favorite forms of government

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I hope that was in jest, MrMark. Even a bad government is generally better than no government. Anarchy can't last. Violence is just too effective. Giving up government altogether just leads to rule by tyrants. That exact scenario seems to have happened all over the world, and throughout history. Anarchy + time = tyranny.

It was a spin of "the only good Indian..."

I like the idea that, "all forms of government are bad, democracy least of all."

I have heard of that book. It was written by an MIT professor, if I remember correctly. I've heard some rather absurd ideas advanced by MIT professors on occasion, but to be fair I haven't read his book. I frankly would not trust a group average to outperform experts. I trust MIT on the natural sciences moreso than the social sciences. I plan to go into science, which certainly does not go by majority rule. The vast majority of people are woefully misinformed on many of the most basic scientific ideas. The same is true of economics, which is a key issue for most modern governments. Most people would favor protectionism, but most economists don't think this would be a good idea. Who should decide?

The fact is, in many cases it actually does! Consistently! Some actual examples, and why this works is explained in the book. Situations when this wouldn't work are explained too. Look up "prediction markets" and "delphi methods" for some examples, or just read the book. Ah, that's the fundamental question isn't it? I suppose you would say the "experts" should decide, but I counter, who decides who the "experts" are? It's basically the same problem all over again, so that doesn't work either. I admit a total democracy is impractical because there's no way everybody could have the time to participate in every little decision. A democracy does, however do a half-decent job of choosing representatives. Do you have statistics to back that up, or are you just speaking from subjective experience? Still, people may become better informed if we could somehow replace these useless government schools...

But democracy tends to fall towards a mean of participants which will inevitably underperform experts. What really causes good performance is where knowledge is selected for, which is what a prediction market does and why they work so well. The issue isn't that large groups of people are inherently smart, but with proper mechanisms they have a lot of information to be used.... not that I have read the book, but I have taken business courses where group dynamics were discussed and have heard of prediction markets.

Well, that is the question. But I think that what Orwell is getting at is that democracies don't look towards merit. Well, if we start going into deciding who the experts are, we either start getting postmodern or recognize that society has a standard for determining experts known as a PhD.


He is basically parroting claims by GMU professor Bryan Caplan who wrote a book called "The Myth of the Rational Voter" about how the populace is persistently biased in its voting decisions. Mr. Caplan does use statistics in his book and his book is based upon statistics on the views of people in society vs the views of experts, and if I weren't so lazy then I could track some of these things. Yes, you are correct, the more one is educated the more they tend to think like the experts.

A pure meritocracy strikes me as a very bad idea. Experts can still be evil. Without some kind of strong ethical controls, I would expect this kind of government to become very corrupt, very fast.

That's not all. Many once-popular scientific ideas have since been disproven. If some kind of school degree becomes the only way to determine who the experts are, then only the "experts" will chose the new "experts". Soon there will be a hegemony of experts that are closed to new ideas, and suddenly your so-called experts will begin to look very stupid. Remember Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Well, I could agree with that due to the power of corruption but that doesn't mean that we don't want the effects of a society run by experts without the poor incentives.

Well, I don't think that this is a very good argument.

For the first part, yes, ideas are proven wrong, but that is only because ideas can never be proven right. So, we cannot compare imperfect, speculative knowledge to the ideal of perfect knowledge.

Not only that, but really, how else can you determine experts? Like I said, we either accept the methods put into place or we accept nothing. If we accept nothing then what is the point of even speculating on truth. The fact of the matter is that you don't have a better solution to formally determine who the experts are than the method laid forth. Frankly, academia already has problems with new ideas, but that is unavoidable. Not only that, but Clarke's first law isn't a law either, so it really doesn't matter.

Frankly you either accept the existence of experts or you don't, and if you don't accept the existence of experts then there is no point in really debating the issue. I don't think you can refute the ideas of many of the experts, and I don't think that you can come up with a better mechanism for determining experts either under the assumption that knowledge consists of ideas in accordance to facts, therefore, we either have a system or we do not.

I'll assert that a democratic election is better at choosing leaders than a college degree! Besides, I do have other ideas. I'm not sure if they're better though. I don't think it's that simple. Let's start by reaching a consensus on the term "expert". I don't expect mere mortals to be omniscient, no. But I do believe in the existence of expert specialists, or a person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject. "High" here is a relative term, relative to other people.

Specialists have to choose a narrow focus for their knowledge. In modern times the sum of human knowledge has become so vast that no one person can be expected to know it all anymore. To reach the "cutting edge" of knowledge requires giving up other fields in order to have time for deeper study of the chosen specialty. Generalists can't reach the edge (they won't have time), so there will always be someone with a much higher degree of skill in or knowledge than them in any given field. That means a generalist can't be an expert because their degree of skill or knowledge isn't "high" compared to the specialists.

I don't think specialists can make good leaders. They can't see the "big picture" because their knowledge is too narrow, and that means they will make bad (short-sighted) decisions. To be able to make good decisions leaders should be generalists, and therefore can't be experts. Specialists can, however, make good advisers to the generalist leaders, but only in their chosen field.

College degrees don't select leaders.


Well, I think your point is simple. High is a relative term and ultimately an undefinable term.


Ok? And they often have a broad exposure so that they can apply their focus for interdisciplinary efforts. Not only that, but we don't really see very many generalists at all anyway. Usually specialists have more general knowledge than the rest of the population too. Especially given the number of specialists that have polymath tendencies or simply interests outside their field of specialty, or even of specialties that have very general application. Economics for example is known as a field that can and does study all phenomena. Professor Caplan, to take an obvious example, is an economist who wrote a book on politics, and who has interest in philosophy and to some extent history as well(but certainly less so than politics, economics of philosophy). So, really, I don't think your critique of specialization is really that effective.


I disagree with that. As I would argue, most specialists have greater broad-based knowledge than most other people and are usually a lot smarter too. Not only that, but we usually don't see generalists out there. I would reiterate, I see more general knowledge with the specialists than with any other group. Frankly, I don't believe that our politicians are effectively generalists as well as our experts are, if only because our experts dedicate their lives to knowledge and our generalists don't.

Well, not now they don't, but in the hypothetical meritocracy I thought we were discussing they could. Ah, so we were using different definitions. All you were saying is that leaders should be well-educated, which I think is fairly obvious. Even a democracy would probably work better if the majority of the population had a good education, but I'm not sure schools are the best way to accomplish this.

Well, depending upon how it is set up. Frankly, if it is on the basis of degree then we simply have a republic of some form. But, if it is degree plus other meritorious accomplishments then we have a more complex system.

Well, on some level, yes. I think i already asserted that education was a good way to align people to the expert opinion though. Frankly, I have not taken a position on the ideal form of government at all. Orwell was attacking democracy, you were attacking Orwell's attack, and I was defending Orwell's attack. My position is probably best considered less trust for the traditional democratic system.

Agreed. (at least if you mean what I think you mean this time) Democracy actually works better if the people are always critical of the government, but not so distrustful that they'll revolt at the drop of a hat.

As for my position, I'm not convinced that democracy is the perfect form of government, it's just the best I've seen so far. (MrMark put it well, "all forms of government are bad, democracy least of all.") the United States manages to be an economic and military superpower, while maintaining a fairly high standard of living and human rights all at the same time. Granted it's not perfect (or even the best) in these regards, but we must be doing something right.

Well, not exactly, but I agree with your sentiment. I really just meant that I am against the deification of democracy.

I could agree with those sentiments.

The problem with Technocracy and other merit-based forms of government is that they will inevitably degenerate into non-merit oligarchies. As another poster said, if it's the experts that are ultimately in charge it will be the experts themselves that decide who gets to become experts, critics of the circle of experts will be silenced. And thus the government slowly becomes a kind of single-party state.

that is why you need to make sure theere are checks and balances in any for of government one creates