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A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether
by apical_dendrite 1y ago
A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether this is meant literally or as a metaphor for Jews or whether they think Jews are secretly lizard people depends on the person). There are vast and necessary government functions that most of the electorate doesn't understand or doesn't value or completely misunderstands.
Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.
Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.
- ivape 1y agoDo we have real proof that a sizeable portion of Americans believe in the secret lizard people thing? Best I could find: https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/PPP_Release_National_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/... "Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?" 11% said yes or were unsure. That's from 2013, so I can't even begin to imagine what a poll from today would look like.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoCome to Texas. Qualitatively, the answer is a thunderous, enthusiastic "yes".
- freeone3000 1y ago11% said yes or were unsure?! One in fucking ten people, in the most generous interpretation, did not know whether the government were secretly shape-shifting aliens. God, how did we get here.
- dash2 1y agoYeah, but some proportion of those were joking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischievous_responders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischievous_responders
- giardini 1y agoBelief in aliens is fairly benign. Consider that half the population have an IQ below 50.
- freeone3000 1y agoNoooo, that’s not true. Below 100, as it’s weighted for this to be true: half above half below. It could theoretically be possible for the half below to also be below 50, but this would require the other half to all be above 150, and both are absurd, because there are a whole horde of people of completely average intelligence. Checking IQ test results, we see they follow a Gaussian with a mean of 100 and a stddev of 15.
- giardini 1y agoWhoops!8-(( You are of course correct. Meant to say "Consider that half the population have an IQ below 100."
- tbrownaw 1y agoWell are we talking literally (under the old definition, not the new definition that the kids are apparently using these days) or metaphorically?