@johnzhao94 @micsolana Yep, this is the answer. Most smart people (or as we sometimes now say - midwits) don’t know that literally half the population cannot perform what they consider basic mental thinking tasks.
@johnzhao94 @micsolana LITERALLY 50% of the population’s “thinking” can be described as:
1) phrases said to them repeatedly become the “thoughts” they have
2) social approval/disapproval => accepted facts
1) phrases said to them repeatedly become the “thoughts” they have
2) social approval/disapproval => accepted facts
@johnzhao94 @micsolana In the ancient world, where there was much less stratification - smarter people didn’t exist in social bubbles - this was much more well-understood by the few elites: literally the majority of people are morons who cannot understand conditional hypotheticals or history.
@johnzhao94 @micsolana There is NO WAY that a population like that could possibly make intelligent public policy decisions: they literally can’t reason about it.
@johnzhao94 @micsolana That’s where the (what we now consider today) the highly undemocratic idea that true democracy would be an unworkable “rule by mob” and that elites needed to control society came from.
@johnzhao94 @micsolana It wasn’t a question of “no one can possibly stay informed about all issues.” It was “the majority of people literally can’t even think about issues because they are abstract concepts.”
@johnzhao94 @micsolana This also, by the way, should explain to Western theorists why authoritarian empires like China function well: there’s nothing sinister going on - they just have the right elites in charge. That’s all.
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