People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Work

[hfojvt]

44. according to wiki (snork)

they did test the Dunning Kruger effect using humor.

I can't figure how a person tests that either.

There might be more of a case with music, as music elitists try to explain to me. Often they really HAVE studied more music than I have. All I have done is play musical instruments and sing for decades, never taken a class or even read a book about it.

One thing I noticed about Dunning-Kruger is that they found incompetence and over-estimation in "the bottom quartile".

The thing is, the vast majority of people, are NOT in the bottom quartile. Something like 75% of people are not. But people like the throw Dunning Kruger around as if, of course, the person they are disparaging MUST be in the bottom quartile.

I have observed a funny thing. I often hear other people saying "people are idiots", and I usually do not say such things.

This, in spite of the fact that I am supposedly above average. I mean, here is my 4th grade SRA. It says: composite 95th percentile, reading 92nd, language 85th, math 98th, social studies 87th, science 94th, use of sources 88th. Here's my 2nd GRE test (after I had gotten my MA ten years earlier) some 28 years later. Verbal 95th percentile, quantitative 99th, analytical 98th.

Supposedly I am pretty high up the scale (if you can believe standardized tests) and yet I do not generally judge people as idiots. My speculation is that, let's say somebody is a 4 in intelligence on a 10 point scale or a 5. Not very high on the scale, but still above or close to even with a lot of people. A 5 might quickly declare a 4 or a 3 to be an "idiot" or even find another 5 or a 6 to be an idiot. Calling that out is a way to boost their self esteem.

Whereas, let's face it, as a Sunday school teacher told me a long time ago. Even if you are 95th percentile, well in a nation of 300 million there are 15 million people who are your equal or superior, and another 15 million who are pretty close to your equal. That's a fair amount of people.

Then there are various specialties. If a guy can fix a car or put in a wax ring, then I am not gonna look down on him just because he hasn't read Tolstoy and isn't a very good chess player. For one thing, their knowledge seems to be much more practical than mine, so who am I to judge?

Speaking of Tolstoy though, this post got kinda long.