The minimum requirement for a democracy to function is that, at every election, each individual voter is able to correctly identify and vote for a person/party whose policies protects that individual’s own interests. Ideally, each individual would be able to determine what is in the best interest of the entire society, and would vote based on that. But that is too idealistic. In practice, meeting only the above minimum requirement should be considered a very high point for any society.

The idea behind that minimum requirement mentioned above is that a notion of “collective wisdom” will ensure that the overall results of the election will protect the overall interests of the entire population. Proponents of the democratic systems often cite an experiment by the statistician Francis Galton in early 20th century, where at a county fair, he observed people guessing the weight of an ox and found that when he averaged all the guesses, the result was surprisingly close to the actual weight, demonstrating the concept of “wisdom of the crowd”. The idea is that by averaging the estimates, we can remove/reduce the error that each individual’s guess might incur, thus obtaining a final number that can be a far better estimate than each individual’s estimate. It should be noted, however, that the above conclusion relies on two important factors:

• that each individual’s guess is a random variable with its mean being the correct weight of the ox, and
• that different individuals’ estimates are independent. Technically, the independence requirement is not necessary, as long as the ensemble can be considered to be reasonably ergodic (i.e., the statistical properties across the ensemble resemble the statistical property of the random variable from which each individual’s estimate is drawn); in practice some level of independence among individual estimators is needed to guarantee such ergodicity.

The first factor above, itself, relies on an assumption that each individual has some basic knowledge in the subject matter about which they are opining (estimating the weight, in this case). That would be a fair assumption in the case of people attending a county fair in early 20th century; that they would have at least some rough idea about how much an average ox would weigh, and that they would also be able to make reasonable adjustments based on their observations of the size and shape/form of the ox. But what if the task was instead to estimate/determine the mass of the Moon or the Sun, or the GDP of their country, or what had caused the recent inflation across the world, or how, if at all, should the government control/reduce the inflation, or how tariffs can affect the prices of goods which directly affect the individual’s life and well-being. Answering such questions requires both some general knowledge about each subject matter (similar to the knowledge about the average weight of the ox in the above example), and some critical thinking skills, to be able to make reasonable adjustments based on their observations (similar to what the fair attendants in the above example did by observing the size and shape of the ox).

It is unfortunate, but a sad reality, that not only the average voter, but even the very educated ones, are not able to make educated guesses/estimates or determinations about items in many subject matters that are involved in the policies that political parties or candidates layout in advance of the elections. Identifying the roots for this inability, especially in a society that takes pride on its democratic systems, is a separate subject, possibly for another post, but suffices to say that the self-esteem craze over the past several decades has been a major contributor. Based on a flawed study, proponents of the idea advocated for placing the main, and probably even the only, focus on improving students’ self-esteem; basically teaching them it really doesn’t matter whether you know something or not, as long as you have the self-esteem to talk about it confidently (often even over-confidently). This shifted the focus of schools from traditional classrooms in which the students were taught math, science, history, social studies, and the like, to sessions like rounding students around a circle and asking them to say something good about another student. I am not denying the positive effects of improving one’s self-esteem, but it is important to note that the resulting self-confidence should be backed by real knowledge and skills, and not be just an empty talk.

One interesting example of the devastating outcomes of this one-dimensional education system over the past several decades is a statement made by one of the lawyers of the former president. She was actually so proud about this that she volunteered to mention it, without even being asked about it during the interview. Basically, she demonstrated her “infinite wisdom” by saying that, between being smart and being pretty, she prefers to be pretty, because she “can fake being smart.”

The second factor above, regarding different individuals’ estimates being independent from each other, relies on the fact that different individuals make independent decisions based on their independent and reliable observations. For example, if the ox was placed in a box and only its head was shown to the audience, the observations would be both less reliable (more biased), and likely more correlated; if the ox, who was otherwise quite large, happened to have a relatively small face, the estimates of all participants would be skewed towards smaller numbers, resulting the average also being too small. Or even worse, if instead of showing the actual ox to the audience, there was just a poster of the ox, with exaggerated features and strong muscles, the estimates would all be skewed towards large numbers, making the resulting average also too large. It is obvious that reliable information is crucial for being able to make a decision/determination about anything, yet, at this age of social media, and with the extreme polarization of societies around the world, we tend to be content with whatever is delivered to us through media that either have intentional positive feedback loops in their algorithms to constantly reinforce whatever ideas and beliefs we have about something, or have clear and explicit agenda of promoting a specific political party, politician, or ideology, at any cost, even if it takes misrepresentation of the facts, not covering all the facts about a subject, or even spreading disinformation.

So, with the basic components for that minimum requirement mentioned at the top of this post missing, it should not come as a surprise if we see that a very reasonably democratic system ends up electing officials that have absolutely no plan for or even intention of protecting the interests of the very same individuals who voted them to the office, let alone the interests of the entire society. Still, I am hopeful that through constructive dialogue, and as explained in a previous post, it is possible to make significant strides in the direction of improving both factors listed above.