tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post6704096092722321618..comments2024-02-13T12:50:30.457-05:00Comments on Rants Within the Undead God: Does Cognitive Science Undermine Democracy?Benjamin Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-90555202771289060222018-12-16T10:37:40.342-05:002018-12-16T10:37:40.342-05:00Again, the United States is a special case, becaus...Again, the United States is a special case, because it's largely a plutocracy rather than a democracy, as the 2014 Princeton study showed: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."<br /><br />Still, the US is a free society, meaning that its citizens have many personal liberties and these are expressed in countless ways that indirectly impact the government. Besides the voting, then, there's a cultural irrationality in a free society (call it pop culture) that can distort the leaders' thinking. Granted, the elite politicians are wealthy and live in a different world than the average voter (in the real heaven on earth that most people can't enter). But they have to pay attention to polls, whereas a dictator can ignore them and resort to brute force or gross propaganda to prevent insurrection. In a free society, politicians see themselves as representatives of the people rather than as aristocrats, so they soak up the cultural delusions one way or another. If you identify with the society, if you pay any attention to pop culture or to the majority will, even if you don't apply that will at the policy level, you'll still be infected by mass bias, to some extent. Hence the gridlock in Washington, owing to the social media atmosphere that's prevailed since the 1990s. <br /><br />A rogue leader like Nixon is an exception, since he acted more as an intellectual dictator. Trump would be in the same category except that he's mentally incompetent, so he's more of a hammer wielded--or a giant middle finger pointed--by a pack of trolls. (See my upcoming satirical article on that point). <br /><br />As complex as some of these matters might be, there does seem like a big problem with democracy: why would we want to unleash mass irrationality? The solution is clear: get your education system in order rather than letting it crumble or be preoccupied with standardized testing. Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-65644933956056664122018-12-16T09:50:54.013-05:002018-12-16T09:50:54.013-05:00I've thought about this. The fact, seeing as h...I've thought about this. The fact, seeing as how the less-qualified person has won the White House in pretty much every Presidential election in my lifetime in which there was not an incumbent, it seems somewhat obvious. certainly, any system in which anyone but the masses decided the outcome would have produced a President Trump.<br /><br />The truth is that it probably would produce a lot of President Doles or President Romney or Kerry. (Well, I suppose not - there would be ego-maniacal opportunists who would figure out how to rig the system under any system...)<br /><br />I'd always sort of suspected the primary system allowed the major parties to water down the final choices a bit, keeping populist choices from getting through, and maybe the Dems, with their super-delegates, sort of do that, but I've lost faith in that theory.<br /><br />And I'm hesitant to even say these things, because I seem to be going a step further than you and valuing the choices of our "betters." But the current circumstances (and not just at the top, of course) have made me start reconsidering.Harry Hamidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13176265571549991218noreply@blogger.com