to do anything too dumb.

No. Democracy is the best form of government discovered so far because it allows voters to remove incompetent leaders and bad policies without violence.

However competent a king or dictator is, most of his competence will be directed towards remaining in power through military force, rather than addressing his country's real problems. He cannot be removed without risking civil war, which is the worst kind.

However incompetent a prime minister or president turns out to be, and however dull voters are, incompetence is easier to recognise than competence.

Besides, one doesn't necessarily need to personally recognise it: one can be persuaded by other people. It's easier to reach agreement about things that aren't working.

Democracy isn't about voting for candidates anyway. In general it's about having some say in decisions which affect your life, and as such I think it's still more of an aspiration than a reality.

  The democratic process relies on the assumption that
  citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize
  the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when
  they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed
  an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem
  to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic
  elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.

A government that is competent enough to survive and incompetent enough to be unable to interfere in the lives of its citizens.

In a democratic system, "Great leader" or not, it really doesn't matter that much in the long run, we will always get there. What important is the system makes sure that "Great leader" won't have the power to destroy our civilization.

On the other hand, "smart" leader may not always yield better outcome than an "average" leader. Complex policy from "expert" may bring more disaster than "no policy".

Democracy is not everything that is good about a state. Modern liberal democracies in Europe and North America also have traditions of rule of law, divisions of power, individual rights, collective rights, property protection, public education and welfare, etc., etc.

Fareed Zakaria has written very interesting things about illiberal democracies and why democracies sometimes produce populists or repressive governments.

Let's say I spend a lot of time prior to an election trying to understand the ballot measures and issues and candidates. Come going day, my decision is weighed just as highly as someone who watched Fox News the morning of the election, heard one of the candidates was the next Hitler and made an uninformed, fear-based decision. Ours votes are worth the same; why should I even do research then? (That's a different rant though).

I'm unfairly picking on Fox News. The vast majority of "news" is bullshit that is a distraction from the issues that an intelligent, informed electorate should care about. By turning news into entertainment, the purpose is no longer to inform and thus little of any substance is discussed by most news outlets.

So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Or what if it was not one person = one vote, but rather a system where people's relative intelligences are reflected in their say in the process.

Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc.

This seems like the rational successor to democracy. Of course this system I'm describing would need to be carefully crafted to remain fair, but I believe we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US.

Democracy is, by definition, a system wherein the minority suffers at the whims of the majority -- mob rule, if you will. Most people seem to think the United States is a democracy, but it is actually (supposed to be) a Republic. Our elected officials are not (supposed to be) able to do whatever the majority wants at the expense of the minority, but rather their actions are strictly limited and restricted by the constitution so as to prevent the majority from violating the rights of the minority -- which is virtually always what results from a true democracy.

In the U.S. we mediate "democracy" through a republican government of divided and checked powers to guard against the dangers of any unified and unchecked political power. But the point of all that is to secure that right to self-government, not thwart it.

If you look at how hard governance is, and how badly most countries do it, it's actually a pretty great system. Baroque, complex, inefficient, sure, but there is little to suggest that any system of governance for 300 million people would be anything other than those things.

Of course they don't elect the "best" leader. What is that, anyway?

Democracies exist only to have an obviously legitimate system to replace the current leaders by new ones every few years, and thus avoid corruption from growing too large and damage the society/economy.

The difference between the "best" or an "average" leader is much less than the difference between "little" and "a lot of" corruption.

This seems to overstate the actual results of the experiments. More here: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k...

It's by far not a perfect solution (in fact, it sometimes leads to a serious democratic deficit), but it prevents ridiculous popularity contests like the US presidential elections.

That seems like an utterly simplistic model. "Leadership"?

Here's some good info on the Dunning-Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Just like you or I can't possibly read every EULA and privacy policy that pertains to us, an individual in a democracy can't even begin to have sufficient knowledge to make the correct choices. Most politicians never even read the bills they vote for!

That imperfect knowledge will exist in every possible form of government. So, um, what's the argument? Are we arguing against scaling ignorance from small select groups to the population?

The conclusion is, "Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders?" Aggregating responsibility to narrow (and possibly wilfully ignorant) self-interests is not a solution.

Edited: removed references to a certain political candidate.

Could it be that a new form of government needs to emerge in this model? One where policy on a specific subject area is handled by those better equipped to understand it and, more importantly, with a good degree of isolation from others?

Wouldn't it be better if, say, education policy was crafted in total isolation from the political goals of any party, special interest group or unions? Or how about energy policy?

I firmly believe the basic premise of the article to be true: Most voters don't understand what the hell they are voting on. They are easily swayed by a barrage of numbers and pretend-facts and probably vote on what sounds good or believable far more so than what might have merit based on facts.

Take the arguments on manufacturing, for example. Everyone from the President on down to Congress and GOP candidates are talking about bringing manufacturing back. Both parties at all level do it. Now, there are two possibilities here: One, they know the truth and realize that the masses might not be able to handle the truth. Or, they actually don't understand what's going on.

Manufacturing, folks, isn't coming back to the US or Europe in massive numbers any time soon, if ever. The standard of living of the average manufacturing worker would have to be reduced to revolution-inspiring levels for this to happen. Environmental and worker safety laws would have to trashed by the thousands. Virtually all labor unions would have to be dissolved. And more. The loss of manufacturing jobs has taken place over sixty years of making the wrong decisions. This did not happen overnight. And this cannot be fixed overnight, if ever. Just try to manufacture a consumer good in the US and see how far you get. Sure, there are outliers that might buck the trend, but, for the most part, its a done deal: Mass manufacturing of consumer goods in the US is dead.

Anyhow, I believe that voters do tend to vote people into office for entirely the wrong reasons. From religious groups to unions and special interest sectors. All seek to place puppets in office that will protect and further their interests. Virtually none --due to the nature of their egocentric focus-- act with the long term interest of the country in mind.

Not an easy problem to solve as it would require a nearly complete change in the form of government we have known for so long. The problem is that the US Constitution does not provide for a mechanism through which these kinds of changes could be made. The only way is for a massive and very disruptive revolution to take place. This is unlikely to happen unless things get so bad that people are compelled to "take up arms against their oppressor". And, this is highly undesirable as well because it would probably result in half a century of uncertainty and turmoil before reaching a new stable state.

And this takes us full circle to an inevitable conclusion: As much as we might hate the fact that the lunatics are running the asylum, it is probably the best option we have. The job, then, is to try to be as creative as possible in bringing issues to the masses in order to make it easy to understand what can sometimes be very complex.

The day we elect politicians that, for example, laugh at the idea of rejecting something like the theory of evolution will be the day that we'll know that we are on the right path. That's because you'll have people in office that will be smart enough to consider evidence rather than indoctrinated ideological drones.

This is a big topic.

Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom.

America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument. The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.

It's about WHO choses what it's "the best".

The majority should choose, period.

Everything else is "I know better than other people what they SHOULD want".

Even if you "know better" by some objective criterium, it should not be up to you to decide.

Because government is about choosing what people WANT not what is BEST for them.