I have said this for years, it is not just the scientist that believe this but the politicians and judiciary also.
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.
Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.
Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."
http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html
Suicide Bomber Attacks US Base in Afghanistan
A suicide bomber has killed at least two Afghan civilians and wounded four others after detonating explosives at the gates of the U.S. military base at Bagram, just north of Kabul.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying it was revenge for the burning of Qurans several weeks ago at the Bagram Air Base.
NATO officials said no coalition troops were harmed in the attack and that the bomber did not breach the base.
In eastern Afghanistan, authorities say a suicide bomber killed a member of the Afghan security forces and wounded 11 others in an attack on a police checkpoint in the city of Jalalabad. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Monday's bombing.
When reports first surfaced February 20 of book burning at Bagram, violent anti-American protests erupted across Afghanistan, leaving at least 30 people dead and fraying relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan.
A prominent American newspaper said Saturday that a series of events led to the burning of Qurans and that the incident could have been stopped at several points "along a chain of mishaps, poor judgements and ignored procedures."
The New York Times quoted a U.S. official close to the joint Afghan-American investigation into the incident as saying at least six people involved in the Quran burning, including "American military leaders" and an American interpreter, could face disciplinary action.
The newspaper said about a week before the burning, military officers became concerned that detainees at a detention facility next to Bagram were secretly communicating through notes written in books from the detention center's library.
The Times reported two Afghan-American interpreters were told to sift through the books and set aside any that could pose a security risk. The interpreters identified 1,652 books for removal, including copies of the Quran and other religious books.
The Times quoted a U.S. official familiar with the joint investigation as saying the books should have been stored rather than burned.
The Times also cited Maulavi Khaliq Dad, a member of the Ulema Council, the pre-eminent body of Afghan religious leaders, which conducted its own inquiry into the incident. He was quoted as saying that some Afghan soldiers saw religious books in boxes awaiting removal. The soldiers told their commanding officer, but by the time he relayed his concerns to his American counterpart, the books were on their way to the incinerator.
The newspaper said both U.S. and Afghan officials believe the soldiers driving the books to the incinerator could not read Arabic and did not understand the significance of the holy books.
The New York Times said an Afghan worker "began to scream" when he realized the soldiers were burning holy Muslim books, and he and other Afghan workers tried to extinguish the fire with their water bottles.
The newspaper said "the Americans immediately stopped," but not before four books had been badly burned.
U.S. President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have apologized for the Quran burning.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/south/Suicide-Bomber-Attacks-Bagram-US-Base-in-Afghanistan-141429573.html
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