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Safeguards against Stupidity
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
The idea for this thread came back to me after the whole Prop 8 thing, but since I want to move to a broader discussion of the workings behind it (and not to mention that the Prop 8 thread is now planning protests against the Red Cross or something), I felt I'd start this thread.
We've recently seen democracy takes some turns for the stupid, both here and abroad: People electing terrorists regimes into almost limitless power, the prejudiced legislating the rights of the people they judge unworthy, and zealots demanding that public forums of education both accept and instruct unprovable spirituality concurrent with (and occasionally in lieu of) scientific fact.
What can we do as a civilized, intellectual society to keep inalienable rights and indisputable truths out of the hands of a tyrannical majority without disenfranchising people? At what point do we decide which of the public's desires we allow and which we don't?
We've recently seen democracy takes some turns for the stupid, both here and abroad: People electing terrorists regimes into almost limitless power, the prejudiced legislating the rights of the people they judge unworthy, and zealots demanding that public forums of education both accept and instruct unprovable spirituality concurrent with (and occasionally in lieu of) scientific fact.
What can we do as a civilized, intellectual society to keep inalienable rights and indisputable truths out of the hands of a tyrannical majority without disenfranchising people? At what point do we decide which of the public's desires we allow and which we don't?
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By having a strong constitution that is difficult to change enshrine basic and/or wide ranging rights which get applied to ensure those various minorities have equal protection.
Proposition 8 is unconstitutional federally and most likely according to California's state constitution. It's just a matter of getting SCOTUS to admit to it.
That or hope that people only get smarter and not dumber. I think it is a general trend that people get smarter.
but they're listening to every word I say
Except school boards are run by people elected to office with very little requisite qualification. As are mayors. As is any official, really.
This is predicated on man doing experiments.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
You can't really safeguard people from electing people you don't like, or it's not democracy.
Nature might find a way.
Well that wouldn't be our problem then, nature deserves what it gets in that case.
True, true, but I think we can all agree that governments that detain or murder thousands of their own people as well as others in the name of centuries-old religious conflicts, while at the same time funding paramilitary groups to murder innocent civilians and calling for the annihilation of entire nations and peoples can safely be called "terrorist," right?
It's not so much "keeping people from electing who you don't like," as it is "keeping people from electing dangerous people."
And in case like Prop 8, that'll work.
But what about when the people attempt to vote in (or out) educational curricula? Or what rights people have per their religion?
Sweet Holy Christ, thank you. You have no idea how often that argument come up and I have to explain the 14th amendment to people.
One of my professors put it in perspective when he said "Currently less than 1% of all American High Schools offer Calculus. Of those schools less than 1% of the students actually take the classes. This means that one one hundredth of a percent of high school graduates have taken Calculus. In Japan 100% of all high school graduates have taken Calculus. The night janitor at Toyota, he has taken Calculus."
While humanity continues to expand our breadth of knowledge on any number of subjects, that average human being has to learn less to get through life. Factor in little external motivation to learn and educate yourself with society attempting to idiot proof itself. If you do not have the internal desire to learn and better yourself then no problem, you will be fully capable of stumbling through life voting for people you would like to have a beer with and paying no attention to the issues.
Not a dig at Obama, but there are people out there who think because he was elected their lives are going to be completely turned around from welfare poor to rich without having to do anything to earn it. There are people with huge unrealistic expectations about what he is actually going to do. Expectations that just sitting down and thinking about them for a minute would lead any rational human being to the conclusion that they are not feasible. Whether Obama created these expectations or not is irrelevant and you could argue both sides. Yet people still seem to think Obamas election is going to bring massive social upheaval where the horrible rich will be cast down, and the barely literate poor with no money management skills will have their mortgages paid, free gas, and be set for life.
How do you communicate with someone like that? How do you explain that Obama, who may or may not be a great president, is limited in what he can do? How do you tell people that at his best what Obama can grant is an opportunity for every American through hard work and dedication to make a better life for themselves and their children? Some people voted for Obama due to the issues, some voted for him because of charisma. He came to office on a platform of change, how do you then tell people that part of that change is hard work? While you can offer more help to people in need a hand out is always a hand out. How do you get people to accept a hand up instead?
Step 2 - Universally high quality public education
Step 3 - Hope for the best
You can't come up with an empirical/rational/mechanical way to determine whether an idea is a good idea or not. If you could, democracy would be unnecessary.
Its a "Known Fact".
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/decline1.htm
quick blurb from here
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3062866.html
How about you find me something that says schools in America today are teaching children less than they were 10, 30, 50, and 100 years ago? That evidence would actually be relevant to your hyperbolic propaganda -- if it existed -- which it doesn't.
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1564
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps2007.html
While we can assume it takes longer to get a PHD or masters look at the number of 18-24 who's highest education is high school or lower.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2586_v122/ai_14995074
An interesting one on the decline of public education.
In other news, water is wet.
http://www.why-is-the-sky-blue.tv/why-is-water-wet.htm
Factor that in with widespread anti-educational bias across many of America's socio-economic groups, as well as ever-increasing percentage of lower-income families, and I think you get the picture. There are actually people in this country that think its an inalienable right to be taught wrong things, as well as there are people who think it isn't cool or worthwhile to be smart or ambitious. And what's worse, there are people at the ready to defend both of these groups' actions as justifiable.
Until we're out of this mired period that would see us squabbling over who's to blame for educational disparity or whether or not religion is an acceptable placeholder for science, we won't better our progress.
Back in the day, after WWII, we were sitting pretty and everybody else was severely fucked. Naturally, we were #1 in various educational metrics. On the other hand, once the rest of the world begins to recover and catch up to us, our inbuilt disadvantages (particularly a strong pro-religious, anti-intellectual culture) were put into stark relief by the successes of other nations, which weren't held back by such disadvantages.
i think its more of a "we're not increasing the amount of learning the really smart people get each year like we used to"
our edjucation system fails btw, because it was structured around a society where children were compliant curious and submissive. with social rights being granted to younger people over the years and the increasing popularity of rebellion, children are less likely to abandon their opinions to listen to the wisdom of the older generations. this leads to schools reacting to keep the majority educated by making policies that "hold the bottom up" instead of further extending the structure (in my telescoping step pyramid sitting on quick sand analogy).
its not like they have a real choice, you can't have the highly educated work well in a country of people that know nothing... a philosopher amoung cavemen isnt going to be as effective as a philosopher amoung his peers. in other words, as soon as the bottom drops out, the top is gonna either split off or fall as well.
also, since what your point seems to be "what can we do to educate people" instead of "how can we make sure a stupid majority dont enact change", can you change the OP to reflect that?
what i mean is that the way schools are structured was based around obedience and the students accepting what the teacher said as fact. since children and teenagers are now more aware of their freedoms, they dont always go into a classroom thinking that the teacher has something valueable that needs to be learned. instead, they see it as pointless and unnecissary and the only reason they are there is because they have to be.
It used to be that children got a low level of education and then if they wanted to continue to high school and college, they wanted to be there. the kids that know the least are often the ones that dont want to learn... yes there are exceptions. My mom teaches math in a public high school to lower track students who all treat the class like a necessity rather than an opportunity.
yeah but i was using it to refer to knowledge.
oh no, im not trying to take away childrens rights and the ability to question decisions of people older than themselves. im just saying that the current structure of k-12 is based on an obedience system that is no longer in place. the ingrained respect for anyone substantially older than yourself is something that was common back then and not so common now. but thats not a bad thing.
the bad part comes when you continue to use a system that is based on something that no longer exists. having a teacher stand at the front of the class and lecture assumes that the students are actually listening, assigning homework assumes that the kids will actually do it etc. grades aren't even an incentive as most teachers just give students a D and pass them up instead of failing them and facing the negative impact on their career.
what i am advocating is a different system that will work today.... what that is? i have no clue. im not even remotely prepared to offer a solution, but i can see that there is a problem. if someone else here majored in education or has some insight into how we can restructure k-12 in order to improve learning, by all means the floor is yours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8&eurl=http://www.howobamagotelected.com/
Then there are the truly stupid who feel their actions have no bearing on their surroundings. That's one of the reasons we're in this economic mess. From home owners who were too greedy or incapable of simple math to plan a budget, that can also include CEOs too.
Nobody in the video seems particularly arrogant to me, although they do appear to be ignorant. It is not surprising that people are going to pick up on news stories about Sarah Palin that are more widely publicised, nor is it surprising that they are more inclined to believe that the opposition candidates are guilty of past wrongdoings.
I think this is a huge part of the problem with ignorance the world over, and especially in Western nations where democratic rights have been commonplace for some time. People honestly feel like they have the right and the freedom to be ignorant and to make choices without being informed.
I know it's a defense mechanism when confronted with one's own stupidity, but c'mon for fuck's sake. And therein lies the crux of the argument: in a democratic process, can ignorance be tolerated, and if so, legitimized by participation within the process?
Seeing as how I don't know everything, I would hope so.
I find these numbers incredibly hard to believe, especially the second. I mean, I went to public school in east bumfuck, we had calculus, and out of a graduating class of 110 there were at least 15 of us in the class. I could possibly understand the first number, but the second means that even in schools with graduating classes of 500 or 1000, you're looking at one class with 5 or 10 people in it? I just don't believe it. That may have been true years ago but I don't believe it's true now.
EDIT: Here, I found these remarks by the secretary of education from 1998 that say that 10% of students take calculus.
Even if that weren't the case, I don't quite see the bearing which calculus has on how smart we are as a nation. I took it in college and have never applied anything that I learned in that class outside of the tests. Yay? If anything the absolute focus on science and maths at the expense of, you know, everything else seems to be more detrimental to the state of our public schools. And in the case of civics and history classes, our governance.
Yeah, I went to an Arts magnet, so the core academics weren't even our strong suit (especially history, oh god our history department was bad) but I had almost 20 people in my calc class, and we graduated 115 that year.
Yeah that stat is 165% bullshit. Not only is the American stat completely and utterly wrong and invented from whole cloth by a lying liar, but the Japanese stat is completely and utterly wrong and invented from whole cloth by a lying liar. Science and Education Indicators 2008 (2003). There's an excel sheet in there that shows calculus completion at around 15% in 2005 (most recent year)
In Japan, entrance into public secondary schools are regulated by entrance exams. Furthermore, when you near the end of "high school" you are expected to choose a scientific/mathematical or humanities/liberal arts track. Those who pick the latter don't take calculus. Those who are at lesser schools will often not have the option in any real way.
What calculus has to do with civics is a bit lost on me however. While a curious mind is always good, specific instruction in scientific and mathematical disciplines will not and does not inherently make one averse to stupidity in relation to government. You'd be horrified how many people with engineering degrees frequent freeperland
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