Certainly you are forgiven, I’ll even vote you up.
Scientists are certainly not super rationalists, but I do think they are the best rationalists we have to offer. I’m obviously not suggesting that we take biologists and put them in power here. I’m suggesting we take sociologists and economists and political science majors, and put them in a betting market. Let’s see how they do, bet ya they’d do better than congress. I think we should harness that predictive power. There are succesful economists that predict crashes and bubble bursts before they happen sometimes years ahead of time. Politicians are not talking to them.
Notice I said this will require good science, not moderate or allright science, I mean really good science, the kind of thing EY would have us do.
Being good at “interpreting expert opinions from a wide variety of fields” does not get you more votes! “negotiating with foreign dignitaries” well does not get you more votes. Signalling competence and confidence certainly does get you more votes, but doesn’t suggest that you should be confident nor that you are competent. Democracy selects for popular people with lots of money. Nothing else is really important, all you have to be able to do is get your face in the public and be more popular than that other guy. THis does not select for experts in anything except being popular.
If we get scientists to start proposing policies, they might start to suck. But If we get them to bet on policies working, we might not get that sort of result.
Certainly you are forgiven, I’ll even vote you up.
Scientists are certainly not super rationalists, but I do think they are the best rationalists we have to offer. I’m obviously not suggesting that we take biologists and put them in power here. I’m suggesting we take sociologists and economists and political science majors, and put them in a betting market. Let’s see how they do, bet ya they’d do better than congress. I think we should harness that predictive power. There are succesful economists that predict crashes and bubble bursts before they happen sometimes years ahead of time. Politicians are not talking to them.
Notice I said this will require good science, not moderate or allright science, I mean really good science, the kind of thing EY would have us do.
Being good at “interpreting expert opinions from a wide variety of fields” does not get you more votes! “negotiating with foreign dignitaries” well does not get you more votes. Signalling competence and confidence certainly does get you more votes, but doesn’t suggest that you should be confident nor that you are competent. Democracy selects for popular people with lots of money. Nothing else is really important, all you have to be able to do is get your face in the public and be more popular than that other guy. THis does not select for experts in anything except being popular.
If we get scientists to start proposing policies, they might start to suck. But If we get them to bet on policies working, we might not get that sort of result.