Are We Too Smart for Our Own Good?

[MineralMan]

Half of the population is below average in intelligence. That is simply a unchangeable fact. Clearly, people like Donald Trump are counting on that, and that half of the population can be convinced of almost anything. That half also goes and votes, often based on erroneous information that is designed to deceive and inflame.

The smarter half of the population includes not only those of us who can see that we aren't getting the truth, but also those who make use of falsehoods to gain the upper hand. The smarter half also tends to over-examine things. We see nuances and don't see everything as a binary choice.

What all too often happens is that we become disappointed when we cannot have what we know to be the best possible choice. That is determined, of course, through our own rational analysis and personal biases. When we cannot have that, we tend not to be willing to compromise. So, we opt out of what IS actually a binary selection process. We're not willing to accept the better choice if it does not come up to our standards in every way.

What happens then? Then, the poorer choice gets selected by the non-selective, indiscriminating, less intelligent half of the population. We end up with Donald Trump, instead of Hillary Clinton, because Hillary wasn't, you know, good enough. Some bright people decided either not to vote or to vote for someone who was closer to their ideal, even though that person could not win.

So, we end up with Donald J. Trump. Yes, there were other factors, but the bottom line was that fewer than 90,000 people made the difference in three states in 2016. We outsmarted ourselves.

We outsmarted ourselves, and how is that working out for us now?

It's worth thinking about, I think. Truly, it is.

[empedocles]

1. 'Outsmarted', may be a bit generous?

[Kurt V.]

2. half the population is not below average intelligence. nt

[MineralMan]

3. Actually, it is.

[Kurt V.]

5. 32%

[Bucky]

17. How do you not understand that?

I mean, other than the fact that intelligence is an arbitrary and unmeasurable concept.

IQ tests are not reliable and are culturally slanted as a measure (and only of a few types of intelligence, if which there are many) and usually narrow the definition of intelligence within particular mainstream academic contexts.

For instance most people consider me pretty darn smart, but if I woke up in a New Guinea jungle tomorrow morning I would be stupid as fuck and probably would die from that stupidity within a couple of days.

On the other hand I can probably beat you in a one-on-one game playing soccer because I have cultivated quick and cunning physical reflexes in dribbling a ball around opponents.

On the other hand, I sometimes have trouble reading people and the relative sincerity of their requests for help.

But none of these are measured by an IQ test. Plus intelligence isn't one thing and it can't be reliably tested. But other than that, it's pretty obvious what he meant by half of all people are below average.

[abqtommy]

4. I have to put in this reminder that tRUMP was NOT ELECTED! Hillary won the popular vote by

a margin of 3 million votes but the Electoral College was corrupted to hand the election to tRUMP and
the reTHUGS. Our election process was corrupted by reTHUGS and Russians who wanted their guy
to "win". So he appeared to but the process was NOT legitimate.

[Igel]

10. Your first point's valid.

She won the popular vote.

But the presidency is defined by the Constitution, as is the House and Senate and the top reaches of the Judiciary. And the popular vote is not the important election when it comes to the Constitution. Like it or shred it, that's how it stands.

The Electoral College is the election that is defined as legitimate under the Constitution. Everything else feeds the Electoral College. And the EC had the same calculus applied to it that gets used every 4 years.

[abqtommy]

14. Where in the Constitution is ratfuckery described as part of a normal and valid election?

[Bucky]

18. There's a lot of legitimate parts of a process that are not covered by the Constitution.

The ratfuckery by itself does not violate specific constitutional provisions, as laid out by the 12th amendment

[rzemanfl]

6. I am convinced every single vote of that 90,000 vote margin was the result of Russian

psyops and GOP scams like voter suppression. Mitch McConnell was in the middle of it and Obama thought Hillary would win despite the cheating. Overconfidence was the problem, who knows what would have happened if interference was addressed directly. We weren't outsmarted, we were outmaneuvered.

[FM123]

7. Yep, there sure are a lot of low information voters out there....

Reminds me of something Isaac Asimov said:
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

[kairos12]

8. Dems forget

that, with ideas, if it thinks, it stinks.

We say Medicare For All. It will protect you from....

They say, Socialists!

Adlai Stevenson was a case in point.

[handmade34]

9. one way to look at it...

I tend to believe that it is not smarts but a general sense of "me" rather than "we" when people make their choices...

Donald Trump epitomizes narcissism, his followers exhibit the same traits and love him for it... but even smart folks envision their politics personally (generally speaking, not specifically to every person)...

silly as this sounds, I have compiled my social and political views from observing the natural world, especially from hours of sitting, watching and researching the honeybees that I keep... I have said repeatedly for years that the only way to do this is to realize that "we are all in this together"

...narcissism causes almost all of the things that Americans hoped high self-esteem would prevent, including aggression, materialism, lack of caring for others, and shallow values. In trying to build a society that celebrates high self-esteem, self-expression, and "loving yourself," Americans have inadvertently created more narcissists — and a culture that brings out the narcissistic behavior in all of us...

[flamingdem]

19. Where does this quote come from?

Curious

[handmade34]

20. book

sorry I forgot link...

The Narcissism Epidemic Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell

[flamingdem]

21. Thanks!

[Igel]

11. You need to separate out "average IQ" from the mean IQ.

They're different things. Average IQ is a range that individuals fall into (or not).

It's not based on standard deviations. It's based on the rather arbitrary "I like multiples of 10" reasoning. So it's 90-110 or 90-109 (depending if you're measuring from the mean and go 10 points out, or start counting at 0 so that 10 or 110 belongs to the next decade).

Median IQ is a specific number, 100 if the test was normed recently.

Half the population is below the mean. But the difference between 95 and 105, not so big.

[ismnotwasm]

12. I think most of us do not want to be elected leaders

Or be involved locally, you know, attend town halls, volunteer for committees, run social media groups for this cause or the other. I think most people want others to take the initiative to “lead” and then we choose to follow, or not.

(I know a lot of people who didn’t vote for Hillary in Seattle. They think they live in a safe state, and it didn’t matter. One is a Mensa member for whatever that’s worth. I don’t discuss politics of any kind with them. Not anymore).

[MineralMan]

16. I'm sure that's true. I live in Minnesota, which is another of those "safe" states.

Among just my friends, I know of three people who voted for Jill Stein here, because "I just can't vote for Hillary." Trump lost in this state by less than 50,000 votes. I've talked to all three of those people, who now are saying, "I won't make that mistake again. We must defeat Trump."

"He's not progressive enough." "I demand MFA." "He doesn't support full legalization of marijuana." "He's too old."

I'm hearing a lot of that these days, with regard to one of the Democratic candidates. It makes me fearful of a similar situation to that in 2016, once the primaries are over.

It worries me a great deal.

[Progressive Jones]

13. The OP is correct.

Nobody in their right mind thought Trump would be a good President, and nobody in their right mind voted for him.
Many of inferior intelligence did. Others, like the tax break addicts, did as well. They will always vote GOP, regardless of the candidate.
Too many people stayed home, believing that he wouldn't win.
Yes, our elections are ultimately determined by the Electoral College,
but I also refuse to believe that the EC process was not corrupted in 2016.

Things will be different in 2020. Things will also change dramatically after that election
in terms of governance.

[NCLefty]

15. We lost because Fox trashed Hillary for all the years after Obama won. They knew she was coming back

And they convinced far too many Americans to utterly despise her.

The stupid were captured by Trump's demagoguery of minorities and fantastical lies about what he could do for America.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

22. the RW started trashing Hillary long before Obama

Her first attempts to get government to help children get health care triggered the start of the trashing. It may even have started when she was an undergraduate gathering information on discrimination in education.

[handmade34]

23. Trump won also

because media obsessed over coverage of him, at the expense of Hillary

Trump disproportionately benefited from the Fourth Estate’s coverage over the past year of the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, drew the most negative coverage of any other candidate

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/media-study-trump-helped-clinton-hurt-224300