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So you're saying that the masses are dumb, and the ruling elites are smart?

DavidHm 10y ago
I think that is what he is saying. Though he is saying that the ruling elites are ruling because they are smart, and not that the ruling elites are smart because they are ruling.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Exactly. If you left the ruling elite to breed amoungst themselves you would end up with something like the Russian nobility - idiotic and doomed.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  It's a circular definition though - it's not falsifiable, because if they are in power they must be smart, defining smart as "ability to get into power", if they can't get power evidently they are not smart enough... Not very useful, except if you enjoy making "winning" arguments that you can't lose.
danieltillett 10y ago
Yes. They know they have been conned, but they don't know how to fight the elites. They are strong, but leaderless and so are left with only the Sampson option.
narrator 10y ago
It's not so much that the masses are dumb, but that propaganda techniques have been so refined and optimized that people have no idea who or what they have to fight to get what they want. There are a lot of ideological systems that are created simply to misdirect the public's attention away from actual important issues and toward infighting or intellectual dead ends or towards the goals of the propagandists. Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the public's attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Anyone who wants to actually figure out what is going on just needs to look at the numerical data, but that's boring. Instead political life is a bunch of people reposting whatever article got published today to freak the public out or very narrowly guide them into strengthening their belief in a particular ideological narrative. People aren't stupid, but given limited information they are easily influenced.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  This is because the elites have all the big artillery. It is not the hereditary nobility that are providing the brains behind all this propaganda. The masses know they are losing, they just don't have the leaders able to fight the ruling class and so are blindly lashing out at all authority - the current situation is rather like the Great Rising [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
- jolux 10y ago
  >Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the publics attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Yep, this is true. However mass shootings over the same period of time have been going up. Compared to the rest of the industrialized western world, we do have a gun violence crisis. Considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r..., the US is sitting between Uruguay and Montenegro with a rate of 10.54 per 100,000. Whether or not it's been falling since 1963 (and I know it has been) it's still at an appalling place and we deserve better. Not to privilege the West over everywhere else but we are closer to most other so-called "Western countries" culturally speaking than countries that are not traditionally part of the West. Within that framework, Finland has the next-highest rate, and it's at 3.25 per 100,000 (i.e. about three times less).
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> This is part of a larger divide that has been opening up between “mass populations” and “informed publics” (Edelman defined the latter group as those who have a college degree, regularly consume news media, and are in the top 25 percent of household income for their age group in a given country) By Edelman's definition, it would appear his elites are more fit to govern than the masses (again, by his definition). That doesn't mean the latter are ignored. But if you put every issue to a vote, the people who have experienced less worldly exposure, less challenge in critical thinking, who are not consuming information from outside their narrow social circles and are not economically tied into the whole will always win. If you're a fan of good long-term decision making, that's a lousy prospect.

I think that is what he is saying. Though he is saying that the ruling elites are ruling because they are smart, and not that the ruling elites are smart because they are ruling.

danieltillett 10y ago
Exactly. If you left the ruling elite to breed amoungst themselves you would end up with something like the Russian nobility - idiotic and doomed.
Noseshine 10y ago
It's a circular definition though - it's not falsifiable, because if they are in power they must be smart, defining smart as "ability to get into power", if they can't get power evidently they are not smart enough... Not very useful, except if you enjoy making "winning" arguments that you can't lose.

danieltillett 10y ago

Yes. They know they have been conned, but they don't know how to fight the elites. They are strong, but leaderless and so are left with only the Sampson option.

narrator 10y ago

It's not so much that the masses are dumb, but that propaganda techniques have been so refined and optimized that people have no idea who or what they have to fight to get what they want. There are a lot of ideological systems that are created simply to misdirect the public's attention away from actual important issues and toward infighting or intellectual dead ends or towards the goals of the propagandists. Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the public's attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Anyone who wants to actually figure out what is going on just needs to look at the numerical data, but that's boring. Instead political life is a bunch of people reposting whatever article got published today to freak the public out or very narrowly guide them into strengthening their belief in a particular ideological narrative. People aren't stupid, but given limited information they are easily influenced.

danieltillett 10y ago
This is because the elites have all the big artillery. It is not the hereditary nobility that are providing the brains behind all this propaganda. The masses know they are losing, they just don't have the leaders able to fight the ruling class and so are blindly lashing out at all authority - the current situation is rather like the Great Rising [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
jolux 10y ago
>Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the publics attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Yep, this is true. However mass shootings over the same period of time have been going up. Compared to the rest of the industrialized western world, we do have a gun violence crisis. Considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r..., the US is sitting between Uruguay and Montenegro with a rate of 10.54 per 100,000. Whether or not it's been falling since 1963 (and I know it has been) it's still at an appalling place and we deserve better. Not to privilege the West over everywhere else but we are closer to most other so-called "Western countries" culturally speaking than countries that are not traditionally part of the West. Within that framework, Finland has the next-highest rate, and it's at 3.25 per 100,000 (i.e. about three times less).

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> This is part of a larger divide that has been opening up between “mass populations” and “informed publics” (Edelman defined the latter group as those who have a college degree, regularly consume news media, and are in the top 25 percent of household income for their age group in a given country) By Edelman's definition, it would appear his elites are more fit to govern than the masses (again, by his definition). That doesn't mean the latter are ignored. But if you put every issue to a vote, the people who have experienced less worldly exposure, less challenge in critical thinking, who are not consuming information from outside their narrow social circles and are not economically tied into the whole will always win. If you're a fan of good long-term decision making, that's a lousy prospect.