This makes sense when you consider the fact that getting elected to Congress is not easy—hence members are likely to be significantly more intelligent than average. Given a fairly high prior on human hypocrisy to begin with, combined with the severely diminishing social returns on overtly displaying intelligence, hypocrisy is almost always a better explanation for recognizably “idiotic” congressional behavior than actual idiocy.
(This is not to say that Congress is especially competent; but their true incompetence tends to be of the sort common to many groups of people—the kind that later explains failures, rather than the kind that would make them the object of contemporary derision .)
This makes sense when you consider the fact that getting elected to Congress is not easy—hence members are likely to be significantly more intelligent than average. Given a fairly high prior on human hypocrisy to begin with, combined with the severely diminishing social returns on overtly displaying intelligence, hypocrisy is almost always a better explanation for recognizably “idiotic” congressional behavior than actual idiocy.
(This is not to say that Congress is especially competent; but their true incompetence tends to be of the sort common to many groups of people—the kind that later explains failures, rather than the kind that would make them the object of contemporary derision .)