What I like, though, is that you've pointed to the “wisdom of the crowds” phenomena, where almost nobody's right on an individual basis, but the average of that stuff is very close to accurate. Now, if we could alter our political processes to take that into account… we'd be golden.

The individual voter gets only one vote; in other words, their vote will never, ever determine the outcome of an election–especially a national election, but even a very close, low-turnout local one. Information is costly–for the reasons we talked about, among others. Getting information about what goes on in government, when we, individually, are pretty much powerless to do anything about it, might not be worth it if the information is costly enough (and it usually is; especially costly to get accurate information on a regular basis).

Bottom line: most people just don't find it worth their while to even try to keep up with the facts when it comes to politics.

What I like, though, is that you've pointed to the “wisdom of the crowds” phenomena, where almost nobody's right on an individual basis, but the average of that stuff is very close to accurate. Now, if we could alter our political processes to take that into account… we'd be golden.

The individual voter gets only one vote; in other words, their vote will never, ever determine the outcome of an election–especially a national election, but even a very close, low-turnout local one. Information is costly–for the reasons we talked about, among others. Getting information about what goes on in government, when we, individually, are pretty much powerless to do anything about it, might not be worth it if the information is costly enough (and it usually is; especially costly to get accurate information on a regular basis).

Bottom line: most people just don't find it worth their while to even try to keep up with the facts when it comes to politics.

And so far as politicians are concerned, I've increasingly become aware that I can't hate them as much as I used to because of what you pointed out: they're human. *I'm* human, and I haven't been given access to the institutions that would tempt me to be as much of a slimeball (if not worse).

I'd like to think better of myself, but that brain of mine's been acting shifty. I don't know if I trust it. Thanks for the contribution, good sir.

We are deeply ignorant, this goes for individual scientists as much as it does for American voters. Any source of information we have is inherently uncertain; there is no way we can verify them, especially when they deal with subjects well beyond our own direct experience.

So it isn't as though “facts” lack the power to “change our minds.” It's that we have no easy way of determining what exactly a fact is, except through sources that we trust, but the criteria by which we decide which sources are trustworthy is inherently bundled up with beliefs about reality that we already have. Again, this applies to scientists, who cannot reproduce the results of every experiment that is relevant to their own line of research (because they haven't the time or resources to) and therefore have to assume that, just because they have read that other people have done so, it has, in fact, been done.

This is no more a problem for Democracy than it is for any other system of government, because it is an inherent–dare I use the word–fact of human nature. And political leaders, whether elected, inherited, or put in place by force, are all human.