Posted on 04/02/2008 6:48:17 PM PDT by shrinkermd
One can't miss many on FR dislike Senator McCain. It is alleged he is a "RINO," a liberal and having a severe anger problem. Some of the complaints focus on his support with Senator Kennedy of an "amnesty" bill for illegals and support for campaign finance reform with Senator Feingold. The anger is palpable and even such conservative luminaries as Rush Limbaugh claim that not only is Senator McCain not a conservative but he won the primaries with independent and Democrat help.
There are problems with these assertions. Among them is not understanding the very nature of mass independent judgments we call elections and their likelihood of success.
In 2004 James Surowieki wrote a short book titled "The Wisdom of Crowds" Surowiecki stated in summary, "The many are smarter than the few and this collective wisdom shapes business, economics, societies and nations.
Surowiecki begins with the founder of biostatistics, Francis Galton. This occurred when Galton studied a group of people making independent judgments as to the dressed weight of a live ox. The one closest would get a significant cash prize generated by the small cost of purchasing a ticket. Some of those guessing were professional butchers who did this for a living, but most were amateurs.
There were 787 guesses. What Galton did was to calculate the mean (average) for all 787 slips. He found the average guessed dress weight average was 1,197 lbs. The actual weight was 1,198 lbs! Actually, the mean of the guesses was better than any individual. Further, many, many studies since show in such matters the experts, if they do win once, they failed to do so in the future.
Galton immediately recognized this was much like democracy. Almost everyone would assume that when guessing the dressed weight (or beans in a jar) that widely differing guesses prevail and the average would miss the actual. Again, this was not true and it surely seems that, as a group, we can make quite good decisions in spite of wide differences of opinion and knowledge. Counter-intuitive but true nonetheless.
In spite of our wide differences about the Senator McCain, when all is said and done the vote determined the outcome. Millions of people made an independent judgment and awarded the nomination to Senator McCain.
IMHO a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is better than any single or several pundits. I would go for their decision on simple probability grounds. Those who won't recognize this, such as Rush Limbaugh, fail to appreciate the real strength of democratic processes.
That’s fine and all, but it ignores the very real possibility that the democrats and independents who voted for McCain were doing so with the sole intention of botching the election.
Also, I would argue that the electorate are in fact not experts in any way, shape or form. They are generally uninformed boobs who vote for whoever the TV told them to vote for.
Oh, jeepers shrinkermd, we’re not guessing the weight of a dead ox. We’re trying to elect a president.
We have some thinking human beings involved in this and some who are driven by the media images.
We have bad, bader and badest, and we know it. There is not much wisdom in a mob.
Really? Is that what you believe?
Are we guessing McCain’s weight then? 189.
You can add me to your bone-headed list. The masses may elect McCain but it won’t be with my vote.
76% of Registered Republicans in California did NOT vote for John McCain in the primary.
Perhaps they are pretty smart.
“..fail to appreciate the real strength of democratic processes.”’
And you, like McCain, fail to recognize the US Constitution and its vast assemblage of writings recognizing and enshrining our God-given individual rights, as opposed to your so-called “democratic processes.”
Thank god we have you few elites around to keep the country functioning.
That is one of the weakest arguements for McLame I’ve encountered. I should vote for him because a bunch of other folks did, ignoring his record and his own words. No thank you.
The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,—strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
- Charles Caleb Colton
The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils.
- John Dryden
The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury, like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will.
- Euripides
The mob has nothing to lose, everything to gain.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob.
- Samuel Johnson
Mobs are multiplied ignorance.
- Sir William Jones
The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness.
- Joseph Joubert
The multitude unaw’d is insolent;
Once seiz’d with fear, contemptible and vain.
- David Mallet
The mob is a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.
- Jane Porter
It has been very truly said that the mob has many heads, but no brains.
- Antoine de Rivarol, Comte de Rivarol
The many-headed multitude, whom inconstancy only doth by accident guide to well-doing! Who can set confidence there, where company takes away shame, and each may lay the fault upon his fellow?
- Sir Philip Sidney
The mob have neither judgment nor principle,—ready to bawl at night for the reverse of what they desired in the morning.
- Caius Cornelius Tacitus
Inconstant, blind, Deserting friends at need, and duped by foes;
Loud and seditious, when a chief inspired
Their headlong fury, but, of him deprived,
Already slaves that lick’d the scourging hand.
- James Thomson
this would be to presume that everyone in the group shared the interests of the group. Hitler was popularly elected. Not comparing Hitler to MCCain, just saying the logic is the same.
Wasn’t Hitler voted in by a majority of Germans?
How about A-Jad in Iran, wasn’t he “voted” in by a majority of Iranians?
How about Jimmy Carter ... that worked out well didn’t it.
Hitler was not elected by a majority of Germans. As I recall he received about one third of the vote.
The wisdom of crowds, huh?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
Caplan, an associate professor of economics, believes that empirical proof of voter irrationality is the key to a realistic picture of democracy and, thus, how to approach and improve it. Focusing on how voters are systematically mistaken in their grasp of economics-according to Caplan, the No. 1 area of concern among voters in most election years-he effectively refutes the “miracle” of aggregation, showing that an uninformed populace will often vote against measures that benefit the majority. Drawing extensively from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy, Caplan discusses how rational consumers often make irrational voters, why it’s in politicians’ interest to foment that irrationality, what economists make of the (non) existence of systematic bias and how social science’s “misguided insistence that every model be a ‘story without fools,’ “ has led them to miss the crucial questions in politics, “where folly is central.” Readers unfamiliar with economic theory and its attendant jargon may find themselves occasionally (but only momentarily) lost; otherwise the text is highly readable and Caplan’s arguments are impressively original, shedding new light on an age-old political economy conundrum.
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428
If you read the post I did, you will note that a collection of individual decisions is what I was talking about. I was not speaking about mob psychology nor did I infer the “mob” made our elected decisions. Millions of individuals of varying knowledge and intelligence do.
Democrats and Independents did vote in the Republican primaries and against a split opposition, they put McCain over the top. So far, you haven't made your case.
They you roll into to this Wisdom of Crowds stuff. What's the point here? More people voted for McCain, therefore that is the wise choice? What's the marginal rate for wisdom per additional vote especially, when you're talking about hundreds of thousands and even millions of voters?
Other than that, take a class in logic. Your article makes zero sense.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.