[sneak]

It's supremely arrogant to believe that you can decide for yourself, but "most people can't be trusted to decide for themselves".

Let people make their own decisions.

[Uberphallus]

It might be arrogant, but not supremely. Maybe the line leaves me out of deciding the content I can consume. I'm pretty stupid out of my fields of interest anyway.

Joking aside, it's taken me lots of effort, but if anything is important to me, my life, or my loved ones, I double check it, even if I agree with it or I'm naturally inclined to believe it. I've also learnt to love to stand corrected, and to say that I'm wrong.

But that's unfortunately above what most people I deal with on a daily basis are able or willing to do, supremely so when you bring religion or politics in the mix. And that's normal, and thoroughly studied[0]. That also means that, in many subjects, people already made up their minds and aren't actually taking decisions, as you suggest they are, but having psychological knee-jerk reactions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance

[ben_w]

Sure, but they didn’t say they were any better.

I mean, it’s not like I know much about civil engineering, or trade policy, or diplomacy, or law, or policing, or military and defence issues, or agriculture and food stability, or economics, or education policy, other than that most of these are things you can get degrees (or equivalent) in, and if I spend three years studying each of them I’d still be a much of a noob in those topics as someone who thinks “lines of code is a good measure of productivity” is in the world of software.

I still believe democracy is better than any known alternative; it just isn’t, y’know, flawless.