[ExI] The answer to tireless stupidity

[Dan]

Regarding your final comment: Don't you think that's the problem? I mean you 
don't seriously think anyone eligible to vote is going to have an intelligent, 
informed opinion? Also, the incentives are skewed -- as Caplan seemed to 
demonstrate in his _The Myth of the Rational Voter_: voters experience very low 
or zero costs for their decision because their vote only counts in a tie 
breaker. This allows for fantasy views on public policy issues and, if Caplan is 
right, the issue becomes why don't we have much worse polities. (Caplan attempts 
to answer that too: elected officials mitigate some of the harm of bad policies 
by breaking campaign promises and the like.*)

Regards,

Dan

* Someone also presented an argument for corruption as helpful in many cases 
because it was a market means of subverting bad policies. E.g., if a cop can be 
bribed not to enforce a bad law (which ones aren't?), then the effects of that 
bad law can be somewhat mitigated. This is, of course, no a perfect solution 
and, certainly, worse than getting rid of the bad law and turning over the 
legislators to me for vivisec -- er, re-education. :)

----- Original Message ----
From: spike <spike66 at att.net>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Wed, November 3, 2010 5:05:55 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] The answer to tireless stupidity

... On Behalf Of Dan
...
Subject: Re: [ExI] The answer to tireless stupidity

>...I've "observed" people changing their minds on this -- mostly from being
skeptical to anthropogenic global warming to believing in it. (I'm not going
to say these people saw the light or they were duped -- or whether they were
just going with the flow.* I don't know enough about their thought processes
to say.)...

Dan, the critical and divergent question is not so much if global warming is
occurring or if it is anthropogenic, but rather the next step beyond that,
which is: what are we going to do about it.  That immediately causes a
divergence of opinion that is not easily swayed by scientific data.  One
group suggests creating taxes on carbon dioxide production, while another
group makes plans to replace their air conditioners with bigger units.  

This is a problem that we cannot discuss to a solution.  If one economy
taxes itself to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while its competitors do
not, then the non-taxing competitors continue to generate CO2 with impunity,
pretty soon they own the gold, they own everything; then they make the
rules.  How is discussion of scientific models of any help with this
problem?  We might as well set up multiple chatbots on both (or all sides)
of that issue and let them chatter away, while leaving the rest of us to
figure out bigger and better air conditioning systems.

>...* How many people really need to have an opinion on this? Why is it
that, like so many issues, people must take a side rather than just admit
that they don't know and are not really capable, at their current state of
knowledge and skill, of vetting the arguments on this?...Dan

Everyone who is eligible to vote needs an opinion on this.  The tax and cap
CO2 solutions require jillions of votes, to elect leaders who will tax CO2
and send us down the branch where our competitors own everything, then once
they do, they make our rules for us.

spike

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