What makes you qualified to have an opinion about gun control? A) Knowing the difference between a magazine and a clip, and bump stocks versus full automatic weapons. B) Ability to assemble and disassemble handguns and rifles. C) If I might get shot, I get to have an opinion.
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Replying to @davidmanheim
Imma bite the bullet and say that SO MUCH damage is done by uninformed votes that we should think that being well-informed matters more than being affected.
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Replying to @ESYudkowsky
Any expertise comes with bias, and democracy (as opposed to technocracy) provides a trade-off between them. I'm not claiming there's no virtue in subject matter knowledge, but democracy fails if only knowledgeable supporters of a policy are considered qualified to have opinions.
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Replying to @davidmanheim
That was indeed one interpretation of the ideal of Democracy. I think we've gotten recent info on where we should prefer to marginally push the balance of that ideal.
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Replying to @ESYudkowsky @davidmanheim
Let us say "Democracy fails if voters don't think they have a responsibility to be informed" and "Democracy degrades as less informed talking heads appear on TV and before Congressional committees."
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
My understanding is that research has tended to show that the belief that people vote their own interest is more or less false. Maybe the ideal that the "involved" will advocate more effective policies is also simply false. I'd expect so.
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