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The methodological flaw here is amusingly it’s own fascinating study: using some verbal sophistication proxy as a cognitive ability proxy to correlate political

The methodological flaw here is amusingly it’s own fascinating study: using some verbal sophistication proxy as a cognitive ability proxy to correlate political attitudes is arguably the key feature of modern hyper-polarized, Internet-speed news cycle politics. It’s difficult to watch a screen without hearing some version of “most people are stupid”. This is deeply wrong: most people are very smart, but this is difficult for the well-educated, because most people are inarticulate. Surviving, let alone reproducing in meaningful numbers, has almost always been a ruthless selection process on intelligence, but hyper-literacy is a path to high status that has only recently become available to people in large numbers, and even then only in some places (in the US where I live, smarty-pants hyper-literacy is dramatically higher status on the urban coasts for example). This is why so many of my fellow coastal lefties are always befuddled if not enraged that huge blocks of the rest of the country (and world) vote with their ballots or feet or both for very poorly-articulated policies and agendas: the (to borrow a dangerous phrase) “sullen, silent majority” understands why “progress” is bad for them, but doesn’t articulate it well. This leads to a combination of feeling obviously right, but getting trounced at the polls rather often.

pstuart 4y ago
I'm not sure about the policies bit. Sure, on the social front God, Guns, and Gays are powerful motivators to get those people to vote. But economic policies from the same side seem to be mainly about lowering the tax burden of the rich. What am I missing?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Not sure what your point is, but wealthy people are the source of investment capital. Less capital investment means a less prosperous economy, which negatively impacts about everybody.
  - pstuart 4y ago
    Sorry, but I wasn't attacking wealthy people, nor capitalism (but would be willing to poke at 'em for fun some other time). > that huge blocks of the rest of the country (and world) vote with their ballots or feet or both for very poorly-articulated policies and agendas My point is that the policies and agendas seem to be driven more on anger than on structural policies that will enrich their lives. I'm trying desperately to not engage in any sort of partisanship here, but I'm not aware of any significant policies from the previous administration that actually made their lives better. It's been shown that fear (and anger) are powerful motivators: https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections tl;dr -- fear+anger > economics/domestic policy
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Politicians are well aware that people vote based on emotional appeals, and take full advantage of it.
      - pstuart 4y ago
        Ok, but I'm asking about what actual policies are "those people" voting on? I'm just seeing the fear and anger bits.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Trump's tax cuts correlated with prosperity and very low unemployment.
        pstuart 4y ago
        Correlated. There's plenty to discuss in depth there but let's just stick to enumerating high-level policy/programs that we're being voted for, e.g., "Vote for me and I'll give you X, Y, and Z!". I'm trying to understand what X, Y, and Z might be.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Eh, I take your point but I think it’s at least debatable. Bell Labs via sanctioned, de-facto subsidized monopoly gave us everything from the transistor to the laser to Unix (you know the list, some readers might not). DoD/ARPA/DARPA funding was responsible for countless innovations, notable to this readership TCP/IP etc. (again, you know the list probably better than I do). Public funding for innovation demonstrably works extremely well at least under some circumstances. Private investment capital has been demonstrably effective at growing that pie somewhat, but it’s arguably been privatizing the resulting wealth even faster than its grown it, and almost definitionally privatizing it into the pockets of people with significant equity portfolios. We’ll obviously never know what would have happened if Bell had been broken up and parceled off in the 1930s instead of the 1980s, but it’s far from obvious to me at least that it would have been better.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > Private investment capital has been demonstrably effective at growing that pie somewhat Compare the success of the free market at raising the standard of living as opposed to other forms of government - by a lot. > arguably been privatizing the resulting wealth The only way that wealth would have grown is if that investment paid off in providing goods and services that the rest of the country preferred to buy, and they would only prefer spend their money on it if it made their lives better. For example, people like to rag on Amazon, but Amazon's products and services has personally benefited me greatly. Shopping online saves me a ton of time, and wear and tear on my car. As for equity portfolios, anyone in America can invest in equities. Etrade, Robinhood, etc., have done a great job democratizing investing. Want a piece of the action? Buy some equities.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        > Compare the success of the free market at raising the standard of living as opposed to other forms of government - by a lot. Generally alongside massive government-directed/-financed social programs, often much higher tax rates than we’ve seen for decades, alongside a powerful labor movement, and alongside substantial regulation like antitrust. To the extent the raised standard of living has been anything remotely like equitable, anyway. To wit: > For example, people like to rag on Amazon, but Amazon's products and services has personally benefited me greatly. Shopping online saves me a ton of time, and wear and tear on my car. That’s great, for you. And the conditions their warehouse workers experience more closely resemble the conditions of workers in similar jobs a century ago, than the conditions of equivalent jobs which no longer exist many places Amazon operates warehouses. In the same time that this more-free market has been allowed to grow such behemoths, wealth and income disparity have ballooned incredibly. To that point, if I said something like this to many family members and several friends: > As for equity portfolios, anyone in America can invest in equities. Etrade, Robinhood, etc., have done a great job democratizing investing. Want a piece of the action? Buy some equities. They’d either laugh out loud or stop speaking to me. Buy some equities with… what? They’re struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Given the circumstances, where I’ve taken over mortgage payments for my parents so they can have a home and where there’s hospital bills much larger than the value of the house, I suspect some of them would disown me for being so callous. I sincerely am glad that you’re enjoying the benefits of the free market such as it is. But you shouldn’t be under the illusion that it’s anywhere near as available to others as you seem to think.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I’ve heard a number of plausible theories, but I’d point out that Blue Team’s politicians are damn near as committed as Red Team’s to preventing any of the “wrong people” from getting any money: epsilon politicians on either side are going to budge a nanometer on “the rich get richer” (Pelosi on privileged “insider” trading, Sinema on the carried interest loophole right off the top of my head). In fairness, Red Team’s politicos are much more bare knuckled / flagrant about their take on kleptocapitalism, but on the ground it’s all more or less boils down to “eat the poor”. Even things that I can kinda sorta get behind like student loan forgiveness are mostly A) cosmetic and B) benefitting the base. Not so different from some Texan congressman porking in some oil thing or an F35 appropriations boondoggle in the political calculus. I’d rather see student loan forgiveness than a garbage airplane like the F35, but I’d really like to see people with family offices get sent to “Federal Pound Me in The Ass” prison for the roughly always that they rig up the tax and financial system with flagrant fraud and that’s a complete nonstarter on either side of the aisle.
  - giardini 4y ago
    bennesman says>" but on the ground it’s all more or less boils down to “eat the poor”."< If only it were that easy! sigh
- treeman79 4y ago
  Your assumption is that government is good. Founders felt it was necessary evil. Without limits it would become tyrannical. Most of the constitution is about Limiting the role of government. So people could have more freedom. Look at China. Dozens of cities locked down. People not free to leave their building. Not possible here thanks to high gun ownership. Police can handle one offs here and their. But not a full cities.
WalterBright 4y ago
> most people are very smart Only half are above median intelligence. There's a difference between being smart and being well-educated. Wisdom is the combination of intelligence with knowledge. > coastal lefties are always befuddled Being well-educated in STEM is not indicative of being well-educated in history and/or economics, which most Americans seem very poorly educated in.
- benreesman 4y ago
  Haha fair point! It would have been better for me to say that the median person is very smart when it comes to understanding the best deal they are realistically going to get on the things they care about, and who they are going to get that deal from :)
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I would reframe that to say that most people are far better judges of what is best for them personally than someone else ever could be. I don't mind the government making recommendations, but when they advance to forcing it on me, I object.
- aeturnum 4y ago
  Not every measure follows a bell curve. The reason intelligence is seen as following a bell curve is at least partially that intelligence tests are designed with the assumption that it does - so every test that is accepted suggests that it's the case. Personally I think it's worthwhile to observe that what we call "intelligence" is also generally a self-driven and self-satisfying demonstration of socially-sourced measures of 'ability.' There are plenty of people who are in social situations who would not see any worldly gains from developing those skills because they are not in a situation where they would be allowed to gain from their application. Often, when someone figures out a clever way to get ahead, they are committing a crime and sensibly pretend they are not doing it (and couldn't do it if prompted). People in this situation might actually be 'dumb' - but they certainly have no incentive to demonstrate their 'smartness.' For a relatively small section of the population, merit really does come into account - but it's not a random sample and so it's very hard, in my view, to feel confident that we know much about 'intelligence' at all - much less that it has a bell curve distribution.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
> It’s difficult to watch a screen without hearing some version of “most people are stupid”. This is deeply wrong: most people are very smart, but this is difficult for the well-educated, because most people are inarticulate. This is all just balderdash. Depending on how people define “stupid” or “very smart” it’s correct or incorrect. It doesn’t really convey anything meaningful. The thing about our society that most seem to not appreciate even though it’s axiomatically true and fairly obvious for most educated to see is that half the population are dumber than the average person. (Yes, technically the median, but you can’t say median person because the median person and those dumber don’t know what median means).
- tsol 4y ago
  What does that mean though? How smart is the average person? Can dumb people not understand their best interests? How are we defining dumb-- would a village elder that's illiterate but has a lifetime of survival skills be considered smart or dumb? How about a brilliant academic that can't take care of their selves? The point I'm getting at is there are a lot of different types of intelligence. Calling people stupid is just a simplistic way to find an easy reason group to blame.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
golemiprague 4y ago
There is some correlation between ability to verbalise your thoughts and cognitive ability or being smart, but the thing is, when it comes to politics being smart is not that useful. Being smart works when you play in a well defined field with certain rules and regulations. Politics is about predicting the future based on so many parameters and in such a chaotic environment that the extra 10 or 20 IQ points (or any other measurements for that matter) doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. At end of the day it is more about gut feeling which accumulate all the knowledge of the self, the tribe, past generations and current. As such, being slightly smarter or educated doesn't affect things much.
eternalban 4y ago
> most people are very smart ... most people are inarticulate. I share this view, though I would dial it down to just smart. My pet theory is that people simply differ in what interests them: almost all people are highly articulate on topics/activities that interest them. (A common preoccupation is 'getting something for nothing' or 'how to get away with x'. There are a lot of geniuses in that field!) Only a narrow subset of humans are fascinated by intellectual matters. And the rest call them egg-heads.

pstuart 4y ago

I'm not sure about the policies bit. Sure, on the social front God, Guns, and Gays are powerful motivators to get those people to vote. But economic policies from the same side seem to be mainly about lowering the tax burden of the rich. What am I missing?

WalterBright 4y ago
Not sure what your point is, but wealthy people are the source of investment capital. Less capital investment means a less prosperous economy, which negatively impacts about everybody.
- pstuart 4y ago
  Sorry, but I wasn't attacking wealthy people, nor capitalism (but would be willing to poke at 'em for fun some other time). > that huge blocks of the rest of the country (and world) vote with their ballots or feet or both for very poorly-articulated policies and agendas My point is that the policies and agendas seem to be driven more on anger than on structural policies that will enrich their lives. I'm trying desperately to not engage in any sort of partisanship here, but I'm not aware of any significant policies from the previous administration that actually made their lives better. It's been shown that fear (and anger) are powerful motivators: https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections tl;dr -- fear+anger > economics/domestic policy
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Politicians are well aware that people vote based on emotional appeals, and take full advantage of it.
    - pstuart 4y ago
      Ok, but I'm asking about what actual policies are "those people" voting on? I'm just seeing the fear and anger bits.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Trump's tax cuts correlated with prosperity and very low unemployment.
        pstuart 4y ago
        Correlated. There's plenty to discuss in depth there but let's just stick to enumerating high-level policy/programs that we're being voted for, e.g., "Vote for me and I'll give you X, Y, and Z!". I'm trying to understand what X, Y, and Z might be.
- benreesman 4y ago
  Eh, I take your point but I think it’s at least debatable. Bell Labs via sanctioned, de-facto subsidized monopoly gave us everything from the transistor to the laser to Unix (you know the list, some readers might not). DoD/ARPA/DARPA funding was responsible for countless innovations, notable to this readership TCP/IP etc. (again, you know the list probably better than I do). Public funding for innovation demonstrably works extremely well at least under some circumstances. Private investment capital has been demonstrably effective at growing that pie somewhat, but it’s arguably been privatizing the resulting wealth even faster than its grown it, and almost definitionally privatizing it into the pockets of people with significant equity portfolios. We’ll obviously never know what would have happened if Bell had been broken up and parceled off in the 1930s instead of the 1980s, but it’s far from obvious to me at least that it would have been better.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > Private investment capital has been demonstrably effective at growing that pie somewhat Compare the success of the free market at raising the standard of living as opposed to other forms of government - by a lot. > arguably been privatizing the resulting wealth The only way that wealth would have grown is if that investment paid off in providing goods and services that the rest of the country preferred to buy, and they would only prefer spend their money on it if it made their lives better. For example, people like to rag on Amazon, but Amazon's products and services has personally benefited me greatly. Shopping online saves me a ton of time, and wear and tear on my car. As for equity portfolios, anyone in America can invest in equities. Etrade, Robinhood, etc., have done a great job democratizing investing. Want a piece of the action? Buy some equities.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      > Compare the success of the free market at raising the standard of living as opposed to other forms of government - by a lot. Generally alongside massive government-directed/-financed social programs, often much higher tax rates than we’ve seen for decades, alongside a powerful labor movement, and alongside substantial regulation like antitrust. To the extent the raised standard of living has been anything remotely like equitable, anyway. To wit: > For example, people like to rag on Amazon, but Amazon's products and services has personally benefited me greatly. Shopping online saves me a ton of time, and wear and tear on my car. That’s great, for you. And the conditions their warehouse workers experience more closely resemble the conditions of workers in similar jobs a century ago, than the conditions of equivalent jobs which no longer exist many places Amazon operates warehouses. In the same time that this more-free market has been allowed to grow such behemoths, wealth and income disparity have ballooned incredibly. To that point, if I said something like this to many family members and several friends: > As for equity portfolios, anyone in America can invest in equities. Etrade, Robinhood, etc., have done a great job democratizing investing. Want a piece of the action? Buy some equities. They’d either laugh out loud or stop speaking to me. Buy some equities with… what? They’re struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Given the circumstances, where I’ve taken over mortgage payments for my parents so they can have a home and where there’s hospital bills much larger than the value of the house, I suspect some of them would disown me for being so callous. I sincerely am glad that you’re enjoying the benefits of the free market such as it is. But you shouldn’t be under the illusion that it’s anywhere near as available to others as you seem to think.
benreesman 4y ago
I’ve heard a number of plausible theories, but I’d point out that Blue Team’s politicians are damn near as committed as Red Team’s to preventing any of the “wrong people” from getting any money: epsilon politicians on either side are going to budge a nanometer on “the rich get richer” (Pelosi on privileged “insider” trading, Sinema on the carried interest loophole right off the top of my head). In fairness, Red Team’s politicos are much more bare knuckled / flagrant about their take on kleptocapitalism, but on the ground it’s all more or less boils down to “eat the poor”. Even things that I can kinda sorta get behind like student loan forgiveness are mostly A) cosmetic and B) benefitting the base. Not so different from some Texan congressman porking in some oil thing or an F35 appropriations boondoggle in the political calculus. I’d rather see student loan forgiveness than a garbage airplane like the F35, but I’d really like to see people with family offices get sent to “Federal Pound Me in The Ass” prison for the roughly always that they rig up the tax and financial system with flagrant fraud and that’s a complete nonstarter on either side of the aisle.
- giardini 4y ago
  bennesman says>" but on the ground it’s all more or less boils down to “eat the poor”."< If only it were that easy! sigh
treeman79 4y ago
Your assumption is that government is good. Founders felt it was necessary evil. Without limits it would become tyrannical. Most of the constitution is about Limiting the role of government. So people could have more freedom. Look at China. Dozens of cities locked down. People not free to leave their building. Not possible here thanks to high gun ownership. Police can handle one offs here and their. But not a full cities.

WalterBright 4y ago

> most people are very smart Only half are above median intelligence. There's a difference between being smart and being well-educated. Wisdom is the combination of intelligence with knowledge. > coastal lefties are always befuddled Being well-educated in STEM is not indicative of being well-educated in history and/or economics, which most Americans seem very poorly educated in.

benreesman 4y ago
Haha fair point! It would have been better for me to say that the median person is very smart when it comes to understanding the best deal they are realistically going to get on the things they care about, and who they are going to get that deal from :)
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I would reframe that to say that most people are far better judges of what is best for them personally than someone else ever could be. I don't mind the government making recommendations, but when they advance to forcing it on me, I object.
aeturnum 4y ago
Not every measure follows a bell curve. The reason intelligence is seen as following a bell curve is at least partially that intelligence tests are designed with the assumption that it does - so every test that is accepted suggests that it's the case. Personally I think it's worthwhile to observe that what we call "intelligence" is also generally a self-driven and self-satisfying demonstration of socially-sourced measures of 'ability.' There are plenty of people who are in social situations who would not see any worldly gains from developing those skills because they are not in a situation where they would be allowed to gain from their application. Often, when someone figures out a clever way to get ahead, they are committing a crime and sensibly pretend they are not doing it (and couldn't do it if prompted). People in this situation might actually be 'dumb' - but they certainly have no incentive to demonstrate their 'smartness.' For a relatively small section of the population, merit really does come into account - but it's not a random sample and so it's very hard, in my view, to feel confident that we know much about 'intelligence' at all - much less that it has a bell curve distribution.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

> It’s difficult to watch a screen without hearing some version of “most people are stupid”. This is deeply wrong: most people are very smart, but this is difficult for the well-educated, because most people are inarticulate. This is all just balderdash. Depending on how people define “stupid” or “very smart” it’s correct or incorrect. It doesn’t really convey anything meaningful. The thing about our society that most seem to not appreciate even though it’s axiomatically true and fairly obvious for most educated to see is that half the population are dumber than the average person. (Yes, technically the median, but you can’t say median person because the median person and those dumber don’t know what median means).

tsol 4y ago
What does that mean though? How smart is the average person? Can dumb people not understand their best interests? How are we defining dumb-- would a village elder that's illiterate but has a lifetime of survival skills be considered smart or dumb? How about a brilliant academic that can't take care of their selves? The point I'm getting at is there are a lot of different types of intelligence. Calling people stupid is just a simplistic way to find an easy reason group to blame.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

golemiprague 4y ago

There is some correlation between ability to verbalise your thoughts and cognitive ability or being smart, but the thing is, when it comes to politics being smart is not that useful. Being smart works when you play in a well defined field with certain rules and regulations. Politics is about predicting the future based on so many parameters and in such a chaotic environment that the extra 10 or 20 IQ points (or any other measurements for that matter) doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme of things. At end of the day it is more about gut feeling which accumulate all the knowledge of the self, the tribe, past generations and current. As such, being slightly smarter or educated doesn't affect things much.

eternalban 4y ago

> most people are very smart ... most people are inarticulate. I share this view, though I would dial it down to just smart. My pet theory is that people simply differ in what interests them: almost all people are highly articulate on topics/activities that interest them. (A common preoccupation is 'getting something for nothing' or 'how to get away with x'. There are a lot of geniuses in that field!) Only a narrow subset of humans are fascinated by intellectual matters. And the rest call them egg-heads.