The Iron Cage of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say:

The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.

The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.

As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries.

He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills. Whether the researchers are testing people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess, the duo has found that people always assess their own performance as "above average" — even people who, when tested, actually perform at the very bottom of the pile. [Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It]

We're just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. "To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for grammar skill. "We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students." Essentially, they didn't recognize the correct answer even when they saw it.

The reason for this disconnect is simple: "If you have gaps in your knowledge in a given area, then you’re not in a position to assess your own gaps or the gaps of others," Dunning said. Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers.

The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.

Dark Thoughts in the Morning

Shannon Love reflects on the reasons why the Left bought so easily into the fake Limbaugh quotes:

Watching so many serious journalists and leftist political figures fall for the fake Rush Limbaugh quotes tells us something very frightening about what leftists believe true about non-leftist America. I say, “frightening,” because we evaluate the level of threat that others pose based on our understanding of the amorality of their beliefs. Then we rationalize the harshness of the methods we are willing to employ against them based on our threat assessment. We are much more willing to use draconian methods against people we view as extremely evil than we are against people we judge less evil. As a nation, we were willing to employ much more draconian methods to defeat fascism than we employed to fight anyone else. The same basic principle applies to our internal conflicts as well. The more extreme and dangerous we view our political and social opponents as being, the more tolerant we become of extreme measures to oppose them.

Given this, what does it portend for American non-leftists that a wide and powerful swath of the American left apparently believes it quite credible that a major media figure with an audience in the tens of millions looks back fondly on slavery and approves of political assassination? What draconian methods could those leftists rationalize using if they really believe they are fighting people with such values?

As I have written before, immersion in fantasy is a defining aspect of leftism. As they move progressively towards the left pole of the political spectrum, the realities become more and more immersive while becoming more and more detached from reality. At the far end of the spectrum, the leftists become delusional to the point they believe they are trapped in a gotterdammerung struggle of good versus evil that justifies any action they might take in fighting that struggle. When dangerous fantasies, once the providence of the 5% most radical left, become accepted as true in the 40% just to the left of center, the rest of us are in great danger.

 Two quick points:

First, when you look at the brutal history of the French Revolution, you will see that even before the Terror, French radicals were engaging in acts of open brutality - such as massacring Catholic priests and political prisoners - out of the simple fear that if they lost, those people would be massacring them.  The logic of the brutality was to "do unto them before they got a chance to do unto us."  If the Left believes that the Right is capable of brutality, then we move one step closer to a self-fulfilling cycle of preemptive retaliation.

Second, one of my favorite aphorisms from the practice of law is that if the other side is accusing you of doing things that it has never occurred to youd to do, then you can bet the other side is doing it.  When the Left fantasizes about political assassinations and repressions on the part of the non-Left, it's fair to wonder what's going on with the Left, particularly given the historic far Left fascination with violence, terror and repression.

California Dreamin'

Well, what does happen when the Left gets control.

According to Victor Davis Hanson the result is social dysfunction:

For years the open borders lobby accused “them” (whites? The establishment? Conservatives? etc.) of racism in wanting the border with Mexico closed, an end to state entitlements to illegal aliens (remember the Satanic Prop 187?), and deportations of thousands of aliens in state prisons (a cost nearing $1 billion per annum). But now the state legislature is largely controlled by those who in the past argued for de facto open borders and an expansion, not a curtailment, of entitlements for those without legal residence. So whom to blame? There is no “they” anymore. The outsiders are insiders and own the state—and its contradictions they once helped to ensure.

Ditto environmentalism. “They” (fill in the blanks: right-wing employers, CEOs, national companies, etc.) were the villains to be overcome in order to stop drilling off our shores, and to put ever more of our timber and recreational and scenic areas into no-use wilderness areas. We were not to build dams. No more canals. Put aside more farm land. No more nuclear plants. Forget coal. Tax gasoline and make it expensive to refine. It is fair to say now that the environmentalist agenda runs the state, and so there likewise is no more “them” to blame—and we must live with the results. I cannot begin to count in my own personal realm of knowledge the farmers who went broke, the high-tech engineers who moved to Nevada, the small business owners who shut down or moved out of state.

Anyone with capital who wants to start business X, knows that he can be put out of business by one supposed sexual harassment suit, a racial discrimination complaint, trying to fathom 500 pages of state EPA applications, a 10% income tax rate, and now a 9% sales tax to come. In California we hunt out the misdemeanor and ignore the felonies. Drive down my avenue, drop five trash bags of wet garbage on the side of the road, and the chances are great you will never be held accountable (even if your receipts are found in the trash and turned over to the sheriff), but please don’t wire an outdoor light in the barnyard without a permit. You see, anyone who nods and obeys the law and pays, we hound; anyone who simply won’t or can’t, or causes too much trouble, we the state employee simply ignore.

That last is a keen observation. Fresno has instituted a practice of staking out north end bars and following drivers leaving those bars home until - some two or three miles down the road - the police can intuit some reason for pulling the driver over. This guarantees a trip downtown, the collection of fines and fees to release the vehicle and the payment of thousands of dollars in attorney fees. Although the odds are that most such drivers may be above .08, a lot won't, but will still have to pay the fines (and, in one case, lose his job of thirty years.) Clearly, there are a lot of costs and externalities associated with this approach, but one thing definitely justifies the cost - revenue enhancement - which only works if the police fish in waters where people can and will pay the fines.

Likewise, in the course of a couple of months, I was amazed with the efficiency and tenacity of the Fresno "garbage SS", which makes sure that garbage can cannot be viewed from the street. There were fines associated with that, and I'm sure that enforcement was undoubtedly emphasized in the north end of town, where people have been disciplined to pay their bills. Admittedly, I instinctively felt that I should obey the law and, apparently, having the garbage can pushed back to the side of the house behind some trees was not in compliance, so I built a fence to shield the delicate vision of the roving garbage can compliance patrol from the site of the city-issued garbage can. On the other hand, I felt harassed over trivialities and had to wonder if there weren't more important things that the City should be resolving like cracking down on gangs and meth labs.

Strangely, the net result for this has been to undercut my previously unquestioned support for the police and local government. When enough people like me - who pay the taxes and obey the laws - start feeling that we are the ones being exploited, what then?