Open Thread: March 2010

AdeleneDawner

We've had these for a year, I'm sure we all know what to do by now.

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

We've had these for a year, I'm sure we all know what to do by now.

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

TLDR: "weighted republican meritocracy." Tries to discount the votes of people who don't know what the hell they're voting for by making them take a test and wighting the votes by the scores, but also adjusts for the fact that wealth and literacy are correlated.

Occasionally, I come up with retarded ideas. I invented two perpetual motion machines and one perpetual money machine when I was younger. Later, I learned the exact reason they wouldn't work, but at the time I thought I'll be a billionaire. I'm going through it again. The idea seems obviously good to me, but the fact that it didn't occur to much smarter people makes me wary.

Besides that, I also don't expect the idea to be implemented anywhere in this millennium, whether it's good or not.

Anyway, the idea. You have probably heard of people who think vaccines cause autism, or post on Rapture Ready forums, or that the Easter Bunny is real, and grumbled about letting these people vote. Stupid people voting was what the Electoral College was supposed to ameliorate (AFAICT), although I would be much obliged if someone explained how it's supposed to help.

I call my idea republican meritocracy. Under this system, before an election, the government would write a book consisting of:

multiple descriptions of each candidate, written by both vir and vis competitors. Also, voting histories in previous positions, alignment with various organizations, and maybe examples where the candidate admitted, in plain words, that ve was wrong.
a multi-sided description of, or a debate about, several policy issues.
econ 101 (midterm)
political science 101 (midterm)
the history of the jurisdiction to which the election applies.
critical thinking 101.

Then, each citizen who wants to participate in the elections would read this book and take a test based on its contents. The score determines the influence you have on the election.

Admittedly, this will not eliminate all people with stupid ideas, but it might get rid of those who simply don't care, and reduce the influence of not-book-people.

A problem, though, is that literacy is correlated with wealth. Thus, a system that rewards literacy would also favor wealth. So my idea also includes classifying people into equal-sized brackets by wealth, calculating how much influence each one has due to the number of people in it who took the test and their average score, and adjusting the weight of each vote so that each bracket would have the same influence. Thus, although the opinions of deer stuck in headlights would be discounted, the poor, as a group, will still have a voice.

What do you think?

That the inteligent and well informed tend to be rich isn't a problem, as this doesn't affect their voting habits (according to Caplan).

However, your system undermines the role of voting as a check on Government; I'm fairly sure you could end up being tested on 'cultural relations' rather than economics.

8prase16y

This may be enough reason to dismiss the proposal. If something like that may exist, it would be better if someone who has at least some chance of being impartial in the election designs the test. And how exactly do you plan you keep political biases out of the test? According to your point 2, the voters would be questioned about their opinion in a debate about several policy issues. This doesn't look like a good idea. The correlation between literacy and wealth seems a little problem compared to the probability of abuse which the system has. And why do you call it a meritocracy?

2Nic_Smith16y

What problem is this trying to address? Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter makes the case that democracies choose bad policies because the psychological benefit from voting in particular ways (which are systematically biased) far outweigh the expected value of the individual's vote. To the extent that your system reduces the number of people that vote, it seems to me that a carefully designed sortition system would be much less costly, and also sidesteps all sorts of nasty political issues about who designs the test, and public choice issues of special interests wanting to capture government power. The basic idea of a literacy test isn't really new, and as a matter of fact seems to have still been floating around the U.S. at late as the 1960s And why do you claim this is "republican meritocracy" when it isn't republican per se (small r)?