Full Transcript for Ep. 355: Should We be Protected from Uninformed Voters? [REMASTERED]

00:04:09.360 As an educator, I find that very disturbing, but just for what it's worth. 00:04:09.599 --> 00:04:14.159 Yeah, I was gonna say, wait a minute, doesn't this like implode your entire worldview as a professor? 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:14.719 Oh, yeah. 00:04:14.800 --> 00:04:16.480 No, I mean I I mostly teach classes. 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:23.920 Uh I literally have a class for freshmen where I spend the first three days explaining like why business school isn't really gonna do much for them and they should probably major in something else. 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:25.279 How are you still employed? 00:04:25.519 --> 00:04:27.279 Tenure, tenure works for some people. 00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:27.839 Yeah. 00:04:28.079 --> 00:04:39.199 So literally like going from having a high school diploma to a bachelor's degree predicts you get about one to one and a half extra questions right on this battery of questions that the Pew polling company gives people every couple of years. 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:40.319 It has almost no effect. 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:40.639 Wow. 00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:45.680 However, it's correlated with other things like income and so on, which does predict information. 00:04:45.839 --> 00:04:47.120 So here's an idea then. 00:04:47.279 --> 00:04:49.759 What if on election day everyone gets to vote? 00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:51.680 But when they vote, they do three things. 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:54.079 They first they tell us what it is they want. 00:04:54.240 --> 00:05:02.079 Whatever it is we're voting on, and I'm agnostic about what we should vote on, but whether it's voting for a president or voting on a referendum or whatever it is, you tell us what it is you want. 00:05:02.319 --> 00:05:06.160 The second thing is you tell us who you are, like what are your demographic factors. 00:05:06.240 --> 00:05:08.639 And we're gonna need this for some statistical stuff in a second. 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:18.879 And the third thing is you answer a quiz of, say, 30 to 40 questions about politics, just really basic questions, like who's the vice president, uh, what's the unemployment rate, et cetera. 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:22.000 Now, this quiz does not determine whether or not your vote counts. 00:05:22.240 --> 00:05:24.160 It doesn't even add weight to your particular vote. 00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:39.360 Instead, what happens is if we have these three things, who you are, what you know, and what you want, and we get this for everyone who votes, what we can do is statistically estimate what the public would have wanted if it were demographically identical, but fully informed. 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:59.839 And the reason I like to implement this, at least try it, experiment with it on a small scale and relatively stable places like Denmark or a well-functioning state like my home state of New Hampshire, is this is the method that political scientists and economists have been using for really like three or four decades to figure out things like how does your income affect how you vote? 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:01.360 How does your race affect how you vote? 00:06:01.439 --> 00:06:04.800 How does knowledge affect how you vote while controlling for all these other things? 00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:09.199 And so we can use this to basically pretend we had an informed public. 00:06:09.360 --> 00:06:14.000 Or the actual public is not well informed, but we can extract wisdom from the crowd this way. 00:06:14.079 --> 00:06:17.199 And the nice thing about it is at the end, no one gets excluded. 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:20.000 And in a way, no one really has more votes than anyone else. 00:06:20.160 --> 00:06:26.480 It's not that you get 7.4 votes and I get 3.2 and she gets 1.0 and that person gets 29.9. 00:06:26.639 --> 00:06:27.360 It's not like that. 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:31.600 It's just that we're basically simulating what would happen if the public were fully informed. 00:06:31.759 --> 00:06:40.959 You know, and then the interesting thing about this is this has been done, like this method, on all sorts of different data sets with different people by different political scientists and economists with different political biases. 00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:45.600 But interestingly, you tend to get similar results over and over again of what the enlightened public would want. 00:06:45.759 --> 00:06:50.000 And the enlightened public's view does not correspond to any major political party. 00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:50.560 Okay. 00:06:50.879 --> 00:06:57.360 I think that's heartening because imagine I imagine, like, you know, your typical listener and you're like, oh, you know what? 00:06:57.839 --> 00:07:02.240 The Academy is just a bunch of like shills for the Democratic Party, which is true, by the way. 00:07:02.319 --> 00:07:03.199 That's correct. 00:07:03.439 --> 00:07:06.560 And they just use this method and it turns on everyone to vote Democrat. 00:07:06.639 --> 00:07:07.839 You'd be like, I don't really believe it. 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:09.360 But in fact, it's not what the method shows. 00:07:09.439 --> 00:07:11.439 It says they wouldn't really prefer what the Democrats like. 00:07:11.519 --> 00:07:13.120 They don't really like what the Republicans do. 00:07:13.279 --> 00:07:17.360 They just have a kind of more nuanced position that doesn't correspond to any particular political party. 00:07:17.519 --> 00:07:25.439 So I think that's heartening because it sort of shows that this isn't an inherently biased method, or it's not like the political scientists doing this or just trying to prove that they were right all along. 00:07:25.759 --> 00:07:26.959 But is it informed? 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:39.759 I mean, not that the public would be tricked in this particular example, but it's kind of like, is that really an informed vote if, you know, the people that are counting them have to interpret the information? 00:07:40.079 --> 00:07:40.240 Yeah. 00:07:40.319 --> 00:07:45.439 So one thing you want to

do with this kind of method is make sure that any kind of statistical test is all done publicly. 00:07:45.600 --> 00:07:51.600 You know, you make the quiz public, you make all the data public, and you can just say, here's how many people voted this way, here's their information. 00:07:51.759 --> 00:07:56.800 And then any newspaper, any like blog, any anyone who has stats training could just check the results. 00:07:56.879 --> 00:07:58.079 Uh, it's not really that complicated. 00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:11.680 So it's true that the average person wouldn't be able to easily tell, but it is the kind of thing where if you just make it public, then Fox News and MSNBC and all these other groups can just say they'll have they have people on staff who can look at it and go, yeah, this is bullshit or this is real. 00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:15.199 Uh so basically it's like we don't have an enlightened public. 00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:17.439 We don't know a way of making the public informed. 00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:17.839 Right. 00:08:18.079 --> 00:08:21.040 Pulp education doesn't work very well because of perverse incentives. 00:08:21.199 --> 00:08:24.240 Following thought leaders doesn't work well because of inverse incentives. 00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:27.439 What if we just had a way of statistically pretending we were informed? 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:28.720 And that's the idea behind this. 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:29.920 That's really interesting. 00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:45.440 For some reason, it makes me think of David Attenborough, you know, the British narrator of the nature documentaries and where he's like looking into the terrarium of humans, going, This is what's happening in Earth today. 00:08:45.519 --> 00:08:47.360 And he's like figuring it out. 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:52.080 Basically, I see David Attenborough as a demigod, which that really is revealing. 00:08:52.240 --> 00:09:01.120 I do have a question about how the test would be worded because I read a book called The Trials of Nina McCall. 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:08.240 And in that, the author talks about a French psychologist was the one who made an IQ test back in the early 1900s. 00:09:08.399 --> 00:09:14.000 But later they realized that it favored wealthy members of French society. 00:09:14.159 --> 00:09:20.799 But the American educational system adopted it nonetheless, using it to identify so-called social delinquents. 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:24.240 And then later in World War I, the army used it. 00:09:24.320 --> 00:09:38.799 And when the data revealed that the median scores showed that basically blacks and whites were testing the same, they changed the questions so that the blacks would score lower to confirm racial bias. 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:49.519 And there was another version of all of this that was for women, so that they could deem them irrevocably mentally deficient, which permitted incarceration and removal of rights. 00:09:49.679 --> 00:09:53.600 So, like the how the wording is, I feel like is important. 00:09:53.840 --> 00:10:01.840 Who determines who in this, you know, hypothetical situation the questions on the test and then how those questions are worded? 00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:02.320 Yeah. 00:10:02.559 --> 00:10:08.559 I'm glad you're asking that because this is really a very fundamental problem with epistocracy and democracy, by the way. 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:08.879 Yeah. 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:22.240 So one of the interesting things that we know about with surveys, and if you're a marketing person, you know this, and you probably are using this for for evil ends, perhaps, is that you can ask people effectively the same question and get completely different answers based upon what words you use. 00:10:22.399 --> 00:10:30.159 You know, so for instance, if you say things like, there's this drug, and it people have a fatal disease, and this drug will cure exactly 80% of the people that have that disease. 00:10:30.399 --> 00:10:31.120 Is it a good drug? 00:10:31.279 --> 00:10:32.240 Everyone says yes. 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:38.879 If you go, there's this drug that has an effect on this fatal disease, but 20% of the people who take it will nevertheless die. 00:10:39.039 --> 00:10:39.600 Is it good? 00:10:39.679 --> 00:10:41.120 They say, no, it's bad. 00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:42.399 I just said the same thing. 00:10:42.559 --> 00:10:44.639 It's exactly the same result both ways. 00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:45.840 The wording matters. 00:10:45.919 --> 00:10:50.960 And then one thing you learn in poly psy research and other things is like, well, what counts as the real way to ask the question? 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:52.559 And the answer is we don't know. 00:10:52.799 --> 00:10:53.919 There isn't the real way. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.000 These are just synonyms and it's not really clear. 00:10:56.159 --> 00:11:00.080 And the people who write referenda and things like that in California, they know this. 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:09.519 Uh, they go out of their way to make sure that when they write the question, they write it the way to get the response that they want, knowing that if they worded it ever so slightly differently, people would have a completely different response. 00:11:09.759 --> 00:11:12.879 So, my best solution to this, and I think it's an imperfect solution. 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:15.279 I think we're we're just talking about imperfection here. 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:16.879 We're not talking about ideals. 00:11:17.279 --> 00:11:20.399 Is, and this is going to sound paradoxical, who writes the test? 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:22.000 Let democracy write the test. 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:22.240 Right? 00:11:22.399 --> 00:11:24.000 What counts as an informed voter? 00:11:24.159 --> 00:11:31.840 Don't have someone like me write the questions, don't have the Democratic Party write the questions or the Republican Party, don't have professional bureaucrats in DC like my neighbors. 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:48.000 Instead, get like 500

citizens, select them at random, almost in a kind of in a jury duty type system, pay them, say,$5,000 or$10,000, and fly them out to go somewhere for a weekend and say, you, the people, are tasked with coming up with what counts as an informed voter. 00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:56.720 We want you to come up with 30 to 40 questions that everyone who votes is going to answer and what you think counts as an informed voter, and then have them deliberate for a weekend and write the test together. 00:11:56.879 --> 00:12:00.320 Now there's some issues with that, but then you know it's not going to be perfect. 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:02.480 But then they get to decide and they can put on whatever they want. 00:12:02.559 --> 00:12:10.080 It could be the price of average price of milk, it could be what counts as you know, who the vice president is, it could be certain things about recent laws. 00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:17.519 And people often think it's paradoxical when I recommend this idea because I I go on and on about how the people don't know the answers to these questions. 00:12:17.679 --> 00:12:23.360 But the funny thing is, people sort of know what questions they should know the answer to, even if they don't know the answers. 00:12:23.519 --> 00:12:32.960 It's almost like uh if you've ever been in a class and you have a final exam coming up, like in trigonometry or something, and you're like, oh, I know I'm supposed to know what a cosine is, but I don't actually know what a cosine is. 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:34.559 That's kind of what happens with voters. 00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:37.840 If you ask them, like, what do you think would what what would count as an informed voter? 00:12:37.919 --> 00:12:39.440 They actually give you pretty smart questions. 00:12:39.600 --> 00:12:41.759 Oh, you should know this, you should know this, you should know this. 00:12:41.919 --> 00:12:42.399 Cool. 00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:43.600 Do you know that stuff? 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:44.159 No. 00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:46.399 You know, for instance, like it seems like pretty reasonable. 00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:48.879 Do you which party controls Congress and what have they done? 00:12:49.039 --> 00:12:50.000 Most people come up with that. 00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:51.919 And if you ask voters that stuff they don't know. 00:12:52.399 --> 00:13:04.080 You mentioned in your book that civic education tends to push people towards more of the extreme views as opposed to bringing them into a place of moderation. 00:13:04.399 --> 00:13:13.279 And when you're talking about letting democracy choose these questions, I'm thinking, well, gosh, shouldn't we like kind of get ready first? 00:13:13.440 --> 00:13:15.120 Like, shouldn't we be more educated? 00:13:15.279 --> 00:13:24.639 Shouldn't we enhance our public educational system to include more complete versions of history and government systems? 00:13:24.799 --> 00:13:27.919 But when I read that part of your book, I was so confused. 00:13:28.080 -->

00:13:30.240 So explain what you mean by that. 00:13:30.399 --> 00:13:37.200 And like, do we just accept our own ig ignorance and pray that we don't become like that movie idiocracy? 00:13:37.440 --> 00:13:37.600 Yeah. 00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:42.399 And this phase me to say it's an educator, but the reason everyone's like, I want to just educate people better. 00:13:42.480 --> 00:13:43.360 And it doesn't work. 00:13:43.519 --> 00:13:44.000 That's why. 00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:46.879 Uh and it doesn't work not because people are stupid, but because they're smart. 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:49.279 And that's that's basically why it doesn't work because they're smart. 00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:54.000 So think of it like this I was a chemistry major for a long time, but I don't remember much about chemistry. 00:13:54.159 --> 00:13:54.399 Why? 00:13:54.480 --> 00:13:55.679 Because I don't use it anymore. 00:13:55.919 --> 00:13:58.799 I took four years of Spanish in high school and I was really good at it. 00:13:58.879 --> 00:14:05.919 I just went to Costa Rica two weeks ago and I struggled to get through, you know, 20 plus years after I finished high school, I allowed myself to forget it. 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:09.519 I don't remember the phone number of like my best friend in high school anymore. 00:14:09.679 --> 00:14:10.320 Why not? 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:11.759 I forgot all of this stuff. 00:14:11.840 --> 00:14:13.120 It's called rational ignorance. 00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:14.240 I don't need this information. 00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:16.559 It's not very useful to me, so I let it go away. 00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:26.240 So think about, regardless of how educated you are, though you went to high school or college or postgraduate school, think about how many tests you got good grades on back in the day that you would fail right now. 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:27.360 Oh, so many. 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:29.440 I do this with my freshmen at Georgetown. 00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:39.759 I will come in and tell them, like, I'll give them a quit set of quiz questions, five questions taken from level one, they're all honor students, but like level one sophomore year of high school type things. 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:43.759 And I'll say, if you can get all five questions right, I'll give you$50 on the spot. 00:14:43.919 --> 00:14:53.200 The best anyone's ever done, and these are really gifted students who get like, you know,$1550 on the SAT and had 4.5 GPAs graduating, the best any of them have ever done is four out of five. 00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:54.720 Usually they get two out of five. 00:14:54.799 --> 00:14:56.159 They forget almost everything. 00:14:56.320 --> 00:14:59.679 And that's what happens with public education and civics education. 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:04.480 We teach people most of what they need to know to vote well, and they forget almost all of it. 00:15:04.639 --> 00:15:09.120 In fact, on average, people only remember about one out of five bits of information

they get in schooling. 00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:12.559 And it's not because they're stupid, it's because it's not useful to them. 00:15:12.799 --> 00:15:16.559 Okay, but doesn't that ask why are we teaching it that way then? 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:26.799 If it's if most of the stuff that we learn and we forget is inconsequential to our daily lives and to the betterment of society, why the fuck are we teaching those things in school? 00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:27.919 That's a good question. 00:15:28.159 --> 00:15:28.799 Why are we? 00:15:29.039 --> 00:15:32.240 You know, you should uh you should invite on uh Brian Kaplan to talk about schooling. 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:36.080 He wrote a really cool book called The Case Against Education and what's really going on with education. 00:15:36.399 --> 00:15:38.080 Do you know do you have a personal invite? 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:39.360 Is that is that an offer? 00:15:39.519 --> 00:15:42.799 Because I would like to have him on the show to discuss that very thing. 00:15:43.039 --> 00:15:43.519 Oh, absolutely. 00:15:43.840 --> 00:15:46.799 If you tell him I ascend to you, he'll that he'll get a yes. 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:47.120 Okay. 00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:47.840 Yeah, absolutely. 00:15:47.919 --> 00:15:51.039 It's we could spend all the whole time talking about why education works the way it does. 00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:57.519 But just focusing narrowly on the civics stuff, I'm the there is a genuine goal of making people better at civics. 00:15:57.679 --> 00:16:02.559 But the problem is you face perverse incentives because government is a collective action problem. 00:16:02.720 --> 00:16:05.120 It's like the climate or pollution or something. 00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:26.559 If if I get rid of my car, which frankly is kind of a gas guzzler sports car, and drive like, I don't know, a really environmentally friendly car, and I never take a trip again, I never fly anywhere ever again, and I turn my air conditioning down in the summer, it's really hot here in DC, from you know, whatever I have it on, to like a much higher temperature, so I'm using less energy, and I stop playing electric guitar and I play acoustic guitar instead. 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:28.559 This will have no impact on climate change. 00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:30.159 It will not have effect pollution. 00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:33.919 My individual input is so minute that it doesn't matter. 00:16:34.080 --> 00:16:36.320 What matters is what we do, not what I do. 00:16:36.559 --> 00:16:38.080 Voting works out that way too. 00:16:38.240 --> 00:16:46.320 It's really important that the public be informed and that the public vote in a kind of intelligent way for people who will actually promote its values. 00:16:46.480 --> 00:16:50.080 But it doesn't matter if you vote that way or if I vote that way, right? 00:16:50.159 --> 00:16:52.399 Because our individual votes just make very little difference. 00:16:52.639 --> 00:17:03.039 So if I were to go, imagine that

there's a party, the murder Jason Brennan party, and their goal is to get in power and to put me in a pain amplifier for 50 years and then flame my skin off and kill me. 00:17:03.279 --> 00:17:04.799 That is incredibly specific. 00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:09.200 This is very insightful into your mind, by the way. 00:17:09.440 --> 00:17:10.880 Yeah, I like to use gruesome examples. 00:17:11.039 --> 00:17:12.640 Uh send a lot of metal, maybe that's why. 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:16.400 So for them to come to power is an absolute disaster for me. 00:17:16.559 --> 00:17:19.119 But it doesn't follow that voting for them is a disaster. 00:17:19.279 --> 00:17:21.680 Or to give a nicer example, I once did the calculation out. 00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:23.440 I said, imagine it's the year 2008. 00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:33.680 I'm living in Massachusetts at the time, and candidate Obama calls me up and says, I can't I don't have an Obama impression, but Brendan, if if I win, I'm gonna pay you$10 million out of the US Treasury. 00:17:33.839 --> 00:17:36.160 Now, to be clear, he's not paying me$10 million to vote for him. 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:38.400 He's just paying me$10 million if he wins. 00:17:38.640 --> 00:17:42.640 Well, you know, maybe I could be bought, maybe that would make me want it want him to win or something. 00:17:42.799 --> 00:17:59.839 But the thing is, the probability that my vote will break a tie is so low that if you discount that$10 million by the probability that I break a tie, the value of voting for him to me is lower than like the risk of voting, because I have a higher chance of dying in a car accident on the way to the voting booth than I do of breaking that tie, right? 00:17:59.920 --> 00:18:10.480 It just works out to be like the number on one model of the effectiveness of the voting, even though I get$10 million if he wins, my vote for him is worth to me$1.45 times 10. 00:18:10.640 --> 00:18:12.880 So then I get$2,645. 00:18:13.359 --> 00:18:13.599 Right. 00:18:13.680 --> 00:18:15.279 So it's just vanishingly small. 00:18:15.519 --> 00:18:20.319 So people don't know these exact numbers, but they do have a pretty good sense that their votes don't really matter. 00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:22.880 You know, it's like they all count, but they don't count for much. 00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:25.039 What matters is what we do, not what you do. 00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:26.799 Democracy is supposed to be like that. 00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:27.599 That's the whole point. 00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:30.079 If your vote mattered a lot, something's going wrong. 00:18:30.319 --> 00:18:31.839 Oh, that's an interesting point. 00:18:32.160 --> 00:18:35.680 The whole point is to spread power out, not to concentrate it, right? 00:18:35.839 --> 00:18:38.400 So basically, this is the dilemma we get with any form of government. 00:18:38.559 --> 00:18:45.039 If you concentrate power in the hands of a small number of people, they tend to use that power intelligently, but for their self-interest. 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:45.359 Right. 00:18:45.599 --> 00:18:47.279 Let Vladimir Putin, right? 00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:53.759 Or my neighbors, like you know, the alphabet agencies, my neighbors, they're very good at running those agencies for their own benefit, right? 00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:54.079 Yeah. 00:18:54.240 --> 00:18:55.599 Because a lot of them have like real power. 00:18:55.759 --> 00:18:59.200 If you spread power out among the masses, they tend to be nicer. 00:18:59.359 --> 00:19:02.640 Like it no longer is in your self-interest to use power selfishly. 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:03.279 Like, why bother? 00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:04.400 Your vote doesn't matter much. 00:19:04.559 --> 00:19:09.839 So they're very expressive and they do what they think is good for justice and so on, but they don't think very carefully about it. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.319 So the dilemma we have is concentrate power, you get smart but nasty. 00:19:14.559 --> 00:19:16.480 Spread power out, you get nice but dumb. 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:18.240 Neither one of those is particularly good. 00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:19.680 They both have their downsides. 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:20.720 Well, hey there. 00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:28.799 Since you seem to be enjoying this episode so far, double check that you've hit the follow button on your podcast listening app and subscribe on YouTube. 00:19:29.119 --> 00:19:36.240 And to join my free private Facebook group, search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. 00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:38.240 Okay, back to the show. 00:19:38.559 --> 00:19:40.960 So should we feel an obligation to vote? 00:19:41.039 --> 00:19:42.720 Is it really our civic duty then? 00:19:42.960 --> 00:19:43.759 I don't think it is. 00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:46.319 I tend to think of more like you have a conditional duty. 00:19:46.400 --> 00:19:48.799 If you're going to vote, you should vote in an intelligent way. 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:49.680 You should be informed. 00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:56.319 You should like really consider the complications of the questions that you're answering, you should consider the values that you're like, you know, be be a good voter. 00:19:56.480 --> 00:20:04.960 I would never never say like to borrow a phrase from Brian Kaplan who I mentioned before, we never say to people, it doesn't matter if you don't know anything about surgery, the important thing is that you make your cut. 00:20:05.279 --> 00:20:09.680 But we do say, it doesn't matter if you don't know anything about politics, the important thing is that you vote. 00:20:09.839 --> 00:20:10.160 Why? 00:20:10.319 --> 00:20:10.880 Why think that? 00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:14.799 Why not instead think that like if you're an uninformed voter, you're effectively polluting the system? 00:20:15.039 --> 00:20:15.359 Yeah. 00:20:15.599 --> 00:20:21.519 So people usually say something like this, well, you you have a civic duty to vote because politics

depends upon people voting. 00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:23.039 Well, it depends upon people voting well. 00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:25.279 It doesn't really help well if you if you're voting badly. 00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:30.000 But frankly, there's lots of other things that we do to make the world a better place besides voting. 00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:38.720 If you're a full-time nurse, or frankly a full-time motorcycle mechanic, you're doing a lot more society by doing your work than you are by voting. 00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:39.119 Right. 00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:40.880 And I think we don't give enough credit to that. 00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:48.400 So I think a lot of our ideas of what it is to be a civically good citizen are written by professional political philosophers who obsess about politics all day. 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:52.240 And they're like, what we do is really the best thing, and the rest of you suck compared to us. 00:20:52.400 --> 00:21:08.960 And I'm like, no, if you're volunteering, you know, working at your PTA at your school, reading to people on the side, working a productive job, like being a stay-at-home parent who raises your children who are going to be good members of society, I think these are all amazing contributions to the welfare of our country. 00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:11.759 And I think they count as instances of civic virtue. 00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:19.039 And so really when you look at the arguments that people give about why you ought to vote, most of them don't really specifically pick out voting. 00:21:19.359 --> 00:21:23.119 They just show voting as maybe one of many ways of discharging an underlying duty. 00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:28.000 Like so if someone says, fight injustice, cool, there's lots of ways of fighting injustice besides voting. 00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:30.079 Help the welfare of your fellow citizens, great. 00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:32.240 There's all sorts of ways of doing that besides voting. 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:34.240 What's so special about voting? 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:38.960 You know, people make an argument like this, they go, well, if nobody voted, it would be a disaster. 00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:40.079 That's true. 00:21:40.319 --> 00:21:41.039 Maybe, I don't know. 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:43.759 If no one voted, it would be a disaster, so therefore you should vote. 00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:44.400 Well, you know what? 00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:47.279 If no one farmed, it would be an even bigger disaster. 00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:48.960 It doesn't follow that you should be a farmer. 00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:51.440 If no one were a medical doctor, that would be a disaster. 00:21:51.519 --> 00:21:53.279 It doesn't follow you should be a doctor. 00:21:53.519 --> 00:21:56.880 Which just follows that we need enough people doing it pretty well. 00:21:57.039 --> 00:21:58.480 You know, what's the optimal number? 00:21:58.640 --> 00:21:59.599 It's probably more than seven. 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:01.359 Probably not everybody. 00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:03.599 Somewhere in between seven and three hundred million. 00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:05.200 You can narrow it down. 00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.559 As as a woman, I mean, because I understand what you're saying. 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:20.319 Like I I agree with the idea that voting is not like, you know, a shortcut for the things that we aren't happy with in society. 00:22:20.720 --> 00:22:23.839 But as a woman, I do feel like this. 00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:40.000 I'll be honest, it feels like a a like kind of a fear, like a threat feeling of like, well, God, if I, you know, we're getting some reversals here in society on our reproductive rights, you know, this this could this could impact me. 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:49.599 For that reason, I'm kind of like, well, yeah, I do feel obligated to vote, even though I equally run into this issue of being myself an unformed voter. 00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:50.240 Yeah. 00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:55.920 I mean, if you could unilaterally protect rights, like if your vote really going to be pivotal, that would be a big deal. 00:22:56.079 --> 00:22:56.960 But what if it isn't? 00:22:57.119 --> 00:23:06.720 You know, so I imagine uh just as an analogy, you turn on the TV and you hear Sarah McLaughlin singing, and you see some starving children, and you go, I really feel bad for those kids starving. 00:23:06.799 --> 00:23:08.400 Um, I really feel like I need to do something. 00:23:08.480 --> 00:23:11.440 That's like the mass starvation around the world is a real problem. 00:23:11.599 --> 00:23:20.160 And so then you take some food and you put it in a bottle and you throw it in the ocean with the hopes that it will wash across the sea and land in front of some starving kid, right? 00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:25.119 Or you throw it at the ground with the hopes that it will quantum tunnel through the earth and appear on the other side. 00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:25.680 Right? 00:23:25.839 --> 00:23:33.279 The the cause that you're concerned about is really high, but the action that you're undertaking to try to fix it, it's it's basically like throwing food away. 00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:36.480 Voting, unfortunately, is kind of like that on an individual scale. 00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:45.680 Like your probability of like the probability that you will personally protect women's reproductive rights through your voting, it's not zero, but it's not very high. 00:23:45.839 --> 00:23:51.359 It's kind of on par with the probability that like if you throw food in a bottle and put it in the ocean, it will wash up in front of somebody. 00:23:51.519 --> 00:23:58.000 So there's other things you can do that have a much higher chance of helping that cause and have like a bigger kind of bang for your buck. 00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:02.880 Now, again, it is important that we have enough people vote, but it doesn't necessarily mean everyone does. 00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:10.319 And actually for this reason, there are people

who they don't like the epistocracy proposal, but they like maybe another idea of like how to modify democracy. 00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:14.400 Oftentimes this is called lautocracy, or there's some other words for it, sortition. 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:17.599 It's what the Greeks used to do, and it has some flaws too, by the way. 00:24:17.680 --> 00:24:25.519 But uh, they would say things like, look, under our current kind of regime with voluntary voting, one of the problems we have is that it's disproportionate. 00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:29.920 So for instance, old people vote at much higher rates than like middle-aged or young people. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:36.160 So maybe for that reason, the politics tends to favor the prejudices and or interests of old people. 00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:40.559 It used to be the case that white people voted at a higher rate than black people, that doesn't appear to be true anymore. 00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:46.240 It used to be that men voted at a higher rate than women, that doesn't appear to be true anymore, but there are some other sort of demographic disparities. 00:24:46.559 --> 00:24:56.079 So what if instead of just having voluntary voting, everyone votes when they feel like it, and then we get these disparities where this group is overrepresented, this group is underrepresented, what if we instead had a lottery? 00:24:56.319 --> 00:25:05.599 Everyone is equally eligible to vote, but about a week before the election takes place or the referendum takes place, 20,000 people are selected to vote, and they and only they get to vote. 00:25:05.759 --> 00:25:06.720 We even pay them to vote. 00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:08.319 You get$2,000 or something like that. 00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:10.640 If we did that, a couple interesting things. 00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:18.480 One is the number of people who would vote would actually be more representative of the country as a whole than what we get under our current regime. 00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:24.400 Statistically speaking, 20,000 randomly selected people is a better poll than just letting anyone vote who wants to. 00:25:24.559 --> 00:25:27.920 We get less of a disparity in things like income and so on. 00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:31.920 And maybe they would take their votes more seriously because your vote matters more. 00:25:32.319 --> 00:25:50.160 I was just gonna say, from a psychological standpoint, that's kind of like, you know, I've got the golden ticket, like there's a I uh oh my gosh, I got picked, and then you're getting paid, and you know, money is energy, so then you try to perform to the level of air quotes energy, aka money that you've received. 00:25:50.240 --> 00:25:51.599 So that's an interesting idea. 00:25:51.839 --> 00:26:10.960 Is there an idea floating around that we could vote on issues instead of parties so that the people would have more like direct and more clear-cut, you know, line of sight to what is the issue at hand instead of voting for individuals who supposedly represent our best interests? 00:26:11.279 --> 00:26:21.680 Yeah, uh, you see something like that maybe in Switzerland, where there's a lot more voting on policies, but Switzerland's also kind of a weird place, and it's a lot of it voting on like local politics and not big national politics. 00:26:21.920 --> 00:26:27.039 Part of the complication that with that though is that most of us aren't using issues the way that we tend to think. 00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:34.559 You know, what we teach our kids in school, like my my you know, my younger son is learning in like middle school right now is that this is how democracy works. 00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:41.359 I have values, I learn how the world works, I form an ideology on the basis of that, I vote for the party that matches my ideology. 00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:44.000 Everyone does this as a result on election day. 00:26:44.079 --> 00:26:49.039 The will of, if not the people, at least a large segment of the population gets put in place. 00:26:49.359 --> 00:26:51.279 Probably isn't none of that's probably true. 00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:56.000 What tends to happen instead is we mostly use politics as a form of signaling. 00:26:56.160 --> 00:26:59.519 And so this is gonna sound controversial, but I think it's true. 00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:07.440 It's more likely that the typical Democrat is pro-choice because they are a Democrat than that they are a Democrat because they are pro-choice. 00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:07.920 Right? 00:27:08.079 --> 00:27:12.960 So it's typically people kind of look around and go, what do people like me do for voting? 00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:14.559 I want to make sure that people like me. 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:20.160 So, you know, being from the Boston area when I was growing up, I would wear like a Red Sox t-shirt or a Patriots t-shirt. 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:21.359 This is back when the Patriots sucked. 00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:24.640 They were they were good after I got to be, you know, they weren't good till I was 21. 00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:29.279 So I wear like a Patriots t-shirt or a Red Sox t-shirt, and people would go, Oh, you're one of us. 00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:29.839 I like you. 00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:30.559 I'm gonna be your friend. 00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:31.920 I'm gonna buy you a beer at the bar. 00:27:32.079 --> 00:27:36.240 I mean, I've literally had people like buy me drinks because of the sports stuff that I'm wearing. 00:27:36.559 --> 00:27:36.720 Right. 00:27:36.960 --> 00:27:38.000 So it's a signaling thing. 00:27:38.079 --> 00:27:39.839 I'm showing I'm a loyal member of my community. 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.160 Well, one other thing that people do is they show their loyal members of their community by sharing their politics. 00:27:44.319 --> 00:27:46.240 And so most people, it turns out, just end there. 00:27:46.319 --> 00:27:50.240 They just look around and go, Well, uh, I don't know, other Boston Irish Catholic people vote Democrat. 00:27:50.400 -->

00:27:51.920 I guess I'll vote Democrat too. 00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:57.680 Uh, some of those people go a little bit further and they find out what the Democratic Party stands for and they copy it. 00:27:57.839 --> 00:28:00.000 But then when the party changes, they change. 00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:02.319 This is actually some of our best evidence for this point. 00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:03.680 I'll give you some examples. 00:28:03.759 --> 00:28:10.319 Um, the Republican Party in 2016, uh, as of January, is nominally in in favor of free trade. 00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:13.200 Donald Trump becomes the presumptive nominee of the party. 00:28:13.359 --> 00:28:23.680 You interview and poll the exact same people that were polled and not just random people, the same people that were polled in January around May, and ask them, What do you think about free trade? 00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:25.279 They say that they're protectionist. 00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:26.720 Okay, maybe they changed their minds. 00:28:26.799 --> 00:28:29.279 So you ask them the question, why did you change your mind? 00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:30.960 And they say, What are you talking about? 00:28:31.119 --> 00:28:32.480 I've always thought this. 00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:34.400 They're not lying, they're just wrong. 00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:35.599 They're sincere, but they're wrong. 00:28:35.680 --> 00:28:40.240 And it's the same thing as like Jimmy down at the Lansdown pub next to Fenway Park. 00:28:40.400 --> 00:28:48.160 If you ask him about like a player, six months ago he thinks that guy's great, but when he leaves us to go play for the Yankees, he's gonna be like, uh, I always thought he was overrated. 00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:49.440 It's the same psychology. 00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:50.799 Yeah, sour grapes. 00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:53.039 That's that's my grandmother called that sour grapes. 00:28:53.119 --> 00:28:55.599 When you're like, I didn't I didn't want to hang out with you anyway. 00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:59.039 But it's really that like primal mammal thing. 00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:04.960 I you in your book, you said the human brain was designed more for winning arguments and forming coalitions than seeking truth. 00:29:05.039 --> 00:29:07.440 And I was like, oh my God, that's so true. 00:29:07.519 --> 00:29:12.240 And this is what turns me and people like me away from politics. 00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:18.079 It feels like trying to look for rationale among bickering teenage girls. 00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:19.759 You know, it just doesn't seem possible. 00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:22.319 You also talked in your book about an MRI. 00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:32.000 It was like a study or something where people's brains were scanned by an MRI, and it showed that their perceptions changed in order to conform to the political group, like you just said. 00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:40.960 So wouldn't this be like evidence to support the idea that a system without teams, if you will, would be more supportive of critical

thinking and thought freedom? 00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:43.839 Yeah, I think I think you're right that teams are a bad thing. 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:50.880 Parties are generally there, there's all these books arguing on behalf of why parties are good, and there are some things to be said for them, but generally speaking, I think parties are bad. 00:29:51.039 --> 00:29:58.240 It's probably not going to be the case that we can get rid of them because people are naturally gonna form groups and we don't, you know, we couldn't really pass a law saying no political parties. 00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:03.119 It's not clear that but what you could do is lower the impact of parties by having more. 00:30:03.279 --> 00:30:04.319 So Oh, yeah. 00:30:04.559 --> 00:30:04.799 Yeah. 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:16.559 And so uh to kind of give an analogy that I like to use, the French philosopher and novelist Voltaire said he was he was visiting England back in the early 1700s, and he was shocked at how open-minded and liberal and tolerant it was for its time. 00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:28.319 He said, like, you know, people there, you go like around the London Stock Exchange, and like all these different Christian sects that in France hate each other are like getting along and they get along with Muslims and they get along with Jewish people, and like how do they do that? 00:30:28.400 --> 00:30:36.559 And he his idea was something like this when you have one major religion, it has a tendency to just it it wants to maintain its power, so it stifles all dissent and crushes everybody. 00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:41.759 When you've got two major religions, all they have to do is defeat the other side and then they get to be the dictator. 00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:43.599 So they fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. 00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:46.559 When you have 30, you just have to learn to live and let live. 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:47.839 You have to get along with people. 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:50.160 And so I think you have something like that going on in the US. 00:30:50.319 --> 00:30:52.319 Almost everyone is a Democrat or Republican. 00:30:52.480 --> 00:30:56.240 Yes, there are other parties, but they they don't matter for reasons we'll get into maybe in a second. 00:30:56.480 --> 00:31:00.799 And as a result, you just have to crush that other party, and then you win, you get to have power forever. 00:31:01.039 --> 00:31:04.799 But if we had 30 major political parties, you couldn't do the thing that people do. 00:31:04.880 --> 00:31:08.640 Like, I'm only going to be friends with people in my party, I'm only gonna work with people I agree with. 00:31:08.799 --> 00:31:12.559 You'd be stuck just having to live and let live with people that are different from you. 00:31:12.799 --> 00:31:16.000 And the reason we have two major parties is because of our voting system. 00:31:16.079 --> 00:31:21.359 We we use what's called first past the post-voting, which means whichever person gets the most votes

wins. 00:31:21.519 --> 00:31:27.279 If there's 25 candidates and you get two votes and everyone else gets one, congratulations, you're the winner. 00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:30.720 This statistically predicts that you'll have two major parties. 00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:34.960 What tends to happen is if a third party rises up, it does so to replace one of the other parties. 00:31:35.119 --> 00:31:36.559 It's called Derverger's Law. 00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:38.559 It's a statistical artifact of our voting system. 00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:41.920 When this voting system was put into place, people did not know that that was there. 00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:45.200 Now, to be clear, the Republicans and Democrats do know about this. 00:31:45.359 --> 00:31:53.359 They're very well aware of it, and as a result, it's extremely unlikely you're going to find a mass movement among Democrats and Republicans to replace our system with a different voting system. 00:31:53.519 --> 00:31:59.359 But if you had, say, proportional voting or other kinds of voting systems, what you'd end up having is more parties. 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:01.759 And as a result, you'd have to get along with people more. 00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:03.599 You'd you'd have more choices to look at. 00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:07.279 It'd be harder for you to just peg your identity to one party and do whatever they say. 00:32:07.440 --> 00:32:18.000 So, in in principle, you know how to solve it because we could copy a lot of what happens in Europe with like proportional voting systems, but it won't happen because the parties in power have a vested interest. 00:32:18.160 --> 00:32:21.039 They agree that changing our voting system is bad for them. 00:32:21.119 --> 00:32:25.200 They like, they don't like the other side, but they would rather have a duopoly than have real competition. 00:32:25.359 --> 00:32:28.960 So it's it's not likely to change, even though it could be it could be changed tomorrow. 00:32:29.039 --> 00:32:29.920 It's easy, but it won't. 00:32:30.160 --> 00:32:38.480 I I am so intrigued by the cross-section of philosophy and social studies and psychology. 00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:44.640 Like I've always been interested in psychology and social studies, but philosophy, well, we didn't get it in school. 00:32:44.720 --> 00:32:53.039 So I guess I wouldn't know if I was interested in it, but it's just so interesting how you can't subtract human behavior from any issue. 00:32:53.200 --> 00:32:59.759 Like you have to consider that as a part of the equation, which leads me to my next question. 00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:06.960 How do you think histocracy or some of the other ideas you've thrown out today would lean in on our primal lizard brain? 00:33:07.119 --> 00:33:08.319 Oh my God, there's a threat. 00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:16.720 I must vote for this party, even though I don't agree with all of them, because if I don't, XYZ will happen and XYZ is bad. 00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:20.559 And you know, the debates are just a freaking joke, right? 00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:24.240 Like it's it's basically another version of reality TV. 00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:26.480 They might as well be desperate housewives. 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:31.759 So how do you think that would change, or would it, if we had some form of avistocracy? 00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:37.359 Yeah, I think you would improve it because at the end of the day, these parties are running candidates with the goal of getting power, right? 00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:42.480 They want to and they're going to run their campaigns based upon what it takes to win in the system that they have. 00:33:42.720 --> 00:33:49.839 So if you are running on an enlightened preference model, you know, you're trying to win this election, like who would the enlightened public want? 00:33:50.079 --> 00:33:55.279 You would have the parties running different types of advertisements, different candidates, different policies, and so on. 00:33:55.440 --> 00:34:00.880 So if people ask, like, well, you know, in 2016, who would have won an enlightened preference model, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? 00:34:00.960 --> 00:34:01.839 It's like, neither. 00:34:02.000 --> 00:34:03.920 They wouldn't have been the candidates, it would have been someone else. 00:34:04.079 --> 00:34:06.480 And frankly, this is not special to my proposal. 00:34:06.559 --> 00:34:09.440 It's true for really any kind of political change. 00:34:09.679 --> 00:34:14.239 The way parties campaign is endogenous to the way the system is run. 00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:22.000 You know, so this is why, for instance, um, people say things like in 2016, didn't Hillary Clinton win the uh popular vote and uh Trump lost? 00:34:22.079 --> 00:34:24.719 And like, no, she didn't, because there's no such thing as the popular vote. 00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:28.159 And it's not being nitpicky, it's actually a really important point. 00:34:28.400 --> 00:34:38.320 The Republican Party knows it's not going to win California, so it doesn't make sense for it to like campaign hard there to get people to turn out, even though there's a very large number of Republicans in California. 00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:42.559 And if you're a Republican in California, you know the party's not gonna, like the state's not gonna go your way. 00:34:42.719 --> 00:34:44.320 It doesn't make sense for you to bother vote. 00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:48.719 And then similar things happen in, say, Arkansas, if you're a Democrat, it doesn't make sense to bother vote. 00:34:48.800 --> 00:34:53.920 And so the turnout we get and the way that the campaign is run is based upon the fact that we have an electoral college. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:56.480 If we didn't have an electoral college, it would have been run differently. 00:34:56.639 --> 00:34:59.760 We might have different candidates, we might have run, we have different results. 00:34:59.920 --> 00:35:03.199 So this this is just a general point about changing politics. 00:35:03.360 -->

00:35:09.039 If what it takes, if you're trying to appeal to an enlightened voter, you're going to give different types of ads than if you're not. 00:35:09.199 --> 00:35:19.039 And by the way, I I just as an example of enlightenment not working, I remember uh I was in 2011, I was in Australia during their federal election and I was watching the advertisements that they were putting up. 00:35:19.119 --> 00:35:26.400 And I remember the Liberal Party had this interesting ad against the Green Party that went like this The Greens have a proposal for a policy. 00:35:26.559 --> 00:35:30.719 They might be right, but we don't really have enough evidence for it right now. 00:35:30.960 --> 00:35:32.079 We need to get more evidence. 00:35:32.159 --> 00:35:36.719 So for now, we should forbear from doing this and until we get the evidence comes in. 00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:39.920 And I remember thinking, that is the smartest political ad I've ever seen. 00:35:40.079 --> 00:35:41.039 Well, the liberals lost. 00:35:41.280 --> 00:35:43.679 I was really hoping you were gonna do that in an Australian accent. 00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:45.440 I am very disappointed right now. 00:35:45.760 --> 00:35:49.119 You know, I can do accents if I hear them first and they can keep doing them for a while. 00:35:49.199 --> 00:35:53.039 But if I if I don't have a prompt, you mean my Midwestern accent isn't helping you at all? 00:35:53.280 --> 00:35:55.599 Yeah, I mean, you're lucky you don't have a Boston accent anymore. 00:35:55.679 --> 00:35:58.880 I my have a twin brother, and he sounds exactly like Ted Kennedy. 00:35:59.039 --> 00:36:02.639 So somehow the fact that I'm comprehensible at all is is a blessing, I guess. 00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:03.760 That is so interesting. 00:36:03.920 --> 00:36:06.800 Well, as we wrap up, I just have a couple more questions for you. 00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:22.719 And one of them is about what you talked about in your book, the fairness doctrine, which prior to 1987, the fairness doctrine meant that broadcast channels had to, had to present both sides of an argument when covering a topic presented to the general public. 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:25.280 And then Reagan discontinued that in 87. 00:36:25.679 --> 00:36:29.679 So this question is about how do we even get accurate information, right? 00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:42.559 If someone wants to make smarter votes, how do they even gather that information, A, in an unbiased way, and B from sources that they can trust? 00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:43.280 Yeah. 00:36:43.519 --> 00:36:44.159 Great question. 00:36:44.400 --> 00:36:46.159 I mean, frankly, it's really hard to do that. 00:36:46.320 --> 00:36:48.159 And there's not like an easy path. 00:36:48.400 --> 00:36:59.440 One thing I would say though is focusing on the news is probably not the right way to do it because the news is giving you particular facts, and it's often, you know, it's taught by journalists, and journalists are not social scientists. 00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:04.559 So understanding the meaning of a fact requires a kind of deeper type of knowledge. 00:37:04.719 --> 00:37:11.119 So I'd really recommend people do is if you really want to be an informed voter, study political science, study economics, study history. 00:37:11.199 --> 00:37:17.280 Uh, there's a lot of bias there, but if the more of this you see, the more you can kind of start seeing, like, well, what might the biases be? 00:37:17.360 --> 00:37:18.559 How can I kind of overcome them? 00:37:18.719 --> 00:37:22.559 And you start getting some general theories to like peg these facts upon. 00:37:22.719 --> 00:37:25.280 And also, you know, one thing there's always this thing about testimony. 00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:31.039 If someone gives you a statement that's contrary to their interest, it's more likely to be true than if it's in on behalf of their interests. 00:37:31.199 --> 00:37:41.360 You know, so for people will say things like, for instance, the political psychology that I cite in the book, they're like, well, political psychologists, aren't they all like really left-wing and like, you know, basically shills for the Democratic Party? 00:37:41.440 --> 00:37:44.800 And it's like, yes, but interestingly, they are, that's true. 00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:52.800 But interestingly, when they do these studies on political psychology, they overwhelmingly find that Democratic voters are worse than Republican voters in all the things that they're measuring. 00:37:52.960 --> 00:37:54.639 That's against their self-interest. 00:37:54.880 --> 00:37:59.599 So it starts to give some credibility to what they're saying because they're not just pushing for their side in these studies. 00:37:59.679 --> 00:38:07.679 So if you can sometimes you can use these heuristics like that, you know, if a person, if a person says to you, here's my study, and the study implies you should give me money and power, you're like, I don't know about that. 00:38:07.760 --> 00:38:11.199 But if it's just the opposite, then uh then it starts being more plausible. 00:38:11.360 --> 00:38:15.599 But frankly, if you want to be an informed voter, you know, start reading economics. 00:38:15.760 --> 00:38:18.400 And after you get that, get some basic political science down. 00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:20.639 And then after you have those two things, then read history. 00:38:20.719 --> 00:38:21.679 Don't start with history. 00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:22.800 Do history next. 00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:25.039 Then you might have a real sense of how the world works. 00:38:25.199 --> 00:38:33.360 And then you can kind of like when people give you facts, you might be able to ask the right questions about the veracity of these facts or like what the impact of these facts is. 00:38:33.679 --> 00:38:33.920 Hmm. 00:38:34.079 --> 00:38:35.440 This has been such a fun topic. 00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:39.760 I think that's the perfect segue to have you share about your new book. 00:38:39.920 --> 00:38:45.679 You have written like, what, 17 of them, but your newest one is more of a historical overview. 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:48.880 Yeah, I just had a book come out called Democracy a Guided Tour. 00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:52.800 And it really is a history of ideas for people that don't care about history of ideas. 00:38:52.960 --> 00:38:55.280 Like me, I'm not I'm not a history of ideas kind of person. 00:38:55.360 --> 00:39:00.639 I care about arguments and evidence and data, but not not history of who said what per se. 00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:21.679 So what the book does is look at five major sets of values, things like stability, freedom, equality, the virtue of citizens, and the wisdom of the crowd and the quality of their decision making, and look at all the major historical arguments for and against democracy in the West over the past 2,500 years, going back to Plato and coming to yesterday, right? 00:39:21.840 --> 00:39:26.000 So it's sort of like a crash course and everything that you can be said for and against democracy. 00:39:26.159 --> 00:39:36.719 It doesn't take my stance, it doesn't take any particular stance, but if you wanted to really get a short, quick, accessible understanding of like everything to be said for and against it, like that's one place to go. 00:39:37.039 --> 00:39:37.760 Well, thank you. 00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:41.760 This was fantastic, and I look forward to keeping in touch. 00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:42.400 Thank you again. 00:39:42.719 --> 00:39:44.239 Yeah, thanks for having me. 00:39:44.719 --> 00:39:45.760 Thanks for listening. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:50.079 Since you've made it this far, I'd like to invite you to be a part of my private Facebook group. 00:39:50.159 --> 00:39:53.119 And there I post content that I don't share anywhere else. 00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:57.039 You can talk to me directly, and I even do occasional giveaways. 00:39:57.199 --> 00:40:01.679 Search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. 00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:05.760 If you liked this episode, you'll also like the one about virtue signaling. 00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:07.679 That is episode 136. 00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:16.400 Stay tuned next week for a remastered favorite asking why so many people are completely unfazed by official UFO disclosure. 00:40:16.559 --> 00:40:18.719 Until then, keep it curious.