My students cheated... a lot

Of course everyone can have an opinion! But are these truly likely to contribute to solving the problem? Of course not. Some people are more likely to have the experience and skills to comprehend and advocate for better solutions.

Yes, I tend to support democratic forms of government over others. However, I'm under no illusion that democracy's broad, sweeping claims about what government are "best" are really defensible when applied to the general problem of collective problem solving under real-world constraints.

Having one person, one vote seems intuitive and valuable for certain decisions. In particular, it seems useful and practical for selecting certain representatives. But I (and many others) don't think it is a great way of making policy decisions in general. Just as one example: committees of experts can make sense in some contexts.

But in general, we can do better than what most of us have seen so far. We have to do better than that. Look at how well government(s) at all levels are serving their constituents. I think it is self-evident that all can stand tremendous improvement.

So, for any particular context, think about how to design mechanisms that are likely to work well. In so doing, one must account for many factors, including: human biases, cognitive limitations, cultural differences, imperfect communication, economic costs, time constraints, factions, self-interest, lack of experience, and so on.

Keeping these in mind, how exactly would you select, organize, and structure an ongoing set of interactions between, say 1,000 people such that one can maximize the quality of their resulting collective recommendations?

One option is to choose 1,000 people at random and weight their opinions evenly. But this is underspecified. How do you compress those recommendations into a form that others are likely to read? How do you discover collective preferences? There are dozens of key questions even if you generally adhere to the idea of "equally weighting each person's opinion".

But there are manifold other options where each individual's starting opinion is not the driving factor.

I encourage everyone here to study political economy, history, philosophy, and anthropology. Disregard your preconceived framings of how people make decisions. Look at how others have done it. Look at what theorists suggest might be alternatives. It is an amazing journey. I've been thinking about it for almost twenty years, and it is just as fascinating, if not more, as when I first got exposed to these ideas in policy school.

I find it enormously frustrating when people (not you) complain about "teaching to the test." Teaching to the test is good pedagogy! First, determine what you want to students to know/do. Then choose how you're going to assess their knowledge/ability. Then design instruction that prepares them for the assessment. This is called backwards design.

I've never met a teacher who didn't do those things; I have met many who wouldn't phrase it like that. Just because they're not using the same terminology as you doesn't mean it isn't happening.

It's very easy to look at a system from the outside and think that they're missing the obvious [1]; things become more complex the more you understand them.

[1] https://xkcd.com/793/

You don't.

You certify it, when it is required.

> Right now, a medical diploma indicates that the person took all the requisites and passed all the tests to be a practicing physician.

exactly! because it is required by regulations.

> If you only measure student satisfaction, how do you which medical student is ready to treat real patients and which isn't?

there is a high chance than an unsatisfied medical student is gonna be an equally unsatisfied doctor, even if they check all the boxes.

let's be clear: satisfaction is not a measure of how much they are having fun.

just like if you go to the gym you're not more satisfied if they give you free candies and hot dogs and couches with Netflix, but you end up being fatter and less fit than before.