HCR: maybe the public’s not so stupid after all
Obama and his cohorts love to claim that the public’s dislike of the HCR bill is just “misinformation,” and that the more they learn about the bill the more they’ll like it. Funny thing though; so far, the more the public has learned about HCR, the more they seem to dislike it.
Must be very frustrating for Obamites, so accustomed to reaping the benefits of spin that they don’t understand that sometimes reality overcomes their efforts. They would have done well to have read the book The Wisdom of Crowds. The following is from a review of the book:
While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.” To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we’re all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd’s “collective intelligence” will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don’t know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. “Wise crowds” need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people’s errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are “smarter” than if a single expert had been in charge.
Of course, crowds are hardly always correct. Would that they were; it would make elections (and life) a lot easier. Case in point: the most recent presidential and Congressional election, which led us to this sorry pass. Of course, the MSM did their best to make sure that most people did not get the correct information on candidate Obama. If they had received it, I feel nearly certain that the results would have been a great deal different.
And it’s even easier for the aggregate of the population to be correct if the “experts” are as obviously inexpert as our president, who sounded a bizarre note in his rambling 17-minute non-answer to the clear and concise question asked by a woman in the crowd during his Charlotte talk.
We all know that Obama is in love with the sound of his own voice, and believes that others automatically are, too. That’s part of what was going on here. But he was also stalling and setting up a smokescreen, hoping the question would get lost in a sea of words, because he really had no answer at all.
Here’s the entire thing, if you’ve got the stamina to last all the way through. Obama’s hoping that you don’t.
What then, after the rebuke from the electorate settles in later this year? Let’s be arrogant enough (for contingency purposes, of course) to assume an upcoming victory this November that matches or exceeds the estimates we hold in our hearts.
Should we then prepare to be doubled down on again, and for the inevitable punishment of the electorate from the executive branch that will follow? We would do well to look back into situations in our history when these circumstances were presented. How much could they do, and how much of Congress would they need to do it?
With that thought, I go to do a bit of research – you got me thinking again, Neo.
Dear Obama, OK. I tortured myself and listened to all 2500 words. I’ve read many of your speeches and listened to almost all of your addresses to the nation and interviews on the TV.
You Mr. President are either duped by people around you or very economically illiterate
or…
you are purposeful in your lies and therefore you are evil.
Which way do you want it Mr. President?
I wish you come here and comment. But keep it brief. Say like 50 words per question of mine. Here are my questions:
1) Do you think it is misinformation when these companies required by the SEC to disclose obligations are reporting large expenses due to your HCR? That could be answered with a yes or no.
2) Have you heard Olympia Snowe interviewed on Greta Van Sustern explaining why she (who has been working on health care issues for most of her career) was against your Health care legislation? Why do you believe the bi-partisan ship was with the no votes?
3) If you are raising investment income tax in this legislation – do you feel that there are negative consequences to investments? Yes or no
4) If you require people to pay for health care insurance – just for existing / living – do you see that money as being taken from other sectors of the economy? Which sectors will people in their 20’s have spent money on – and won’t because of your requirement.
You have an opportunity to explain why you lie or why you are misinformed by answering these questions. With less than 200 words. Can you – a supposedly smart man do this???
Signed, a concerned and loving American who is deeply concerned about the generational theft being committed by your administration and this congress.
Neo, since you mention the Charlotte incident and given your background as a mental health professional, I’d be interested in your opinion of Roger L. Simon’s new post on “President Weirdo” and the comments that follow (almost 200 as of 8 p.m. DST):
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/04/03/president-weirdo/#comments
“Wise crowds” need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions.
NNC: Of course, the MSM did their best to make sure that most people did not get the correct information on candidate Obama.
Yeah. I think that violates #1 above.
Our system of voting does a good job of aggregating opinions; perhaps the best in the world, but if those opinions are based on faulty, or witheld, information then the other 3 points are for naught.
Come to think of it, I don’t think #1 is stated well at all. It should be: ” (1) Opinions based on diverse sources of information.”
You can’t derive a “diversity of opinion” from limited sources of information if the people are rational.
In fact, the Bill of Rights leads to those 4 points if the 1st point is stated as I suggested.
I gotta add: what good is a “wise crowd” if they cannot enforce the product of their wisdom? 2nd Ammendment.
Good ol’ Founding Fathers….
…who sounded a bizarre note in his rambling 17-minute non-answer to the clear and concise question asked by a woman in the crowd during his Charlotte talk.
He showed us his ass.
The public as a whole is none too bright,,,but apparently they are capable of learning. Here’s to more of that!
Obama is creepy. I don’t know how we don’t add that description to his supporters at this point.
Some years ago my minister demonstrated this in an Old Testament bible study group. The first session he told a long and moving story which had nothing to do with the OT. He never mentioned it again. Every week someone would ask, What about the Michael story? We’ll get there, he’d say. Finally at the last session someone said, You have to tell us about Michael. You tell me, he said.
No one of us remembered it all. But together we remembered it all.
He said, that’s why we can trust the oral history of the OT. Together, people can put it all together.
Berkeley used to have an experiment in which Chem 1 students prepared cuprous sulfide and determined its stoichiometry (ratio of Cu:S).
Most compounds are stoichiometric, i.e., consist of elements in integral ratios, which for Cu and S would be 1:1 or 2:1. We TAs compiled the results for each of our sections, and then ultimately for all 1700 students in the course.
Cuprous sulfide, it happens, is non-stoichiometric, and corresponds to a Cu:S ratio of 1.88:1 (IIRC). Some students did the experiment carefully, and both of them (kidding) got a peculiar result. Some screwed up the experiment hopelessly, in various different ways (mostly by contamination with elemental Cu or S), and thereby achieved outlandish results (ratios less than 1:1, or more than 2:1).
Students, expecting stoichiometry, nudged their results toward a stoichiometric result, with most rounding up to 2:1, but some rounding down to 1:1.
The astonishing thing was that regardless of the ineptitude and carelessness of the students, every year – without fail – the 1700 results described a textbook Gaussian centered on…you got it, 1.88:1.
This was, of course, the point of the experiment. Very few first did the experiment carefully and then reported their incomprehensible (to them) results faithfully. But in aggregate, ineptitude and massaging of the data were randomly distributed both in magnitude and direction. Fascinating.
and Occam just described why Culture works, and the lefts idea of destroying it for some reason they see as harmful, is really harmful to us as despite our not getting things right sometimes on individual levels, the masses and their computing power (coupled with SURVIVAL as a prior honing stone), would converge on similar realities descriptions.
it was not amazing to me, because once you added up all their stuff, the bad stuff became noise which often cancelled itself out, while the good stuff reinforced the situation.
in essence this is what gets us to draw by sketching better than by outright line. where the sum of the sketches tend to fall mostly in the right places.
its what drives most of our electronics solutions where we drive noise down or let it cancel itself (common mode rejection) to get a cleaner truer output.
its how we know that history is valid or not.
and it points to something i am using it to reveal to those that like to think..
it shows that in some subjects it takes reading a lot of informatino before you start to distribute what you have along this kind of curve. that is, read Zinns history and nothing else, and you can be VERY wrong. read Zinns, read a patriots history, read an old text book, read mitrohken, read venona, read defectors, and on and on..
what you get then is the ability to weed lies out of masses of information!!!!
THIS is how i know i am right on so many things, because i have done copious amounts of reading and over time it adds up and becomes more and more valuable beyond its measured volume. (like a linguist facts buld on facts, so you dont actyually learn 800 languages, you learn so much about language that adding another one is a variant rule, not a chore in itself. ie, your at a different level)
this is why discussion with everyone attempting to throw in good information works, while discussion with a few throwing in crap breaks it down.
most of us define our realities truths and principals this way. and we do it all the time (so watching TV sans other input causes a brain to develop for TV reality nto REALITY REALITY)
by the way… when you tryu to do things a lot and get better, guess what rule is getting you to hone your golf stroke, and other such things?
ALL realated… one method, hundreds of embodiments.. THIS is the reakl power of philosophy, not the manipulate your brothers for a sociopathic kick