Nathan Explains Science Just Voted, and You Can Too.

I just voted. You should too. Well, if you're 18 or older, anyway.

Errol Morris usually says it better.

Nathan Explains Science has spent a fair amount of resources to convince you that politics doesn't work quite the way that pundits would like you to believe. Among the topics: the many reasons — sometimes arguably legitimate — not to vote. Among them, your vote is unlikely to count, and even if it counted  toward deciding your state's electoral college votes in a presidential election, your state's choice might not ultimately matter. Who gets elected might not matter — though Nathan Explains Science emphatically denies that assertion as it applies to recent presidential elections.

On the other hand, if no one votes, then anybody who does makes the decision for everyone. Thus, in an incremental sort of way, the fact that you vote makes democracy just a little bit safer.

I'm bringing this up because Errol Morris, innovative director of the documentaries The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, just shot a short film on the subject of why we don't vote. You can view it here:  11 Excellent Reasons Not to Vote. It's about seven and a half minutes, and Morris does not disappoint.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Nathan Explains Science Was Going To Blog About The Debates, But....

Dear Readers,

Nathan (of Nathan Explains Science fame) really wanted to explain why he (and many others) won't be watching any of the (vice-)presidential debates, but he's been working hard all day, he's tired, it's the bottom of the 7th and the O's are tied with the Yankees in the ALDS, he's already decided whom he's voting for, the election isn't all that exciting this year, and he should probably make some dinner.

Catch all that? Good. Anthony Downs and I are proud we've taught you something. More next time.

Cheers,
Nathan Explains Science

Why People Know What They Know About Politics

In my two previous posts, I looked at what people know about politics, and I looked a bit at who knows what about politics. The general theme is that people don't know very much overall, but there's variation—people know more about some things than others, and some people know more than others.

Today, I want to look at why people know what they know, and fortunately we've already seen some hints at the explanation. For example, we've seen that more people know about high-profile issues than about others. Putting that together with everything else we've seen so far suggests a fairly simple explanation for why people don't know that much about politics: it's actually kind of hard to follow, and most people have better things—or at least more pleasant things—to do than think about the awful state of the economy or whether gay people should be allowed to marry each other.