I lost an election for Astoria City Council by 3 votes with no change after a recount. It was in the hundreds of votes level. I agree that it can matter in small turnout elections.
It is unfortunately in my opinion that you are conflating the inherent limited knowledge of mortals - i.e., not knowing everything there is to know about every possible subject - with the ostensibly motivation-based "rational ignorance" - i.e., not putting in the effort to learn what can learned about specific topics. It makes the argumentation less precise. These are two very different arguments, with the second one being much weaker (although more catchy and seemingly more clever) than the first one.
On a different note: Why don't you cross post these at Equality by Lot? I think there is a chance you will reach a wider audience and get more feedback if you do that.
Can you explain this criticism further? I think the reason people don't attempt to learn everything there is to know about everything is largely due to rational ignorance. The two concepts are related.
Thanks for asking - I don't think those concept are related, they are largely substitutes (or competitors) as theories of limited knowledge.
Rational ignorance is about people *choosing* not to find out information. Thus the focus is on motivation. Voters, we are told, could in theory learn what they need to know about the candidates and then they would vote "better". But they choose not to because "it doesn't pay" and they selfishly prefer to economize their efforts and watch TV or do some other private activities. Presumably the more civic-minded among us are already motivated enough to understand the world better and to vote "well".
The paternalistic and elitist implications follow (take your pick, or mix and match). The "bleeding heart liberals" would hope to make voters more informed by incentivizing them correctly, or by inculcating civic duty. While the "hard headed conservatives" know that such hopes are unrealistic and that the mob would never choose to inform themselves.
Limited cognitive capacity, on the other hand, is a universal human upper bound on what can be learned or understood that is not affected by motivation. The fact that there can be no all-to-all conversation in a group of 1,000,000 people is not a matter of motivation or choice, it is simply humanly impossible. This fact implies that in a large society there is an elite - that minority of people whose ideas do become widely known - and that this elite dominates electoral politics. This intrinsic property of large groups has nothing to do with rational ignorance. Even if we all spent all our time and all our effort learning about all that is going on in society we would still be subject to this phenomenon and elections would still be an oligarchical mechanism. The only way out of elite domination is to do away with elections altogether.
I agree that elections are an oligarchical mechanism. I disagree that pointing out that rational ignorance exists is demeaning to the people. That ignorance is rational. Spending time and effort preparing to vote in an election is irrational as an individual. We don't have control over who is running. The inherent limitations of the current political sphere (that all politicians operate in), as well as the limitations of the candidate pool, make it so that who wins a particular election may have very little impact on a voter's day-to-day life. That significantly compounds when one realizes that their individual vote has very little ability to tip the results in any particular direction. In many cases it's a false choice that is also pointless. I vote because I like thinking about politics (which is why I'm engaging here), because there is social pressure to do so, and because I'll still take the vanishingly small chance that my vote might make the world fairer.
i don't vote, because it's a farce. when i paid attention, all the remotely viable options were undesireable. feeling like one bug out of a million and getting some little congratulatory pin so i could wear it and try to make other people feel bad for not voting...what a joke.
I understand that there are far more fundamental problems with elections than rational ignorance... but it isn't "either/ or." The point here is that even if all candidates were honest sincere people, only looking out for the interests of the general population as they understood it, with not a trace of elitism, campaign money corruption, or narcissism, and there was a large array of choices so everyone had at least one candidate they could eagerly support, elections STILL are undemocratic and cannot work, simply due to rational ignorance. My goal is to show that even if people LIKE the candidates on their ballot and feel well-informed, and believed all of the other desirable requirements were met, that elections can't fulfill the democratic ideal, simply because of rational ignorance. You will note that I will be going o to great lengths to show that none of these other necessary elements listed above exist either, so that even if rational ignorance DID NOT EXIST, elections would still not be suitable. There are a huge variety of reasons that elections are unsuitable for democracy and rational ignorance is ONE of them, and that alone is sufficient grounds for rejecting elections.
Well... it is true that "average" can technically refer to mean or median or even mode, but I meant median. The reason median is the implied meaning is that the question that was asked of people doesn't specify what sort of "average" yet nearly everybody interprets the question as "am I better or worse than the 'typical' driver?" Hardly anyone (though you may be the exception) calculates that there are a handful of outrageously terrible drivers pulling down the mean, so of course they are better than the average (as mean). So you are technically correct because the word average has multiple meanings.
I lost an election for Astoria City Council by 3 votes with no change after a recount. It was in the hundreds of votes level. I agree that it can matter in small turnout elections.
Very important psychology in this post!!
Terry,
It is unfortunately in my opinion that you are conflating the inherent limited knowledge of mortals - i.e., not knowing everything there is to know about every possible subject - with the ostensibly motivation-based "rational ignorance" - i.e., not putting in the effort to learn what can learned about specific topics. It makes the argumentation less precise. These are two very different arguments, with the second one being much weaker (although more catchy and seemingly more clever) than the first one.
On a different note: Why don't you cross post these at Equality by Lot? I think there is a chance you will reach a wider audience and get more feedback if you do that.
It is unfortunate ...
Can you explain this criticism further? I think the reason people don't attempt to learn everything there is to know about everything is largely due to rational ignorance. The two concepts are related.
Thanks for asking - I don't think those concept are related, they are largely substitutes (or competitors) as theories of limited knowledge.
Rational ignorance is about people *choosing* not to find out information. Thus the focus is on motivation. Voters, we are told, could in theory learn what they need to know about the candidates and then they would vote "better". But they choose not to because "it doesn't pay" and they selfishly prefer to economize their efforts and watch TV or do some other private activities. Presumably the more civic-minded among us are already motivated enough to understand the world better and to vote "well".
The paternalistic and elitist implications follow (take your pick, or mix and match). The "bleeding heart liberals" would hope to make voters more informed by incentivizing them correctly, or by inculcating civic duty. While the "hard headed conservatives" know that such hopes are unrealistic and that the mob would never choose to inform themselves.
Limited cognitive capacity, on the other hand, is a universal human upper bound on what can be learned or understood that is not affected by motivation. The fact that there can be no all-to-all conversation in a group of 1,000,000 people is not a matter of motivation or choice, it is simply humanly impossible. This fact implies that in a large society there is an elite - that minority of people whose ideas do become widely known - and that this elite dominates electoral politics. This intrinsic property of large groups has nothing to do with rational ignorance. Even if we all spent all our time and all our effort learning about all that is going on in society we would still be subject to this phenomenon and elections would still be an oligarchical mechanism. The only way out of elite domination is to do away with elections altogether.
I agree that elections are an oligarchical mechanism. I disagree that pointing out that rational ignorance exists is demeaning to the people. That ignorance is rational. Spending time and effort preparing to vote in an election is irrational as an individual. We don't have control over who is running. The inherent limitations of the current political sphere (that all politicians operate in), as well as the limitations of the candidate pool, make it so that who wins a particular election may have very little impact on a voter's day-to-day life. That significantly compounds when one realizes that their individual vote has very little ability to tip the results in any particular direction. In many cases it's a false choice that is also pointless. I vote because I like thinking about politics (which is why I'm engaging here), because there is social pressure to do so, and because I'll still take the vanishingly small chance that my vote might make the world fairer.
i don't vote, because it's a farce. when i paid attention, all the remotely viable options were undesireable. feeling like one bug out of a million and getting some little congratulatory pin so i could wear it and try to make other people feel bad for not voting...what a joke.
I understand that there are far more fundamental problems with elections than rational ignorance... but it isn't "either/ or." The point here is that even if all candidates were honest sincere people, only looking out for the interests of the general population as they understood it, with not a trace of elitism, campaign money corruption, or narcissism, and there was a large array of choices so everyone had at least one candidate they could eagerly support, elections STILL are undemocratic and cannot work, simply due to rational ignorance. My goal is to show that even if people LIKE the candidates on their ballot and feel well-informed, and believed all of the other desirable requirements were met, that elections can't fulfill the democratic ideal, simply because of rational ignorance. You will note that I will be going o to great lengths to show that none of these other necessary elements listed above exist either, so that even if rational ignorance DID NOT EXIST, elections would still not be suitable. There are a huge variety of reasons that elections are unsuitable for democracy and rational ignorance is ONE of them, and that alone is sufficient grounds for rejecting elections.
These posts can be over 1,800 words, and come about every six days. I assumed it would be presumptuous.
I don't think that should in principle be a problem. We put most of the post under the fold and people can decide how much they want to read.
It is indeed mathematically possible (even if unlikely in this case) for the majority to be above average.
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-90-of-drivers-can-be-above-average-or-why-you-need-to-be-careful-when-talking-statistics-3df7be5cb116
Well... it is true that "average" can technically refer to mean or median or even mode, but I meant median. The reason median is the implied meaning is that the question that was asked of people doesn't specify what sort of "average" yet nearly everybody interprets the question as "am I better or worse than the 'typical' driver?" Hardly anyone (though you may be the exception) calculates that there are a handful of outrageously terrible drivers pulling down the mean, so of course they are better than the average (as mean). So you are technically correct because the word average has multiple meanings.