People Are Ignorant. Big Deal, Right? Well, Yeah.

We've been on the theme of political ignorance for nearly a month now, and so far we've concluded that people are generally pretty ignorant, but we don't yet understand whether this is such a bad thing. Recall from last time there were three arguments about whether political ignorance matters.

Seeing the Forest for the Splotchy Green Blob

Lesson for today: statistics is hard. Specifically, it's hard to sort out real patterns from random noise, especially when you don't have a lot of data. Nonetheless, people sure do their darndest.

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

Weird (Social) Science, and Why We Need It

Social psychologists in particular are fond of what Lee Ross once called "demonstration experiments," that is, experiments that show in more or less dramatic fashion the weird things you can get people to do if you try hard enough. Even social scientists have derided demonstration experiments as goofy, sometimes useless, but they have their value.

Nathan Explains Science on Santa Fe Radio Cafe

Sadly, my real job has kept me from doing my real avocation, blogging, and it's especially unfortunate this week since the Republican National Convention is in full swing just in time for hurricane season.

But fear not!

The lovely and talented Mary-Charlotte over at Santa Fe Radio Cafe interviewed me recently on matters political, and you can listen here:

http://www.santaferadiocafe.org/podcasts/?p=2961

More political knowledge in the news...

...plus a hint about why it matters. A new Gallup poll indicates that about 80 percent of Americans have some roughly correct idea of why July 4th is significant in American history. Scroll down to some of the demographics for a bit of a surprise regarding men, women, whites, and blacks.

Bonus: about as many Americans as Germans or British people know that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Happy 4th, everybody! Now please don't burn the country down.


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Remember that thing about framing?

Fox News headline this morning: "Obama's Debt Reduction Plan: TAX HIKES". (Caps theirs.)

People Are Ignorant. Big Deal...Right?

In my previous three posts, I wrote about the fact that people generally don't know much about politics, though there is variance, and I wrote about why people know what they know. Basically, learning about politics takes effort, so people only know the things that are the easiest to learn about, which isn't much.

Okay, so people don't know much about politics, and we have some idea why. Today and next time, I'll look at whether it actually matters. In particular, I'll look at whether individuals and societies can make good decisions in spite of their ignorance. Roughly, there are three arguments:

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.

One other thing about what people know…

One of the things I didn't mention last time is that people tend to forget the issues and the politicians of yesterday, and that at least partially accounts for Americans' lack of political knowledge. Apropos, former Senator Rick Santorum, who lost his seat in a 17 point loss in 2006 — which, I should point out, is an unusual loss and an unusually huge landslide — is running for President.

Santorum used to be a Republican superstar. Today, according to Pew, fewer than half of Republican-leaning voters even know who he is.

You can read about Santorum's announcement here.

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A Look at What People Know About Politics, Part 2: What We Know and Who Knows It.

Last time, I wrote about what Americans and others know about politics. Before I get to discussing why people don't know much about politics—and whether it even matters—let's take a closer look at how much people know, whether it's changed over time, and who knows what. I'll also look a bit at whether the measures of political knowledge people use are actually that useful.

A Look at What People Know About Politics, Part I

What with the recent debate in the United States over the federal budget—and whether to cut funding to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—I got thinking again about how much Americans and other people know about politics. (Naturally, this is also a nice way to come back to the 'blog after a lengthy, research-induced hiatus.)

Organization in the News

I've now written a couple times about how policy changes and the importance of political organization and why it's hard to come by. In yesterdays's New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert points out Lewis Powell's advice—in 1971, to business leaders—to, among other things, organize. Herbert rights about the importance of organization in the context of labor unions. An interesting column and one you might like to read, which you can do here.

Thanks to Chris Mathieson for drawing my attention to this.

Fire Alarms, "Gasland," and How Policy Changes

Yesterday morning I watched Josh Fox's documentary Gasland and it got me thinking about something that I've been meaning to write about for a while: how and when Congress changes laws and, in particular, laws affecting things like environmental and financial regulation. The basic ideas of this topic are actually among the least complicated I've discussed here at Nathan Explains Science, so this will be (mercifully?) short.

Grammar in the Real/Political World

My friend, the illustrious John Bullock of the Yale University Political Science Department, points this observation out. I can't vouch for the blog or its content, but it is intriguing.

Readers may, with bemused curiosity, recall that one of my first stories was on grammar and perceptions of political figures. The story is here.

Stay tuned for a post on physics: how gravity really works!


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What "The People" "Want", Part Three: Voting Rules Gone Bad

Last time, I introduced Arrow's Theorem, which states, essentially, that we can't have our voting cake and eat it too. I also showed how plurality rule fails to give us one thing we’d like, transitivity.

Today I want look at the other classic problem: the Borda count and independence of irrelevant alternatives. First, let's review a little bit.

Is Cesar Millan More Dangerous Than O'Reilly and Olbermann?

Fox News probably won’t turn you into a neocon wingnut, and MSNBC probably won’t turn you into a left-coast hippie either, but The Dog Whisperer might turn your political brain to mush. That’s a scary thought given trends that suggest more and more people are turning out to vote while avoiding news.