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Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

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Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#161

Post by aidenn0 »

runningdogx wrote: post #29

One aspect I've never thought about before is the selection of representatives for parliament/legislature. In the U.S., they're pre-selected in primary elections per party, but the national elections are single-winner per seat, so the candidates are out pandering to the voters constantly. I don't know percentages, but many other countries use multi-winner to select their national multi-seat bodies, and my understandi…

Ultimately it's hard to beat approval voting, since it's the best simple system. There are many systems that are better overall, but they are too complex for people to understand.

A voting system needs to be so simple that everyone understands and trusts it. Approval voting is a really simple replacement under the single-winner system that everyone can understand.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#162

Post by jlarocco »

tincholio wrote: post #125
gcp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well-versed may be a very relative term. I've been exposed to physics, engineering and computer science. The physicists had the scientific method drilled in deep. The engineers a bit. The computer scientists had vaguely heard about it. We still call them computer scientists. Your wife may suffer from a similar "relative difference". (Coincidentally, I could repeat your story with my wife, who's a computer scientist w…

CS is a tricky term, in that it is actually (mostly applied) math, and math ain't science...

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this has always bugged me.

I wish there were better standardization on CS degrees. Depending on the school, CS can be part of the math department, science department, engineering department, or a liberal arts department.

My school grouped it in science/engineering and required a bunch of math, and quite a few science classes. I've met people with the same degree from other schools who think it's crazy I took so much science and are surprised I had so few liberal arts classes.

It'd be nice if everybody were on the same page.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#163

Post by smsm42 »

ashconnor wrote: post #110
smsm42 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still go to lectures - or find them on YouTube, download them from the web or torrents, etc. And the debates are as much "attended" and more - people just don't have to be physically there anymore. It's all right with Americans and thinking - it's just most of them don't turn their thinking towards government. Which is a blessing - it is brilliant minds who brought us the current financial crisis, for example,…

You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union. Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambast it with an uninformed critique.

Here's the danger of making assumptions about people you don't know on the internet. As it happens, I not only read the manifesto, I was born and raised in the country that had the study of the discipline of "Scientific communism" a requirement for getting any higher education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_communism So I have a very good reason to assume that my background in both theory and practice of Marxist regimes is no less than yours. While one could have legitimate differences on the merits of teaching of Marx, it is obvious to any informed person that they were presented as the scientific basis for building new kind of society both in theory and in practice. Even if the theory was false and the practice made it degrade into dogmatic repetition of meaningless drivel, it was still presented as the scientific approach and meant to be so.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#164

Post by gopi »

Charismatic people with great oratory skills get elected, its as simple as that!

In the south indian state (Tamilnadu) where i grew up most of the chief ministers (governors) are former actors with no college degree. Yet that state is relatively wealthy, what do you say about that?

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#165

Post by _nist »

I think part of the problem is that American's don't read enough. They don't seek knowledge and understanding outside their own field. I mean it doesn't take a lot to read a book about the scientific method, or a book about statistics and try and learn it. Sure you won't be as good as someone who studied it, but you can at least try and be well versed in the concepts. I frequently read text books and do the exercises in them on my spare time. However, American's are so enthralled in media culture that you can probably make a good guess that most American's don't read on a regular basis, or read those $2.00 novels you get at the gas station. In other words, what they read doesn't have much substance.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#166

Post by lurker17 »

tincholio wrote: post #125
gcp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well-versed may be a very relative term. I've been exposed to physics, engineering and computer science. The physicists had the scientific method drilled in deep. The engineers a bit. The computer scientists had vaguely heard about it. We still call them computer scientists. Your wife may suffer from a similar "relative difference". (Coincidentally, I could repeat your story with my wife, who's a computer scientist w…

CS is a tricky term, in that it is actually (mostly applied) math, and math ain't science...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Mathematics_as_sci...

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#167

Post by ashconnor »

jerf wrote: post #137
ashconnor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union. Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambast it with an uninformed critique.

The Communist Manifesto leads directly to the "dictatorial regimes of the 20th century". The Communist Manifesto is not founded in any reality (psychological, political, economic), and as it is applied but fails to bring the promised benefits as it is completely ungrounded in reality, it also encourages the leaders to come to the conclusion that the only reason this can be is that the people aren't trying hard enough…

You'll have to detail these applications because having studied 20th century history I haven't seen any countries implement anything that looks remotely socialist, except 1930s Barcelona.

Now were I disagree with Marxism is the advocation of the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" which I believe results in these state capitalist dictatorial regimes. I'm not an intellectual, don't take my work for it. Chomsky is a good source of information regarding the Soviet Union: http://youtu.be/K4Tq4VE8eHQ

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#168

Post by smsm42 »

adrianN wrote: post #59
smsm42 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still go to lectures - or find them on YouTube, download them from the web or torrents, etc. And the debates are as much "attended" and more - people just don't have to be physically there anymore. It's all right with Americans and thinking - it's just most of them don't turn their thinking towards government. Which is a blessing - it is brilliant minds who brought us the current financial crisis, for example,…

Except Marxism was extremely anti-intellectual. You didn't have scientists in positions of power, instead peasants became majors. Children of intellectuals were forbidden to attend universities and forced instead to work in the industry.

I think you are referring to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (I can not think about anything that fits your description in the Soviet history, for example) - but that has little to do with Marxism and does not follow from it. Of course, almost all communist regimes feature mass purges, especially at the beginning of their rule, but usually these purges are not specifically aimed at intellectuals but at "old elites" in order to destroy the existing power relationships and establish the new ones. I do not see anything specifically anti-intellectual in Marxist theory or practice.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#169

Post by sidww2 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #159
rdouble wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American culture has always had an anti-intellectual component. The country was initially settled by merchants and religious fanatics, two groups not exactly known for intellectual curiosity. What's more interesting is how successful intellectuals have been in this country, considering half the population has generally held them in contempt. This book is a bit dated but is a pretty good history of American anti-intel…

> What's more interesting is how successful intellectuals have been in this country They've been successful at delivering concrete, immediate results. Fundamental science at the highest levels is usually done elsewhere.

That used to be the case in the past. However with the increased government expenditure on basic science in the wake of the cold war, more of the fundamental science did happen in the US (foundations of CS, foundations of Crypto, lot of AI & ML, string theory, lot of work in Math, etc.). Now with the decreasing focus on the funding of science, fundamental research (especially in high energy physics but in other areas too) is again shifting to other places like Canada, Europe, Israel, China and Australia.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#170

Post by sidww2 »

peteretep wrote: post #28
prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

That'll be the same reason Americans don't elect a Juris Doctor who was President of the Harvard Law Review, right?

Don't forget that 46% of the country still voted for John McCain - a person was extremely terrible academically even after the Republican Party had launched two disastrous wars, exploded the deficit and their lack of regulation and oversight had caused the worst recession since the Great Depression. And as others have pointed out, Obama wasn't really elected because of his intellectual ability but because of the state of the economy at the time and because he's a charismatic speaker.
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