[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Because people who have an education are more likey to make an informed decision -[/quote]
Are you serious? Do you REALLY believe OUR system of education helps the majority of people that go through it make informed decisions?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
otherwise what would be the point of education at all, Hspder?[/quote]
I was the one claiming that education should include teaching students how to develop critical thinking, and was immediately shot down by several people, namely Rainjack. So you should be asking HIM that question, not me. I agree with you that should be one of the roles of education.
However, there are two things you are missing: one, that education has become largely purposed to teach people how to perform specific tasks (or jobs), rather than develop the ability to generally make informed decisions; two, that purpose and results are two different things, i.e., even if it was designed to, it certainly is not achieving that result, as I’ll show later.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Because discrimination and language barriers deny access to education. Without education, you are likely to be two things: more ‘idiotic’ and less likely to have access to a job that pays a higher income. [/quote]
Less likely to have access to a job that pays a higher income, yes. I never doubted there is some correlation between education and income.
But I still question your correlation between education and idiocy.
OK, so let’s assume we agree that idiocy is lack of intelligence, with intelligence defined as:
"
the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations
"
… which is the most universal definition.
Now, explain to me how does our education system necessarily and specifically helps improve this ability, BETTER than without it? Preferably with examples.
Then, explain to me why, under your assumption, LIBERALS have the highest education level of any typology group: - 49% are college graduates and 26% have some postgraduate education (vs 10% for Conservatives). One of the most liberal regions in the US – the San Francisco Bay Area – is, “coincidentally”, the most highly educated region in the US. I mean, if education DOES improve your ability to make informed decisions, clearly liberalism is the most informed choice, since it’s the one the most educated people are taking.
While you’re at it, explain to me then why a whopping 46% of higher-income, higher-educated Republicans rely EXCLUSIVELY on Fox News as their news source, while less educated, lower income Republicans actually watch other channels much more (only 21% rely on Fox News). Is watching just ONE news channel as news source the hallmark of people who make informed decisions?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
so tell me, Professor, under your model when none of that matters as far as idiocy, why you are immune to the pitfalls of idiocy yourself?[/quote]
Because I have shown again and again great ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.
Does that satisfy you, or in order to convince you, do I need to now proceed to tell you the whole story of my life, in great detail?
But that’s not all:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
if these people were rational, they wouldn’t possibly vote for Republicans, who won’t act in their self-interest.
It is therapy for the Left-wing, as people often vote on principle instead of self-interest, among other things - and well, God knows the Left needs therapy.[/quote]
As I already said several times, Behavioral Economics explains those “selfless” behaviors – and YES, they ARE irrational, as proven again and again, including by the fact that monkeys also make similar “selfless” decisions. So in essence you are both right: they are irrational AND people do vote on “principle” (what we eggheads call “heuristics”) among other things – like picking the candidate that most resembles them.
These are some bullet points on those “selfless” decisions that you can use to do some searches:
- Heuristics: People often make decisions based on approximate rules of thumb, not strictly rational analyses – what you call “principles”. For detailed explanations on how these heuristics, lookup “cognitive biases” and “bounded rationality” – which explain how your “principles” came about.
Computer Science, specifically Artificial Intelligence, has proven that using heuristics inevitably result in severely sub-optimal results for not only the individual, but for the whole society. In fact, the reason Artificial Intelligence is not so Intelligent is that it uses heuristics, since we have been unable to emulate strict rational analysis in computers.
Game Theory has also explained why that is so, and proven that the decision that yields the optimal result can only be found through strictly rational analysis – NOT an heuristic.
In essence, using heuristics is the negation of intelligence.
- Framing: The way a problem or decision is presented to the decision maker will affect their action – hence the power of the media I’ve mentioned before, and the necessity of obtaining your news from MULTIPLE sources.
Also lookup “herding” and “groupthink”, which are the mechanisms that allow the above anomalies to spread.
NON-IDIOTS, i.e., intelligent people, naturally seek the optimal outcome for both them and society as a whole (great ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations implies optimizing the outcome of your every decision – I think we can agree your ability is best measured by the quality of the outcome). They are able to escape the above two pitfalls by a) NOT using heuristics – i.e., using strictly rational analysis and b) Obtaining their news from as many different sources as possible, taking the framing problem out of the equation.
Unfortunately all studies point to the fact that most people, like monkeys and computers, use heuristics for most of their decisions, and obtain their news from only one or two sources (in particular, high income Republicans…) – worse of all, mostly TV.