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by mishellaneous
15 days ago
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i like your framing of "holes" in political systems.
one way to put it is that a political system has "holes" if the ideal/desired outcome is not a Nash equilibrium. however, my understanding (though i can't speak for the other commenters) is that the reasoning behind "humanities-educated people make better democracies" is NOT that humanities-educated people are more virtuous, and thus will willingly not degrade the commons (the reasoning you seem to be criticizing). rather, it's that humanities-educated people cannot be manipulated as easily by a demagogue (and other similar things). the usually cited problem with democracy is that it gives the people the power to choose, but it does not automatically makes them capable to make good choices. that's where the education comes in. clearly many questions require technical/domain knowledge to be answered and are not simply a matter of preference. for example, fixing your car, or building a bridge. and even running a business or cooking an elaborate meal. with technical knowledge, you are able to make better decisions whatever your preferences are. humanities education is then implied to be the "technical knowledge" for participating in society. of course, in that case, we can discuss what should be the content of the "humanities education", but that's another discussion... |
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I can see where your reasoning is coming from but I mostly disagree. I can see two factors that could prevent manipulation: 1. The rare case of wisdom (that I define as being strong willed enough to think independently and not fall for self-deception/wishful thinking + intelligent enough to think correctly) which doesn't apply here since education doesn't influence this and 2. Manipulation going too much against the previous indoctrination, which does apply here but kinda defeats the point.
In fact, I'm mostly distrustful of intellectuals (!= intelligent people). That misattributed Thucydides quote about scholars ("The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.") further illustrated by Uncle Ted ("Though they like to fancy themselves independent thinkers, the intellectuals are (allowing for individual exceptions) the most oversocialized, the most conformist, the tamest and most domesticated, the most pampered, dependent, and spineless group in America today.") summarize my position.
Where I do agree is that practical/technical knowledge allowing individuals to be more independent and less reliant on specialized technicians to change a light bulb is highly important. Sadly, the Western world I (we?) belong to has almost finished removing teaching of DIY and even the individual ability to do so (cf modern cars, appliances or operating systems). I suspect that this isn't a coincidence considering the aforementioned ramifications...