A journalist thinks that a candidate who talks about ending the War on Drugs isn’t a “serious candidate.” And the newspaper won’t cover that candidate because the newspaper itself wants to look serious… or they think voters won’t be interested because everyone knows that candidate can’t win, or something? Maybe in a US-style system, only contrarians and other people who lack the social skill of getting along with the System are voting for Carol, so Carol is uncool the same way Velcro is uncool and so are all her policies and ideas? I’m not sure exactly what the journalists are thinking subjectively, since I’m not a journalist. But if an existing politician talks about a policy outside of what journalists think is appealing to voters, the journalists think the politician has committed a gaffe, and they write about this sports blunder by the politician, and the actual voters take their cues from that. So no politician talks about things that a journalist believes it would be a blunder for a politician to talk about. The space of what it isn’t a “blunder” for a politician to talk about is conventionally termed the “Overton window.”
I’d agree with Simplicio that voter’s “stupidity” as in “ignorance and inability to discern correctly on even issues where a scientific consensus has been reached and it really feels like a good, intuitive idea to make an internet search of ten minutes and check what the most accredited institutions are saying on the matter” would interact a lot with the border of the Overton window.
If 90% of the voters were able to mock any “stupid” idea suggested, moving out of the Overton window by going down with the quality of idea discussed would be plain suicide, moving up would sometime reward. Attempts to shift the Overton window downward, such as “hey, let’s completely go against what (insert science field) says about (insert important issue), and lets (choose between prohibiting particular subgroup therapies even if science says it’s really a good idea to provide said therapies/talk against preventing key crisis that will product unbelievable damage in short term future/suggest completely unfounded model about social issue x works and propose solution unrelated to any actual finding on the matter that has a track history of failures)” would be harshly punished by the voters, while right now these seem to be roughly 30% of politics discussed.
Still, I guess Cecie’s theory can explain the source of this “stupidity” with systemic failures that happen in other parts of society such as information and education, while if we just ascribe this to widespread individual “stupidity” and “sheepness” we are not less confused, but perhaps more so.
I’d agree with Simplicio that voter’s “stupidity” as in “ignorance and inability to discern correctly on even issues where a scientific consensus has been reached and it really feels like a good, intuitive idea to make an internet search of ten minutes and check what the most accredited institutions are saying on the matter” would interact a lot with the border of the Overton window.
If 90% of the voters were able to mock any “stupid” idea suggested, moving out of the Overton window by going down with the quality of idea discussed would be plain suicide, moving up would sometime reward. Attempts to shift the Overton window downward, such as “hey, let’s completely go against what (insert science field) says about (insert important issue), and lets (choose between prohibiting particular subgroup therapies even if science says it’s really a good idea to provide said therapies/talk against preventing key crisis that will product unbelievable damage in short term future/suggest completely unfounded model about social issue x works and propose solution unrelated to any actual finding on the matter that has a track history of failures)” would be harshly punished by the voters, while right now these seem to be roughly 30% of politics discussed.
Still, I guess Cecie’s theory can explain the source of this “stupidity” with systemic failures that happen in other parts of society such as information and education, while if we just ascribe this to widespread individual “stupidity” and “sheepness” we are not less confused, but perhaps more so.