From: David Clark (clarkd@rccconsulting.com)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2005 - 13:56:54 MST
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Goetz" <philgoetz@yahoo.com>
To: <sl4@sl4.org>
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 10:28 AM
Subject: Re: Demarchy (was Re: Ethics)
> The thing is, we aren't usually faced with a situation
> in which there is a hard decision to make, and our
> officials weigh the options and use their intellect
> to choose that which is best for the country.
> We are faced with situations in which it doesn't
> matter how smart or wise our officials are, because
> they are acting in the interest of a few special
> interests who fund them, rather than in the interest
> of the country. It would be better to have a dumb
> person trying to solve our problems, than a dozen
> very smart people trying to use our money to solve
> some elite group's problems.
If you think the problems put before all levels of government are so
trivial, I think you should take a look first hand to prove your point. The
problem of pandering to special interest groups shouldn't be solved by using
random or ordinary people. Too much is at stake. I agree that special
interest groups have too much say but how is that helped by using people
that are obviously less qualified? What about using better qualified (not
necessarily the smartest) people and putting a lid on the excesses of the
special interest groups?
> > Linus Pauling might have been
> > a brilliant chemist and
> > researcher but he definitely got in wrong with
> > vitamin C.
>
> Huh? Off-topic: Linus Pauling was less wrong in
> going overboard plugging vitamin C, than the rest
> of the medical establishment was in saying, at the
> time, that there was no medical reason to take
> more than 60mg of vitamin C a day (and trying to
> enforce that by laws prohibiting the sales of larger
> vitamin supplements).
My point about Linus Pauling is that just because he was very smart in
Chemistry and got a Nobel Prize, didn't make his fanaticism about high doses
of vitamin C valid. A smart correct person in one domain doesn't
necessarily translate into a correct person in another domain. I was trying
to show that just using the smartest people to solve problems doesn't always
mean you get the best decision making. However, better decision making in
general is correlated with intelligence IMHO.
-- David Clark
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