Dude. Your, like, totally stoopid.

[pmgaido]

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


Many people lack the mental goods needed to choose the best candidate.
CREDIT: Callahan | Shutterstock

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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.

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. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.

As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. 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," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries.

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. [Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It]


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We're just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. "To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for grammar skill. "We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students." Essentially, they didn't recognize the correct answer even when they saw it.

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.

The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.

Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. 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.

Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."

This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.

[friendlyskies]

What is up with this rash of social "science" memes discussing the inherent stupidity of the electorate? Another one making the rounds on the leftist circuit says that conservatives and prejudiced people have lower IQs than liberals: http://www.livescience.com/18132-intell ... acism.html

People, no matter how elegantly constructed the experiment (and these two memes seem mushy as all hell), the social sciences are not truly scientific, not in the same way physics or chemistry is scientific. Predictive and enlightening, sure, but you can't use these findings to make some sweeping generalization and pretend it's been as rigorously investigated and accurately measured as the decay rate of Carbon 14. Ugh.

[friendlyskies]

Oh, here's another one. Published in that ethically barren misinformation machine Global Post, what an offensive excuse for a rag, and article. Anyway:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/gl ... -steal-lie

This particular social "science" meme claims to have proven that rich people are less ethical than poor people. I can't believe this crap is gaining traction. I swear this is some kind of side effect of the pharmaceutical industry treating every human characteristic as a disease and scientifically "curing" it with psychoactive chemicals for a fat profit. Bazillions of dollars are spent each year tricking people into thinking psychology is a science, and now these poor drugged and demented fools believe it. People who should know better are taking this social science shit seriously and THIS is where I want to get my Michael Shermer on and rip the lab coat off these frauds. Grrrrrrrrrrr......

[Kurt]

Michael Shermer is awesome.

I used to subscribe to The Skeptical Inquirer and then often bought the Skeptic as well.

I have noticed that with more media and visual media in the past 60 years that ugly people are less likely to get elected. Nixon was probably the last one but his opponents were not attractive, especially since RFK was killed.

Imagine if a well rounded, intelligent person like Taft was running in this race? No way would he pull it off.

Good looking people get elected and ugly people get appointed. But I am not going to claim any scientific validity to this so as to not tick off Shermer.

[friendlyskies]

Michael Shermer is awesome.

I used to subscribe to The Skeptical Inquirer and then often bought the Skeptic as well.

I have noticed that with more media and visual media in the past 60 years that ugly people are less likely to get elected. Nixon was probably the last one but his opponents were not attractive, especially since RFK was killed.

Imagine if a well rounded, intelligent person like Taft was running in this race? No way would he pull it off.

Good looking people get elected and ugly people get appointed. But I am not going to claim any scientific validity to this so as to not tick off Shermer.

Exactly. A lab coat is a privilege, not a right - you have to earn it. Sure, there's observable support for your point, and it's certainly worth an op-ed decrying the shallowness of modern elections. But you wouldn't pitch it as science.

I mean, imagine all the mushiness inherent in any experiment designed to test the hypothesis. How do you determine looks? By facial symmetry and optimum waste-to-hip ratio? By charisma as measured by volunteers watching a speech? How would you deal with political bias in your subjects? Would you choose the most apolitical or independent volunteers? That would certainly skew the sample. Would you just show them pictures of the "candidates" without saying what they support? Then you're asking them to make decisions based on attractiveness. Of course, you can gather inductive evidence by having volunteers rate politicians against one another in a "hot or not" type experiment, then seeing how well that correlates with election results.

But:

And remember, you'd be measuring at least two things. The tendency of the average voter to unconsciously choose the more attractive candidate; and the deliberate selection of an attractive candidate by a small, savvy group of political party brass and influential interests. It's not that your hypothesis is incorrect, but no matter how perfect the experiment, there's going to be a lot of mushiness, because sociological data is mushy.

And that's the thing. You can prove almost anything by manipulating data inputs in the social sciences. It's not like splitting an atom. You could come up with this cliche just perfect for the manufactured class war: "Rich people are less moral than poor people." "The average voter is too stupid to choose his or her leader." Then find or design the "experiment" that proves it. Come on, how often have you been mugged or ripped off for taxi fare by a rich person? How was that data gathered, processed and interpreted, then? Not that rich people are all good and we *shouldn't* have a class war, I'm just saying that these particular studies are unimpressive reasons to have a class war, try again. When I look through Michael Shermer's lens, all I can see is bad science and an irresponsible media making much ado about nothing. And if I put on my tin foil hat, it looks like a lame attempt to pit we the people against each other, by invoking the word "science" as though it offered automatic intellectual credibility.

[LechoZX]

Imagine if a well rounded, intelligent person like Taft was running in this race? No way would he pull it off.

Taft was too fat to get elected today anyway. I say imagine somebody like Woodrow Wilson trying to get elected today.

I can't believe this crap is gaining traction. I swear this is some kind of side effect of the pharmaceutical industry treating every human characteristic as a disease and scientifically "curing" it with psychoactive chemicals for a fat profit.

You have a point, but you don't think there might be a bit of truth to the fact that people vote for stupid shit?

[Woodsman]

Michael Shermer is awesome.

yep- his book about why people believe weird things is worth it's weight in gold.

[Fansy]

this is totally true. its true for most of you idiots as well. so fuck you stupid ppl. you all dont know shit. and ive always known it.

[Fansy]

and no friendly there are tons of experimental psych studies on these issues and well designed socio researh with meaningful results. your stereotype of all sociological research is as bad as the shit youre decrying. worse because, as the article points out, you're critiquing shit that you don't understand anyways and then thinkin you're right. how the fuck can you read this stupid article, criticize it and do the exact same thing its talkin about. thats a fuckin high move and a half.

we used to play stoner chess even tho i didnt smoke at the time. you got to take back an incredibly stupid move that like lost you the game. you just lost the game. you can undo your move and reconsider your options tho because this is stoner chess too and that move you did sucked.

[nowonmai]

Anything less than death is a stoner chess opportunity.

Everything made by man can be undone by man.

[Fansy]

i dont disagree with you but when did you and sri lanky merge entities.