It Was More A Knee Jerk Reaction Than A Well Thought Out Argument

Last week I published an article entitled, Elon Musks’s Free Speech Thunderdome, where I shared my thoughts on Musk’s plans to “democratise journalism” by giving everybody’s voice equal weight. My overall take was that it was almost certainly a stupid idea, but I didn’t really care because Twitter is a stupid place. 

But after sitting with it for a few days, I began to wonder if I was being a little elitist. 

Why was I so sure that democratising journalism would be a bad thing? Why did I believe that the average member of the public wasn’t as informed as the average journalist? How could I blame people for being distrustful of a media that had gotten so many things wrong?

Serge had similar questions. 

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Serge:

Let's say each of us are a pixel on a gigantic screen. To get the highest resolution possible, each pixel should be free to give its own true color.

When some people who are higher up on the chain of command force the people who are under them to show a specific color, then the whole screen looses resolution and the overall picture is biased.

To climb the social ladder, you don't have to be more intelligent, you simply need to be more ruthless. That is especially true in the mainstream media arena.

All the most intelligent people are part of the population. And the most intelligent of the most intelligent stay away from the establishment.

So I COMPLETELY disagree with your argument that « the average person doesn't have the geopolitical knowledge to make political decision ». The most intelligent are in the population, not in the elite.

There are a million times more intelligent people outside the rings of power than inside. Just look at the complete fiasco in the European Community. Bad decision after bad decision year after year.

They have made that experiment already in a university : they asked the same political hard question to the most intelligent students and to a big random set of ordinary people. They did it many times. Each time the people came up with a better answer to the question. Because the university student are forced to be disconnected from reality for years on end in order to become specialist in one area, knowing nothing about the real world in the meantime, while ordinary people are in reality all the time.

Voilà!

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Steve QJ:

“So I COMPLETELY disagree with your argument that « the average person doesn't have the geopolitical knowledge to make political decision ». The most intelligent are in the population, not in the elite.”

It's not about intelligence though. Nor about the general population vs the "elite." It's just about knowledge. The average person doesn't have the knowledge to make all kinds of decisions. This isn't to say that they're dumb, but rather that knowledge is acquired through effort and dedication that most people are too busy or too disinterested to invest.

Ask most people why they voted for the party they voted for. Many will give you a negative reason, "I don't like the other candidate/party." Many others will give you a single, often local issue, "I agree with the candidates position on jobs/crime/big business." But very few can give you a well-rounded answer. Speaking of the EU, Brexit is a glittering, fairly recent example of this problem.

People aren't pixels. Countries aren't screens. And even if they were, what if the image that each of these individual pixels projected was grotesque? Would showing it in the highest possible resolution be desirable?

Again, this isn't about a lack of intelligence, and your point about ruthlessness vs intelligence is well taken (if a little too broad). I'm not arguing against democracy. I take Churchill's view that it's the worst system of government except for all the others. But I don't at all believe that everybody's input is equally valuable. Especially on topics they don't know much about.

In these areas, as Sowell pointed out, people too often confuse thinking and feeling.

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Serge:

Of course, it was more a knee jerk reaction than a well thought out argument.