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.

Metaphors and Crime at ScienceNOW

I have a brief story up at ScienceNOW on how the metaphors others use to describe crime affects how we think about dealing with crime. This is part of a broader research program — both on the authors' part and on the part of the political science, communications, and psychology fields — focusing on how subtle changes in language affect how we think about all manner of things.

In fact, I've written on this before, when I wrote about Teenie Matlock and Caitlin Fausey's research on the effects of grammar on electability. Caitlin, who I knew when we were grad students at Stanford, was a student of Lera Boroditsky, one of the authors of the crime and metaphors paper — but, like I said, lots of people are interested in this stuff.

Babies Make Brains et al at Scientific American Mind

A quick note to tell you I've got two stories in the latest (March/April) Scientific American Mind, on newsstands now. Seriously. I picked mine up yesterday at the newsstand on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

But for you youngins, check the stories out here: A New Mom's Changing Brain and Accent Trumps Appearance.

Fun fact: yes, that narcissism story under "Head Lines" is the same one I wrote about last Fall.

Happy reading!

A Brief Note on the Myth of the Astrophysical Vacuum Cleaner

I've done some reporting on physics but have yet to write about my favorite science topic, gravity, here on the 'blog. Today, I want to tell you a little bit about something I know a fair bit about, black holes.