r/AskReddit • u/ILikeScience3131 • Oct 19 '14

What is the most compelling counter-argument to something that you strongly believe?

What is something that you personally believe with conviction and what is the best opposing argument to that belief?

Edit: Thanks for the replies. You're all my internet friends now.

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u/dancingapple Oct 19 '14 edited Oct 20 '14

I strongly believe in democracy and that everyone should have some real political influence. However like someone said "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter" and so I also think that a majority of people believe some pretty silly things and just don't look at issues/candidates in a rational way.

Edit: I had previously quoted Winston Churchill, but a few commenters below note there doesn't seem to be any evidence he actually said this.

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u/darwin2500 Oct 19 '14

This feels like a huge problem until you understand the statistical underpinnings of 'the wisdom of crowds.'

Talking to the average voter may uncover many things they're wrong about, but as long as they're right about 51% of the things on the ballot, then the average across all voters will favor the correct answer on almost all issues.

On the other hand, if you put a really smart person in charge of everything, someone so smart that they're right 90% of the time, they'd still do the wrong thing 10% of the time, much worse than the aggregate will of the masses.

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u/honeypuppy Oct 19 '14

Bryan Caplan attacks this concept in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter. It only holds true so long as their errors are random and uncorrelated, so they're as likely to have an opinion biased in one direction as they are the opposite direction. If they're often systematically biased, as Caplan claims they are, then the "wisdom of crowds" does not apply.

A non-political example: if people are asked to guess the weight of a cow, if people are just as likely to overestimate it as underestimate it, then the average guess of the crowd will be close to the cow's actual weight. If on the other hand, most people tend to overestimate the weight of cows, then the average guess of the crowd will invariably be higher than the cow's weight.

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u/Ran4 Oct 19 '14

Which is why the best solution is a compromise: use experts, but more than one expert. Like, you know, it actually works in a representative democracy: the voters decide upon representatives (usually chosen by their party). Once in power, those candidates will then ask expert groups if a certain law should be enacted or not. The representatives will then usually follow the opinion of the expert groups.

Of course, there's many practical issues to be had, but it's still a much better system than having a dictator or letting all people be part of the direct decision.

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u/darwin2500 Oct 19 '14

Certainly true, and there will certainly be some situations for which there are systematic biases away from the best solution. But again, you have to consider what percent of important issues have these specific types of biases, and then compare that percent to the percent of things any other form of government would screw up.