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

The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas.

On top of that, "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

He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills. Whether the researchers are testing people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess, the duo has found that people always assess their own performance as "above average" — even people who, when tested, actually perform at the very bottom of the pile.

"To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said.

The reason for this disconnect is simple: "If you have gaps in your knowledge in a given area, then you’re not in a position to assess your own gaps or the gaps of others," Dunning said. Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers.

http://www.livescience.com/18706-people ... cracy.html

Bad headline.

Not the best choice of words, I agree.

What are you having a problem with? - the "smart" or "democracy" portion of it?

It seems the piece deals with democracy choices and voting for politician. Implications towards tolerance of other people, science, social issues, etc. are quite obvious. Other studies have also outlined that we as humans almost always overestimate our own knowledge and how good we are at thing, feelings and intentions but when it comes to others we always underestimate them. Case in point, the most recent opinion polls of US Congress. 9% approved of it, yet 65% or more approved of the way their elected official.

I guess my biggest problem is, "flourish." Thats pretty subjective and the underlying connotation is that stupid people will cause Democracy to fail, which I don't agree with. It might not reach its ideal potential, but that doesn't mean it won't survive, or even expand.

The research/scientists quoted in the article have nothing to say about Democracy flourishing or not. Its simply about people's inability to self-assess expertise (aka the Dunning-Kruger effect). The intro paragraph makes the leap that this leads to democratic elections producing mediocre leadership and policies. That's debatable (although I am inclined to agree), but even that has nothing to say about Democracy "flourishing."


I'm sure that DK is a part of this, but its much more complex than that.
If my rep is in the minority party, then its very legitimate for me to approve of my rep, but disapprove of the majority-run body.
Or, I might like my rep, but his/her party leadership are ineffectual thus I am largely dissatisfied with the legislature.
Or if I am a single issue voter, e.g. anti-abortion, then it might be easy for me to approve of my anti-abortion rep, while disapproving of the legislation (anti-abortion, or otherwise) produced by the whole body.
Or similarly, I may like my rep because we agree on most issues, but the legislature did pass one single bill on, e.g. the Patriot Act, that really really pisses me off.
Or In our two-party system people may approve of their rep as simply being better than the alternative s/he ran against, but disapprove of the whole body based on actual legislation.

Lots of factors to play with.

Here's an interesting, but fortunately not taken, solution to the democracy problem.
http://lclane2.net/atkinson.html

Since we don't even live in a democracy, but are in fact ruled by FIVE People on the Supreme Court, all this is pretty irrelevant.

whatever, newt

Exactly! They do whatever they want. No appeal!

No, they don't do whatever they want. And why do you hate the constitution?

May I propose they exercise their choices within the confines of the Constitution? Or for those who'd like to use pointless theological/philosophical concept of "free will" they use their free will?

Five people on the Supreme Court determine, through their interpretations, what the "confines" of the Consitution are.

For them, there are no "confines".

The Constitution says what they say it says.

They have the power of life and death; what other powers should they have?

And I don't hate the constitution; I hate what agenda driven Judges who have betrayed their oaths have done to the Constitution.

They can decide to have you killed? really? Do they sit in a room with pictures on the wall and throw darts to see who gets killed each morning?
Or do you mean that they find that some laws enacted by Congress fall within or outside the bounds of Constitutional authority... and since some of those laws have consequence to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, you simply pretend that the Court then has ultimate jurisdiction over life?


Invisibility. Although I think Scalia would just use it to spy on pre-teens in the bathroom.

[/quote][/quote]They haven't done anything to the Constitution. They uphold or strike down laws. Not the Constitution. Which judges have betrayed their oaths? What is an agenda driven judge?

Yep. They have the power of life and death. Really. And they can exercise if by upholding laws ranging from abortion to euthanasia. Watch out. Its coming. If grandma's in the way and costing too much, the death panels that will be set up (and that they will find Constitutional) will decide that she would be happier dead. As to whether or not they sit in a room with pictures and throw darts, its as good a way as any given their decisions. Hell, maybe that IS what they do!

And funny that YOU came up with the "invisibility" example. Does that titillate you?

The judges who found a right to privacy that allowed killing the innocent betrayed their oaths; they were to uphold the Constitution...not write amendments to it. Harry Blackmun was a prize example, rendering a decsion that we now know was based on flawed provisional science.

Now, its time for YOU and your pals to start answering My questions!

Oh, now I see. You're ranting about Roe vs Wade. The Court found, 7 to 2, that the 9th and 14th Amendments were broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. This decision was not based on the whims of the jurors, but on historical precedent of ancient law, common law, English statutory law, and a subsequent review of American law, as well as the professional opinions of the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and the American Bar Association. It turns out that the Framer's would have been considerably less insulted by abortion than the Victorian-era lawmakers who started challenging the practice in the later half of the 19th century. So there was a definite attempt by the Court to put anti-abortion laws and attitudes into historical context, not just interject their own opinion.

The decision was actually a privacy issue, and the Court found a lot of legal precedent to consider as to whether or not the right to privacy was broad enough to include abortion:
Abele v. Markle, 342 F.Supp. 800 (Conn.1972), appeal docketed, No. 72-56; Abele v. Markle, 351 F.Supp. 224 (Conn.1972), appeal docketed, No. 72-730; Doe v. Bolton, 319 F.Supp. 1048 (ND Ga.1970), appeal decided today, post, p. 179; Doe v. Scott, 321 F.Supp. 1385 (ND Ill.1971), appeal docketed, No. 70-105; Poe v. Menghini, 339 F.Supp. 986 (Kan.1972); YWCA v. Kuler, 342 F.Supp. 1048 (NJ 1972); Babbitz v. McCann, [p155] 310 F.Supp. 293 (ED Wis.1970), appeal dismissed, 400 U.S. 1 (1970); People v. Belous, 71 Cal.2d 954, 458 P.2d 194 (1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 915 (1970); State v. Barquet, 262 So.2d 431 (Fla.1972). Crossen v. Attorney General, 344 F.Supp. 587 (ED Ky.1972), appeal docketed, No. 72-256; Rosen v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 318 F.Supp. 1217 (ED La.1970), appeal docketed, No. 70-42; Corkey v. Edwards, 322 F.Supp. 1248 (WDNC 1971), appeal docketed, No. 71-92; Steinberg v. Brown, 321 F.Supp. 741 (ND Ohio 1970); Doe v. Rampton (Utah 1971), appeal docketed, No. 71-5666; Cheaney v. State, ___ Ind. ___, 285 N.E.2d 265 (1972); Spears v. State, 257 So.2d 876 (Miss. 1972); State v. Munson, 86 S.D. 663, 201 N.W.2d 123 (1972), appeal docketed, No. 72-631.

Ultimately the Court decided with the majority of these cases. So they were far from activist agenda-driven oath breakers. They did their job diligently and within the scope of their Constitutional authority. You can disagree with them if you want - I often do - but please stop with the nonsensical hyperbole about 5 guys doing whatever they want, and death panels coming for grandma and you. It sounds ridiculous.