Evolving Democracy towards Epistemic Responsibility
Society has become so used to representative democracy as the status quo form of government that no one is really tackling the discussion about its problems. The discussion often goes into "it's the most perfect system of government... so far". The so far often implies that someone else could improve past the problems someday, some time, somewhere, but no one seems to actually make an effort. The status quo remains as is.
So I would like to argue for a new type of democracy, "Epistemic Representative Democracy" or whatever term that would fit the form best.
I've always been a fan of Plato's idea about philosopher-kings, however, not a fan of its removal of people's democratic choice. So my proposal would be to combine the current form of representative democracy with Plato's philosophy kings.
Current problems
At the moment, we have educational requirements for most jobs, especially high-risk jobs, i.e jobs that could lead to harm and death. It wouldn't take much effort to argue that a politician is a high-risk job. Political decisions shape lives all the time and the causality of a political decision could very well kill thousands of citizens without there ever being any direct argued link to those decisions. Say, for example, reducing health care for poor people will definitely kill those who need it the most.
So why isn't there any educational demand on the politicians conducting this high-risk job? Why is it that anyone can become a politician and end up at the top of a nation's power hierarchy?
We live in a time when demagogues rule far more than actual leaders. And they have been placed there because of a representative democracy using psychological warfare, propaganda and advertising. In some cases even manipulating people through targeted advertising. The corruption of democracy we've seen in the last couple of decades has become a big problem for the type of system it's supposed to be. With enough resources, you could actually rule a nation as a dictator by manipulating the democratic system behind the curtain, like a wizard of Oz.
Most of this has to do with the politicians being interested in power, rather than knowledge and leadership. The motivations for becoming a politician often starts out with a will to change something and quickly descends into becoming a struggle for power instead. Like a video game where the goal of the game is drowned in meaningless tasks to the point where the game's initial goal becomes meaningless.
Other solutions
What can we do to change this? There have been tries of implementing this into some governments, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
But it doesn't erase the fact of incompetence within the leadership and it could even enforce it more by mob mentality. We could also decrease the time between elections in order to not have any politician enforcing laws that could fundamentally change a country against a large portion of its population. Still, it won't fix the problem of incompetence.
Epistemic Representative Democracy
My suggestion is to educate politicians. To become a politician able to vote in parliament or being in charge of a sector within the government in power, you need to go through education in order to act within those halls. You could still be a politician outside of it, say, you have a strong opinion that a change is needed, you could join a certain party and try to influence politicians, but you are not allowed to enter parliament or become someone with power unless you educate yourself to this position.
Just like any other high-risk job in society, the ability to shape people's life so drastically that it could kill them demands a level of competence. Just like anyone would be able to educate themself to become a doctor, we would never give that job to someone without any education. A medical license is required in order to be a doctor. Having a political license would mean you at least draw a baseline of knowledge a politician has to have in order to rule a country.
Requirements
Now, what would that education be about? At least 3-4 years minimum of university degree education that focuses on Philosophy (primarily Ethics, Epistemology, Political Philosophy), Psychology, Leadership psychology, dialectic debate, History and Economy.
You can enter this education at any time and in those countries where education needs to be funded by yourself (which should be abolished), the political party can fund that education if you have proven yourself being an asset they want in parliament.
After this education, you will be given a political license. This license can, just like a medical license, be suspended if you conducted malpractice as a politician, like bribes and such.
Parliament praxis
In parliament, interpellation debates often take place to discuss different decisions about to be made. If these debates were conducted in a more philosophical manner where biases and fallacies aren't allowed, it would lead to better and faster decisions since irrelevant things to the decision are canceled out by the praxis of having the debate free from bias and fallacies.
Usually, there's a "speaker of the house" present to keep order during debates and handle the schedule of the day. However, an additional role is added, the "fact-checker", to tackle fact-checking, biases and fallacies during debates. While this could make things go slower, it would definitely clean up debates and settle facts directly instead of in hindsight.
With the Fact-Checker present and the politician's educated knowledge in philosophy and dialectic debate, the discussions and practices in parliament would be both cleaner and more rational in method than what we see today.
People's democratic choice
When people vote, they cannot vote for people without a political license. All names available need to have a license in order to be elected. However, there will be optional questions about what areas in politics you as a voter want politicians to focus on.
If you, for example, vote primarily because you want the healthcare system to be better, you can tickbox your vote on a representative person together with a vote on healthcare as a primary thing you want to be improved. While none of this would affect the election of the representatives, it would inform any elected government about what the entire people are interested in improving in society. Meaning, even if you vote for representatives that will not be part of the ruling government, the entire parliament will know what all voters want to focus on. This would help any government to prioritize their politics during their first year in power.
Not direct-democracy, but direct-influence
Online, on the homepage for the parliament, there will be a forum for the people, where everyone has the ability to propose, and others to vote on, ideas and subjects of interest from the people. If these ideas gets traction on the forum, they will become subjects to address in parliament.
This way, people would have direct influence to start debates on issues and ideas through the philosophical scrutiny of the debate routines, in order to reach informed decisions out of the influence of the people.
Conclusion
While there are many more areas to cover for such a new system of democracy, I think the basics would lead to a much more rationally based government that minimizes bad decisions and keeps most demagogues locked out of power. It demands competence while not locking the door towards influence. It keeps the democratic freedom, even expanding on it, while having a system closer to that of Plato's philosopher-kings.
While not all rules of government look the same, I think the basics of politicians educated in areas important to being leaders and minimizing corruption and irrational actions because of it, is the best step forward to improve upon the current form of representative democracy into taking more epistemic responsibility, i.e an "Epistemic Representative Democracy", or "Epistemic Democracy" for short.
So I would like to argue for a new type of democracy, "Epistemic Representative Democracy" or whatever term that would fit the form best.
I've always been a fan of Plato's idea about philosopher-kings, however, not a fan of its removal of people's democratic choice. So my proposal would be to combine the current form of representative democracy with Plato's philosophy kings.
Current problems
At the moment, we have educational requirements for most jobs, especially high-risk jobs, i.e jobs that could lead to harm and death. It wouldn't take much effort to argue that a politician is a high-risk job. Political decisions shape lives all the time and the causality of a political decision could very well kill thousands of citizens without there ever being any direct argued link to those decisions. Say, for example, reducing health care for poor people will definitely kill those who need it the most.
So why isn't there any educational demand on the politicians conducting this high-risk job? Why is it that anyone can become a politician and end up at the top of a nation's power hierarchy?
We live in a time when demagogues rule far more than actual leaders. And they have been placed there because of a representative democracy using psychological warfare, propaganda and advertising. In some cases even manipulating people through targeted advertising. The corruption of democracy we've seen in the last couple of decades has become a big problem for the type of system it's supposed to be. With enough resources, you could actually rule a nation as a dictator by manipulating the democratic system behind the curtain, like a wizard of Oz.
Most of this has to do with the politicians being interested in power, rather than knowledge and leadership. The motivations for becoming a politician often starts out with a will to change something and quickly descends into becoming a struggle for power instead. Like a video game where the goal of the game is drowned in meaningless tasks to the point where the game's initial goal becomes meaningless.
Other solutions
What can we do to change this? There have been tries of implementing this into some governments, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
But it doesn't erase the fact of incompetence within the leadership and it could even enforce it more by mob mentality. We could also decrease the time between elections in order to not have any politician enforcing laws that could fundamentally change a country against a large portion of its population. Still, it won't fix the problem of incompetence.
Epistemic Representative Democracy
My suggestion is to educate politicians. To become a politician able to vote in parliament or being in charge of a sector within the government in power, you need to go through education in order to act within those halls. You could still be a politician outside of it, say, you have a strong opinion that a change is needed, you could join a certain party and try to influence politicians, but you are not allowed to enter parliament or become someone with power unless you educate yourself to this position.
Just like any other high-risk job in society, the ability to shape people's life so drastically that it could kill them demands a level of competence. Just like anyone would be able to educate themself to become a doctor, we would never give that job to someone without any education. A medical license is required in order to be a doctor. Having a political license would mean you at least draw a baseline of knowledge a politician has to have in order to rule a country.
Requirements
Now, what would that education be about? At least 3-4 years minimum of university degree education that focuses on Philosophy (primarily Ethics, Epistemology, Political Philosophy), Psychology, Leadership psychology, dialectic debate, History and Economy.
You can enter this education at any time and in those countries where education needs to be funded by yourself (which should be abolished), the political party can fund that education if you have proven yourself being an asset they want in parliament.
After this education, you will be given a political license. This license can, just like a medical license, be suspended if you conducted malpractice as a politician, like bribes and such.
Parliament praxis
In parliament, interpellation debates often take place to discuss different decisions about to be made. If these debates were conducted in a more philosophical manner where biases and fallacies aren't allowed, it would lead to better and faster decisions since irrelevant things to the decision are canceled out by the praxis of having the debate free from bias and fallacies.
Usually, there's a "speaker of the house" present to keep order during debates and handle the schedule of the day. However, an additional role is added, the "fact-checker", to tackle fact-checking, biases and fallacies during debates. While this could make things go slower, it would definitely clean up debates and settle facts directly instead of in hindsight.
With the Fact-Checker present and the politician's educated knowledge in philosophy and dialectic debate, the discussions and practices in parliament would be both cleaner and more rational in method than what we see today.
People's democratic choice
When people vote, they cannot vote for people without a political license. All names available need to have a license in order to be elected. However, there will be optional questions about what areas in politics you as a voter want politicians to focus on.
If you, for example, vote primarily because you want the healthcare system to be better, you can tickbox your vote on a representative person together with a vote on healthcare as a primary thing you want to be improved. While none of this would affect the election of the representatives, it would inform any elected government about what the entire people are interested in improving in society. Meaning, even if you vote for representatives that will not be part of the ruling government, the entire parliament will know what all voters want to focus on. This would help any government to prioritize their politics during their first year in power.
Not direct-democracy, but direct-influence
Online, on the homepage for the parliament, there will be a forum for the people, where everyone has the ability to propose, and others to vote on, ideas and subjects of interest from the people. If these ideas gets traction on the forum, they will become subjects to address in parliament.
This way, people would have direct influence to start debates on issues and ideas through the philosophical scrutiny of the debate routines, in order to reach informed decisions out of the influence of the people.
Conclusion
While there are many more areas to cover for such a new system of democracy, I think the basics would lead to a much more rationally based government that minimizes bad decisions and keeps most demagogues locked out of power. It demands competence while not locking the door towards influence. It keeps the democratic freedom, even expanding on it, while having a system closer to that of Plato's philosopher-kings.
While not all rules of government look the same, I think the basics of politicians educated in areas important to being leaders and minimizing corruption and irrational actions because of it, is the best step forward to improve upon the current form of representative democracy into taking more epistemic responsibility, i.e an "Epistemic Representative Democracy", or "Epistemic Democracy" for short.
Comments (58)
It was corrupted from the start and doesn't make much sense anymore, but I've always liked the idea of a self-elected meritocracy providing checks and balances on democratic action. (It would itself need oversight to ensure it remains a representative meritocracy.) It rather relies on people accepting undemocratic judgment though. If something emotive like Brexit failed to pass due to its terrible merit, we'd end up just demonizing then abolishing the meritocratic part entirely.
I think rather than educating the powers that be, would it not be simpler to disqualify uneducated people from executive posts? E.g. the chancellor must hold a doctorate in economics, etc.?
Can't say I really like it, because it's a bit elitist only allowing certain diploma's. And licenses are also always reviewed by people who can be corrupted... which means you're probably just shifting the problem, while creating additional red tape.
But the most fundamental issue I have with it is that I think your diagnosis is wrong. The biggest problem is not education of the politicians IMO, but corruption and nepotism. Solving that is not a question of better education, but of will, or of giving the right incentives.
So what could work to reduce corruption and nepotism?
- financing: make it so that politicians are independent from financing from industry and other powerful lobby groups
- election campaigns: restrict election campaigns to shorter periods so that money becomes less of a factor
- accountability: maybe the biggest problem is that politician aren't held accountable for the things they do. In theory accountability happens through elections, but people hardly know what politicians actually did because of party propaganda, biased media reporting and general complexity of political issues etc.... Not sure how you would solved this, but maybe some kind of fact-based independent review system could be devised that can give the public reliable information of what politicians have done in their term. If you want democracy to work the public needs to be educated, not the politicans.
- political parties: something needs to be done to reduce power of parties, because any parliament of 'representatives' is kind of a joke if parties have that much power, because they invariably end up representing their party and not the people who they are supposed to represent. Maybe make it so that party-leadership are not the ones to decide who gets to be on the elections-list etc etc... to begin with.
- shorter political careers: maybe a maximum duration should be imposed for people to be active at higher political levels, to minimize the potential of politicians building up nepotistic networks.
- media : as the 'third pillar' of democracy a good functioning media is vital to inform the public. Regulate the profession like some other professions, so that they have to uphold certain standards of journalism... or force them to self-regulate, whatever works best. Probably something needs to be done to cut ties with politics also.
These are some of the things that maybe could have some impact on making a less corrupt political system, but I wouldn't count on it... if I learned anything, it's that I never should be surprised by the ingenuity of people to bypass regulation.
A government can be fair, anti-nepotic, and still incompetent through sheer ignorance. This seems like a separable problem.
Yeah but competence is irrelevant if they are not fair, anti-nepotic etc... so it seems like something you'd want to tackle first.
Your suggestions don't seem practical to me. I prefer making voting mandatory because I think it leads towards more moderate leaders, radicals are likely to be a greater percentage of option voting. Polling already exists and I'm not sure what's different about your proposal for it.
You aren't really addressing the major flaws in democracy, we already know we're going to have incompetent politicians. They get voted in as opposed to getting in by merit and whether they keep their jobs isn't necessarily based on whether they do a good job or not. It's a complicated job on top of that, having a degree in philosophy or psychology isn't even likely to help even a little bit.
Identify a real problem and a practical solution, I have no idea what you're even talking about here.
I feel there is a curious disconnect between your analysis and your suggestion. You wrote the following about the current problems:
Quoting Christoffer
None of this seems directly related to education. Rather, the problem seems to be one of [I]virtue[/I]. The people that are successful in politics aren't the people we might want as leaders. That suggests to me that we need to change the mechanism behind success in politics to be more in line with our goals.
It sounds like a Noocracy, and it would be difficult to call it Democracy because it excludes people from the political process and denies them power based on their education and certification. Politics would becomes a debate between elites, none of which would be representative of the general polity.
Personally I’d much rather vote for someone picked randomly from the phone book than to be led by some over-educated, certified politician.
That is a start perhaps. But disqualifying does not equal the people in power to have the necessary merits to govern the nation. I think a key difference here is that politics starts to conduct philosophical praxis of discussion rather than just having "an education". I also think that its key that the politics education, which is focused on specific parts of what it means to govern, i different from just having "a higher education".
In essence: You don't educate yourself and then chose to become a politician, you chose to become a politician and then educate yourself.
The problem with corruption in the way you describe wouldn't really nullify the benefits of educated politicians. And I wouldn't call it elitists as long as the ability to educate yourself into becoming a politician is available to anyone. Just as I mentioned that different countries have different handling of education, being educated to becoming a politician needs to be (in countries with bad handling of education funding, such as the US) free and available to anyone who wants to pursue it. You can also join the party you are interested in joining, forming proposals and discussing with politicians in parliament, but you cannot be a part of that parliament voting system and be a representative that can be voted into power. So you can still be a part of the parties in power and if you want to pursue a higher position enter the educational program for that. I don't see a problem with having a higher demand of education like this. It's not really elitist, it's focusing the political praxis into effective measures while minimizing incompetence from the power positions.
It wouldn't exclude anyone from politics, it focuses politics into better praxis.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Those are two different problems really. To educate politicians has little to do with corruption. As you mentioned, you could be corrupt and conduct nepotism in a system with education for politicians, so battling those problems are really a separate issue than what I'm fundamentally talking about here. I'm trying to focus parliamentary politics into philosophical praxis so that the incompetent mud throwing that can be witnessed in many parliaments today disappears in favor of better dialectic scrutiny.
If a system is corrupt, it is always corrupt, whatever system it is. What you say is like saying that democracy, autocracy and communism are the same because all of them can be corrupted and feature nepotism, but the truth is that some are better for the people than others and some of them are easier to corrupt than others. I would argue that it's harder to corrupt epistemic democracy than regular representative democracy. But even then, it's not really an issue that this system tries to tackle.
You can tackle both at the same time and epistemic democracy has far better methods to tackle corruption and nepotism than regular representative democracy, so it's a start, not a solution. I'm with you that corruption is a problem, but it's a separate branch of political philosophy that is present in any political system and can be tackled intellectually independent of which is present.
Are we still talking university-type education here? If so, I don't see how education after election avoids the problem you ascribe to disqualification. You still end up with a politician with a relevant education.
It would circumvent NOS4A2's point about meritocratic elitism keeping out those denied equal education opportunities, since you would be elected without necessarily having been satisfactorily through the education system, whereas a meritocracy would favour the privileged.
What about practicalities? What does an elected official do, government-wise, between being elected and graduating? Do they still govern without competence? Or is it a long game? What if, by the time the elected official graduates, the electorate no longer want her? Isn't that just voting in beneficiaries of presumably state-funded education? And is degree level really the best we can hope for? I'd rather my economy be in the hands of a doctor of economics, in the same way I'd want my surgery in the hands of a doctor of medicine.
I agree that mandatory voting is key to get better democratic representation of a nation's wills. But I don't see how that is an issue in epistemic democracy since both representative and epistemic democracy would benefit from mandatory voting without nullifying or changing the benefits that epistemic has over normal representative democracy?
Quoting Judaka
How do you get incompetence when you have the education needed for a job? Yes, we can have incompetent doctors, but compare that to having doctors without any education.
Also, in the system I propose, politicians don't get in by merit, they are still voted in. You seem to miss that it's still a democratic system, only that the ones being elected have an education specifically addressed for political practices. The problem today is that politicians have no education in areas that broadly affect your ability to form rational conclusions in debates or lead with respect to balanced knowledge. If you have an education within the areas proposed you at least have a baseline for conducting discussion and rational thought through a method more based in unbiased thinking than someone without any such knowledge.
When you say that it's "not likely to help even a little bit", that is a seriously flawed rational conclusion. Are you really certain that through my system it won't help anything at all? I'm not sure you proposed counter-arguments to conclude this system to have no impact at all. And I don't think you really read through it all in detail since you seem to miss aspects like merit not being the reason to be elected, but being a foundation for your job if you are elected.
I understand what you mean, education isn't a source that eradicates the people who only seek to be politicians out of the need for power alone. However, I think that the requirement of education can A) make people who have that ambition only to reach power either give up their attempts and quit or B) reprogram them into proper praxis and reduce such primary goals. I also think that because it's not only about education but how debates in parliament are handled, they wouldn't be able to survive such fact-based scrutiny. How can someone who doesn't apply their education survive debates with the fact-checker? They would be humiliated in parliament if they have attempted to bypass the praxis of parliament.
I'm not sure if you actually read everything I wrote since I mention Plato's idea of philosopher kings and why that in itself doesn't work. Instead, I proposed a synthesis.
No one is excluded, in what way is someone excluded?
Quoting NOS4A2
Did you read the entire argument?
Quoting NOS4A2
Did you read the entire argument?
You form a counter-argument in a way that seems to strawman what I wrote rather than actually adress it dialectically.
Are you elected as soon as you chose to become a politician? No, you chose to be a politician and then run in elections. If you chose to become a politician in an epistemic democracy, you have to go through 3-4 years of education in order to run in an election or be part of the parliament.
And since I think that people in here are very used to a very specific form of education, i.e you need to pay for it yourself, what I'm talking about is education is free of charge that anyone can get. Just like in countries with better educational systems, but as a form of democratic responsibility, education to become a politician is always free, even in free-market systems.
Remember, it's not "just education", it's a specific education towards being a politician, just like education to become a medical doctor.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
But it can't if you have an educational system that is free of charge. If anyone can get the education to become a politician, it won't favor the privileged. I understand that in a country where education is usually the result of being able to independently finance it, a society with free education or a society where at least the education to become a politician is free, there are no barriers. You cannot get privileged education if it's not based on the economy of the student. If the state secure housing and education free of charge for anyone educating themselves to become a politician, then you aren't bound by privileges.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You have this in the wrong direction. You educate yourself and are available to be elected, you cannot be elected before education. Please, check the argument again. You do not get elected and then educate yourself, but you can be part of the parties outside of parliament and being a minister of something, meaning you cannot participate in voting in parliament or being a minister of something, but you can be part of pushing the party outside of it. If you want to be part of the ones actually voting in parliament, making decisions and being ministers of certain areas, you have to have a political license, which is given through passing education.
It's simple, you can be a politician, you can involve yourself in politics, but you cannot be part of decision-making without education. If you aspire to do that, you have to get your political license and it is free of charge to get, but you need to educate yourself through 3-4 years of education within the areas I proposed.
Requiring several years of study might dissuade some people. But then the higher positions in politics tend to be taken up by older people anyways. Most people need to travel up through various local and minor posts before they reach the spotlight, and there is frequently a lot of not at all glamorous work involved. So I am not sure whether people who want power but are unwilling to put in the effort are actually all that common in politics. Sure you have populists which get catapulted up out of nowhere, but it's not clear yet whether that will be a major feature of democracies going forward.
Quoting Christoffer
I am very sceptical of that line of thinking. It feel like it could easily go the other way, too. A form of modern aristocracy forming around these courses where people are socialised as part of an elite. There is already arguably a problem with certain prestigious universities forming networks of contacts that lift people into high places regardless of their skills.
Quoting Christoffer
I think that changes to the way that debates and policy decisions work is, in general, the right approach to the problem. The problem with any neutral element of a parliament is, of course, how it is controlled. It's easy to imagine a "fact checker" neutered by onerous requirements to establish a "fact", or debate simply avoiding concrete proposals that are subject to checking.
I think that, as a starting point, it would be helpful to look more closely at the actual structure of incentives that surrounds politicians. For example, maybe it's too easy to convince a politician to vote for some lobbyists proposal because, in the grand scheme of things, their vote won't be noticed anyways and they figure they can't really spend the time to figure out the consequences either. Having parts of parliament with more clearly defined roles and responsibilities might help with that.
First, would you agree that epistemic democracy is an improvement over representative democracy?
Second, what are your suggestions to battle the issues you brought up within the context of epistemic democracy? I'm seriously asking here, since it's important to address the issues you brought up.
Quoting Echarmion
Agreed, what do you think can be done to battle this? Can we make adjustments to the education in order to minimize these types of elitism? Even if people lift others regardless of their skills, can the skills be at focus so that them alone are needed for succession? How would someone be able to debate in parliament with the fact-checker without finishing the level of knowledge needed for it? Even if they finish the education, they can't form arguments with biases in parliament and they can't skew facts. Fact skewing would dismiss an argument in parliament.
Quoting Echarmion
Can you form a rational argument without facts? I don't think you can. And any attempt would highlight a bias or fallacy-based argument. The "fact-checker" is also able to dismiss arguments not formed to philosophical scrutiny. Reason being that in order for you to propose something in parliament, it needs to have a logical argument attached to it. If all in there are educated in philosophy and the other areas I listed up, they would all have the tools to form proper arguments for decisions and the debates in there would be focused on the rational rather than the populistic.
Quoting Echarmion
I think that in an epistemic democracy you cannot propose something that hasn't been put through philosophical debate. Meaning that there can be lobbyists, but if there isn't a logical argument behind it, it won't be able to reach voting.
But I think you bring up good points in this, things to address. I just think that because epistemic democracy is changing very fundamental practices of how representative democracy works, we need to view these issues through that lens.
Earlier you said you don't need to be educated to be a politician, only to be elected, so the election appeared to be the crucial point, not the career move. The fact that the degree might be funded by the politician's party also suggests that.
But I guess you mean that if a politician wishes to stand for election, he or she cannot do so without the requisite education level. In other words, they are disqualified.
What your idea (putting aside things like limiting the degree to philosophy and such) really does in addition is provide a framework for politicians to get free degrees if they're ambitious. I'd rather they get them because that field is what they're driven by.
As for philosophy, it's only the right grounding for governance according to... uh... philosophers :) I think education in philosophy, psychology, sociology, physics, and history would all be beneficial to potential leaders and representatives, but I'd still prefer the woman specialising in law to be a specialist in law, the man specialising in economics to be a specialist in economics. Nothing against philosophy graduates, but, to follow your own analogy, I'd rather my surgeon have a medical doctorate than a two-two in philosophy.
Doctors don't just get an education, they have to pass exams that show their competency, then they need to do internships and then if they got past all that then they still need to do their job at least somewhat competently or they'll lose their licence. You can't compare what it takes to become a doctor with what it takes to complete a philosophy course.
I mean it's just silliness to begin with to say that a philosophy or history course will even help being a politician in the first place. One can't really compare that with studying medicine to practice medicine.
Also, I misread your post and thought you said people would need a voting licence and that's why I made the comments about mandatory voting, my mistake there.
Anyway, yes I am pretty certain that none of your suggestions will help, I think most of them already exist. Trump is fact-checked all the time by the media and his supporters don't care, why does putting a fact-checker in parliament make any difference. The politician licence is a waste of time, none of those classes you suggested are likely to help a politician do their jobs better and I don't think that the problem with democracy is lack of education for politicians in the first place.
Politicians already debate issues in parliament, they debate on the media, they debate in elections, how much more debating do we need.
Your suggestions are either redundant or superfluous and really I think you've failed to address real problems in representative democracy in the first place. I think mandatory voting alone would probably stop many of the totally unqualified people who are getting elected recently.
Not sure what you mean here? The education to become a politician is supposed to be free for all. In some countries without free education, that might mean funding from the political party itself.
Point being that anyone will be able to get the education, not a rich elite.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, in order to be elected in a democratic election, you need a political license that proves a certain level of competence for the job. Point being that anyone can get that education, but you need it for the job as a representative.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I get what you mean that they should be educated in the field they are a minister for, but as we know, most parliament politics is handled by a vote through all present in the parliament. So it doesn't really matter if you get a spear-headed education for a role in politics, everyone needs to, for example, know economics in order to vote on such things. That's why I proposed an education specifically aimed at the broad spectrum of what politicians need in order to be competent in their job.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Your point here touches upon an important factor and that is "what does politics require in a field of education?". Philosophy, the broad spectrum of it, actually incorporate areas that are needed for political praxis. You get the knowledge in dialectics and how to form arguments in debates free of biases and fallacies. You learn the complexities of subjects that are key to political decisions. You learn important ideas that are the groundwork for political laws and legislations.
Specialized knowledge doesn't form the broad ability to debate and understand complex dynamic issues in society. You can handle specific tasks with specialized knowledge, but philosophical knowledge would mean you understand how to think outside of your own biases. This is why I think politicians need a deep understanding of philosophy and philosophical praxis and why it's important that it exists as a praxis within parliament as well.
It's not a philosophy course, it's an education for becoming a politician. It's a new field that doesn't exist outside the concept of epistemic democracy and therefore you can't judge the level of demand that education has on itself. What I meant was that if you apply the level of demands that a doctor have on their education based on their responsibility the job implies, onto the job of a politician, then you understand the level of needed responsibility put upon politicians.
As I also listed, philosophy is one part of the education for politicians.
Quoting Judaka
Why not? Why would philosophy, history, economy, psychology not be crucial areas to learn in order to be an educated politician? If you would name the fields of competence that a politician needs to have in order to be an unbiased political person in government, what would those be? Right now, politicians have no requirements at all, is that better than a baseline of education for the job?
How is it really different educating yourself for a job like a politician that can affect millions of people compared to a doctor who's competence handles a few dozen lives? I would argue that a politician has enormous power over people in society, so having that responsibility needs the knowledge to govern in an unbiased way.
Quoting Judaka
Having a fact-checker in parliament means that if you present something in parliament that wouldn't get past that person, you can't propose it in parliament. It makes a huge difference. If you can't argue in a rational matter with facts backing it up, you can't pull through a decision you want to make.
I guess that this makes more sense in more parliament driven nations than nations like the US where a president has more power. But try adjusting the form to the US system and see how it would act out.
Quoting Judaka
You don't agree that democracies are filled with demagogues and that none of them can pull through any philosophical scrutiny for the decisions they try to vote through? Don't you agree that there are plenty of politicians who are not competent for their job?
Quoting Judaka
Debating through philosophical scrutiny, fact-checked, unbiased and without fallacies, is not at all close to what we see at the moment. The level of debates at the moment is a mud-throwing spectacle, not proper debate. I think that people have normalized political debate into the mud-throwing spectacle and forgot that debates should lead to some informed place of knowledge. If we had philosophical rules of conduct to these debates, they would look very very different.
I hope you get what I mean here? Philosophical dialectics aren't the type of spectacle debates we see in media today, it's aimed at figuring out the truth of a subject, not what's popular.
Quoting Judaka
I think that you haven't really taken a step back and looked at what I'm really proposing with epistemic democracy. I do agree with you fully that mandatory voting is positive for democracy, but I think that my idea about epistemic democracy handles issues more related to the praxis of government between elections rather than elections themselves.
I don't think that the demagogues you're talking about would be changed by this course, I don't think that the already educated people who wanted to get into politics would need the course. I don't think any of the things you listed to be studied would actually help somebody getting into politics.
There are already plenty of competent people who want to get into government, the thing is, democracy hasn't changed, the morons who got elected are still going to get elected and they're still going to be morons. You can't avoid this and honestly, I have no faith that the people you like would be people that I thought well of nor that the people you dislike are people that I also dislike, that's democracy for you.
I don't know what kind of fact-checker you're talking about, someone with complete authority to tell people to stfu if they say something wrong? I'm not sure how practical that would be and if they don't have that authority then I'm not sure how it's different from normal fact-checkers.
Quoting Christoffer
The thing is that with the Trump debates, for example, not only was it broadly criticised that he made stuff up but also that he changed his opinions and that his answers to questions were vague and nobody knew what his actual policies were or how he planned to do what he said he'd do. Not only did it not matter but they ended up giving him so much coverage that it ended up just helping him become more popular.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets by because basically as far as the left is concerned the intentions justify the means. She has no clue what she's talking about but it simply doesn't matter to people. All of this is already out in the open and I don't know what you're planning to differently, it seems like you just want to strongarm voters.
I don't share your respect for philosophy either, I don't assume practitioners of philosophy are rational, intelligent thinkers. Discussions on this forum are filled with fallacies and few here have any fucking clue about the facts. In my experience, philosophers are the worst when it comes to facts because they think complex questions can be answered with baseless theories and morality.
So what I don't really understand is how epistemic democracy is different from media fact-checking. Are you proposing that someone is tasked with telling politicians in parilament how to speak, how to argue, to shut up when they're wrong and correct them etc?
1) Demagogues won't bother with education as much as people invested in politics for reasons beyond themselves. If it takes effort to handle the praxis of politics and the praxis of parliament demands philosophical scrutiny, you can definitely filter out some of the bad apples in this regard. Not all, but most. Most notably, more than the current system.
2) Educated people doesn't mean they are educated in the subjects needed for politics. Being "Educated" doesn't mean anything outside of what the education is about. I proposed a foundation of education that is connected to what it means to govern and handle politics. Other lines of education does not focus on the nature of politics in the same way.
3) Do you study to get into something or do you study for the knowledge applied towards the job you do? I think you view education in a different way if you frame it as a hurdle to get a job and not a requirement for the praxis of the job. It is needed not only for the job as a politician but for being able to handle the praxis of parliamentary discussions. If you don't have that education you won't be able to handle the interpellation debates in parliament, so how can you be a politician if you don't know those things within this system?
Quoting Judaka
Not in an epistemic democracy. You are talking about the status quo, I'm talking about a fundamental change in the democratic system. So the morons can't be elected if that is changed.
Quoting Judaka
Socratic dialectic praxis. They will have the ability to fact check information proposed in arguments in real-time during debates and if someone uses false facts they are dismissed from the argument for 5-10 minutes re-working their argument before continuing. These fact-checkers are also trained in spotting biases and fallacies and can stop an argument if it doesn't hold up to philosophical scrutiny.
This is why you can't really smurf yourself into parliament without the necessary education to handle these debates.
Quoting Judaka
What normal fact-checkers? There are none in parliament. The debates taking place, as of now, happens sometimes between politicians who aren't even close to educated and with no fact-checkers in the room whatsoever. There's never a praxis of rational thought conducted in parliaments today.
Quoting Judaka
Don't see the relevance to the topic here really. He is a narcissistic demagogue sure, and he gets popular because of populism. Epistemic democracy would make it impossible for someone like him to reach his position.
Quoting Judaka
What does this have to do with epistemic democracy?
Quoting Judaka
People educated in philosophical methods have better understanding of rational argumentation and with a fact-checker in parliament, you get debates more focused on rational thought and facts rather than the clusterfuck of current political debates.
Quoting Judaka
Are the people on this forum academic philosophers? If you base your opinion on your experiences on this forum, then you really don't know what philosophical praxis is about. This forum is a mash between schooled philosophers, auto-didactic philosophers and uneducated attention-seekers who have no knowledge at all.
Would you agree that philosophical praxis of dialectic debates and discussions are better than just uneducated arguments between two opposing sides without any form of guidance in method? I would strongly argue that having philosophical praxis of dialectic debates is light years better than what we see in politics today. As per Plato's argument against democracy.
Quoting Judaka
Media can be corrupted. Media right now is working towards their financers, not towards truth. While I defend media in terms of being better at fact-checking than the common citizen, they are so far from being unbiased and properly fact-checking. The people also need to interpret media correctly and accept their fact-checking, which they today don't do.
What I'm proposing is politicians schooled to be politicians, available to all, free of charge, but demanding of them to make an effort in philosophical scrutiny, both during education, but also in play during work within the parliament.
The philosophical praxis of debate and dialectics is not "someone telling them how to argue", it is method. How to propose decisions in informed, rational matters that need to be proposed with an argument that holds against biases and fallacies. The fact-checker checks if politicians in parliaments have or don't have proper arguments for their proposals. If they don't, they have to adjust them.
I think you kind of strawman my argument into something it's not. I'd recommend that you look through my OP again and ask yourself if that system is an improvement over the current system or not. Of course, I'm probably coming from another perspective and form of government than the US has, but ask yourself, how would things be if the educational requirement I proposed in my OP were applied to presidents? If a president is required to have that education in order to be available to that position, why would that be worse than how things are today?
The key thing is that you argue specifics as counter-arguments against a broad change in the democratic system. You use arguments that focus on details in which you say that "you think it wouldn't improve" instead of looking at it like "will it improve against what we have right now"?
I'm not proposing a utopia, but an improvement on the status quo of the democratic system. You have to ask yourself: is it an improvement or not? Not whether some problems will persist, but whether there will be improvements to politics. I think that everyone would agree that if politicians were better educated in philosophy, they would more likely make informed decisions compared to those without philosophical education, right? I would argue that is a pretty logical deduction of the matter.
Yes, but these are a philosopher's ideas of what's most important which, unsurprisingly, bend toward philosophy more than pragmatic skills of governance.
Is approaching subjects philosophically biased or unbiased? You speak of philosophy as a form of biased ideal and politics in government as being neutrally pragmatic?
Isn't the neutral approach the philosophical approach? You can't have philosophical praxis without the demand of an undbiased dialectic approach.
You've proposed a 3-4 year degree split into several large topics, you have to be realistic about how deep they're getting into those topics. People from this course are not going to be on the level of career philosophers and psychologists or experts on history as a result of this course. How can a 3-4 year course on so many topics be advanced in these topics?
So what you're giving these politicians is just an introduction to topics which don't really have anything to do with being a politician. It sounds less intense than the average undergraduate degree. Why are you acting like people coming out of this degree are going to be experts in these topics? They're going to be receiving less of a philosophy education than what you get from an undergraduate philosophy degree.
So someone three or four years out of high school gets their politician licence and they're now a competent politician lol. Not only are they not going to be remotely competent but I don't think they're even slightly better off than before they began this course. How you gunna compare a doctor with a politician licence holder.
Demagogues would still exist as politicians still need to get voted in and they aren't suddenly experts on all topics related to the economy, industries, infrastructure, history, geopolitics, budgets, taxation, foreign nations, policing and any other topic they might speak on or be responsible for.
As for "parliament praxis", it sounds nice but I am concerned about how practical this suggestion is. I am unconvinced by the licence, I'm also unconvinced by the fact-checker and the main reason why is that I'm not sure that this fact-checker wouldn't just get into arguments. Alternatively, this person has absolute authority and just sin bins people.
You say biases and fallacies aren't allowed but I don't know, I'm sceptical. Aren't you at all scared by the fact-checker? If they aren't satisfied with your argument then you're just sent out of parliament or not allowed to speak?
I don't really have any faith in what is essentially less than an undergraduate philosophy student, I don't expect an increase in how informed they are on things or that they'll be impressively logical or even good debaters. I have no idea where your self-assurance on this is coming from. The licence is just a waste of peoples' time, not really making things worse or better.
In all honesty, I've rarely met a neutral philosophy graduate. But that's not the point. Suggesting that a philosophy degree is the best way to derive great economic policy is like suggesting someone learn Latin if they plan to move to Spain. Yes, you'll learn lots about some of the underpinnings, but you'll not have expertise, and most of what you'll learn will be irrelevant. Would you accept a heart transplant from a biologist?
Okay, even if we would try to bracket the corruption and nepotism question, I still think this misses the mark to some extend. The mud throwing is not a consequence of incompetence primary, but of ruling-party/opposition-party dynamics. They see parlement as an arena wherein they fight for the favour of the crowd... and election cycles and the principle of democracy gives them the incentive to see it that way. And so I think if you don't change that incentive, that dynamic won't really go away.
Another point I want to make is that you maybe underestimate the 'dialectic scrutiny' that happens behind the scenes. A politician is no isolated island that relies solely on his or her abilities. Usually they have a personal staff of various experts they can rely on, and more importantly they are part of parties that certainly have teams of experts in every domain. My point being here that I don't think they are really incapable of having a good discussion of the issues in parliament to begin with... it's just that that is not what is expected of them. Positions on issues are usually well scrutinized and determined beforehand along partylines, and what happens then in parliament is not a matter of dialectics anymore, but of rethorics.
3-4 year minimum. We could figure out the necessary length of education. Maybe because a politician with power over the people is a high-risk job as my example with a doctor's medical degree and license, it needs to be longer, just like for complex jobs like being a doctor. 5-6 years?
The education does not need to spearhead the knowledge like for example the topic of history wouldn't lead you to a master's degree in history. All the topics and courses are tailored around the requirements of a politician.
Like for instance, what is the most important part of philosophy for a politician to have if we prioritize? Aside from the basics in philosophy, ethics and political philosophy are probably the most important parts. Moral philosophy, justice, political theory, and economy. While knowledge in dialectic debates is a preparation for the actual praxis of parliament.
I could write a book surrounding getting all the details down about epistemic democracy but needed to keep things short here.
Quoting Judaka
You are right in that these things don't have anything to do with being a politician within the current form of government or parliament of representative democracies. But this is a new system of democracy aimed at having all members of parliament educated in areas which relate to how we reach truth and rational conclusions about different topics.
The knowledge required to be a part of parliament or government helps to reduce or get rid of politicians not able to dialectically balance complex issues in society before making proposals. While the nature of parliamentary debates is changed into a more philosophical dialectic with much higher standards of arguments than they have now. In order to lead a country, make decisions or vote in parliament on complex subjects the education prepares the necessary tools of practice while the methods of debate prepare for how parliamentary procedures.
Quoting Judaka
They are not going to be experts or have master's degrees in those topics, they will have a political license. A doctor working in a hospital is for instance not educated to do medical research, they are trained in medicine in terms of repetition of practices. If a master's degree in philosophy is what you get for studying philosophy specifically and then be able to philosophical research in academia, getting a political license is closer to the doctors medical license than the researcher of medicine or biology.
They are two different things involving the same areas of knowledge.
Quoting Judaka
How so? If a politician comes from no education and becomes a parliamentary politician or even minister with power over society, how is that [i"]the same"[/i] as someone coming from this type of education? You also have a changed parliamentary practice that requires knowledge in philosophical debate. An uneducated person in that place wouldn't be able to propose anything in parliament or debate anything they want to pursue as a proposal since they would be unable to hold the level of praxis needed in such debates. It's a new system, not just the education part.
Quoting Judaka
Is that what I'm proposing here? That they will be experts? No, I propose a level of education to minimize the number of demagogues and incompetent politicians. You can still have incompetent doctors, so should we then just get rid of educations for becoming a doctor? No, we have educations for doctors because it's a high-risk job that can risk people's lives if done by an amateur. Why wouldn't parliamentary and government practice be any different in this regard?
Proposing a system that improves upon the standards of representative democracy we have now, is not equal to creating a utopian democratic system. I think that you are making a fallacy with the idea that "because epistemic doesn't make experts of politicians it is not better than the status quo." Are you certain that epistemic democracy would have no improvement on governments and parliamentary practices?
Quoting Judaka
Doesn't the current speaker of the house has the same kind of power initially? The fact-checkers job is to review data mentioned in arguments and make sure that the correct data is used while being an expert on biases and fallacies so that if someone makes arguments without the required philosophical scrutiny, they need to rephrase their argument. If you listen to politicians in parliament debate about issues today, they are rarely doing even close to an adequate job if the intention is to reach a truth the parliament can vote on.
Epistemic democracy demands much higher quality in parliamentary debates, which require politicians in those debates to have education on such philosophical scrutiny while being reviewed by someone who's specific job is to review the quality of arguments used. While this sounds like taking up more time than the system right now, just think of Brexit and check the debates that went on about that and how long that took. It won't take up more time, it will focus the arguments and reduce the time before parliamentary voting on a subject. And since all in parliament have the same required education, they are educated in how to analyze the arguments presented in order to form a voting decision better.
Epistemic democracy puts a higher demand on the quality of praxis within parliament, it puts a higher demand on the decision making being based on rational arguments rather than being a "popularity contest".
Quoting Judaka
No, you are not sent out. As I said, you get a request to rephrase your argument. In essence, if you present the wrong data or if you present an argument where you jump to conclusions and don't back it up in any rational way, the fact-checker can speak up and point these things out, give you 5-10 minutes to re-phrase the argument correctly or the choice to postpone until next time if you need more time to change the argument. This doesn't mean you are silenced or that the debate is over and the other side won because of it, because the higher quality of praxis is about reaching closer to truth instead of just having winner or losers in debates. As mentioned, getting away from the popularity contest and put an effort into increasing the quality of rational arguments.
Imagine if there was such a person on this forum when doing more serious philosophical discourse. Someone who will mark your argument where you make biases and fallacies, who would point out that you might need to rephrase your argument if you have logical holes in them or facts that are wrong. I would argue that such a person is helpful, not a hindrance. Especially if we are talking about facts. Sometimes there can be a discussion going on for pages and pages based on someone's faulty facts and the entire discussion rendered meaningless because of it. Which is often what happens in parliamentary debates if someone presents faulty facts.
Quoting Judaka
Is a medical license a waste of time? Is driving licenses a waste of time? You can be a doctor without knowing a thing about medical research and biology, you can drive a car without ever being a racing pro. I think you are making a black/white fallacy out of this, in which you are unable to see the middle ground of it. Will epistemic democracy be a utopia? No. Will it be the solution to all political problems? No. Will it improve the quality of parliament and government praxis? In all logical sense, yes.
I understand your skepticism, but to say that a political license out of education for it won't matter at all and that a new standard of praxis in parliament won't change anything from how it's done right now isn't very true is it?
What is the difference between a parliamentary politician in representative democracies today and someone in an epistemic democracy? Based on the educational foundation I proposed. Are current representative politicians experts in economy? The education behind the political license isn't meant to make them experts, it's meant to make them educated in how to review complex things in society, the broad spectrum, to see all moving parts, not just one. The education is meant for them to be prepared to debate such complexities without biases and fallacies to increase the quality of parliamentary praxis.
I think you misunderstand the reason of having the education. It's not meant to make them experts in economy or history, it's meant to make them experts in political duties. Right now we have politics in parliament who might not even have a basic high degree in anything. How is that better?
If you change the praxis of debate, if you demand unbiased arguments without fallacies and factual errors, there's no need for mud throws. You can argue for the people who voted on you, but in a much higher quality than just populistic rants.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That won't go away. I'm just proposing to increase the quality of politicians in parliament. If they aren't experts in an area, they need to be experts on how to handle information and debate a topic. It's a different field of expertise to be a politician, that right now in our current system we have no such demand for expertise. Epistemic democracy force politicians to not just be representatives, but experts in being representatives. That's the key difference.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Which is the change to parliament I also propose here. The debates taking place is there to reach a voting conclusion. So increasing their quality would increase the quality of those votes.
Essentially I want to move away from experts who give their expertise to amateurs who then debate and decide. I want to have experts who give expertise to dialectic experts who decide closer to facts than popularity.
But that's not the differentiation I made. I'm on board with elected officials being educated, and I'm on board with philosophy forming part of that (indeed everyone's) education. But even in debate, I'd still prefer the woman arguing economic policy to understand economics first and foremost. A two-two in philosophy just doesn't cut it.
It is your belief that there's a simple equation: a philosophy graduate = a better political thinker. I don't even think this is true. Some philosophy graduates will be superior thinkers. But some will be solipsists, a great many are theologians, some deny the material world, some deny causality, some will argue for an ethics of self-advancement. I don't want any of those people running the country.
I'd actually make a stronger argument for physics being a better option: it at least grounds you in some understanding of reality; physicists are overwhelmingly atheists which will guarantee a separation of church and state; they have an average IQ well above politicians; they tend not to be partisan (at least here); they are equipped with the mathematical knowledge to understand economic theory; they are used to modelling complex systems like a society; they're used to thinking big picture (cosmology) so are unlikely to be vulnerable to malicious lobbies; they also understand that the smallest of things are important. Okay, their empathy skills are low, but there's the argument that you actually need your leaders to be a little psychopathic. Overall, physics is clearly the superior choice of universal political education... according to a physicist!
I don't think you fully understood the ramifications of what I'm saying. It's not the representatives who decide. Or they decide only 'technically', the decisions are determined beforehand. So what gets decided beforehand determines the quality of the votes, not the parliamentary proces.
Quoting Christoffer
The need is determined by the incentive, which remains unchanged. If you want a higher level of rethoric in parliament, what would really help I think is if people would expect a higher level of debate... if they would punish representatives electorally for poor rethoric. And maybe you could accomplish that by educating or informing the people... not necessarily the politicians.
How do you decide the requirements for being a politician without being yourself political? You cannot create an impartial course on these topics.
Besides learning parliament rules, what else is impartial if it's specific?
If you had explained the license differently then my comments would be different. If it was a specialised course that prepared you for the practical elements of the job you're intending to take then it could be compared to medicine. As it stands, it's more of a bachelor of arts.
Quoting Christoffer
Here's already the issue with the "fact-checker" who looks out for biases and fallacies, your accusation here is demonstrably false given how I've repeatedly said that I think it will make absolutely no improvement on the status quo. When it was just facts, I was okay with it, now it's also biases and fallacies and I think it's too dangerous.
I certainly don't trust anyone to moderate my posts, the moderators on this forum are legit the worst posters here.
The idea is asinine and that's my position, now I can assume the role of fact-checker and do not respond to my criticism, just go back and rewrite your argument, I will let you know if it's logical or not and if it isn't then you can rewrite it again. You didn't lose this debate but I've determined that your position is illogical therefore you must rewrite it so we can get to the truth beyond your biases and fallacies.
No comment on the increased quality of parliament debates.
I think ChatteringMonkey put this in perspective when arguing that politicians have a staff made up of experts and that many decisions are made outside of the actual parliamental debates. So you don't have to be a spearheaded expert in economy for putting forth an economy proposal. However, if everyone is educated to be politicians you have a baseline understanding of the proposal itself. You might even have further combined knowledge of the consequences of the proposal and therefore be able to conduct a rational debate about it.
What I mean is that philosophical methods of debating are more focused on rational balanced facts than just convincing rhetoric. We don't lose experts by this, we add expertise in one link of the democratic chain.
With that said, maybe additional education is needed for the role of ministers? You can still be part of the parliament without being a minister of something. But I think because the pure experts in different fields are behind the scenes, it's not really needed.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Philosophy is part of the education I listed. It's also focused on philosophical methods of dialectics and moral philosophy surrounding the job as a politician. What I mean is that the education isn't just normal philosophy for a philosophy degree, it's an education for a political license, it's for that purpose specifically. So the philosophy taught is focused primarily on debate methods and dialectics, moral philosophy and justice, epistemology and through that skeptical approaches. Metaphysics, for example, is just part of the introductory, it's not the focus since the education is aimed at a specific philosophical practice.
A politician who studies through this education will learn history, economy, political philosophy, moral philosophy, epistemology, leadership, psychology and philosophical dialectic methods that will be used in parliament. The philosophy part is primarily aimed at how to discuss things in society before making decisions, helping the rational thought and debates about it. In essence, it will force each political party to be able to argue rationally for their ideology in a way that makes voting more clear in its consequences.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Philosophy demands rational thinking with strong premises. It also has a focus on things that politicians are always dealing with such as justice, morality, ideology, making hard decisions with life/death consequences.
I think you view philosophy in another way than I do within the context of epistemic democracy. I focus on the practice of dialectical scrutiny, the focus on strong premised, unbiased arguments together with an understanding of moral theories, deeper ideological understanding as well as how the praxis of philosophical debate erases all populistic behaviors in parliament.
It might be the case that lobbyist and politics behind the curtains make some of the representatives decide before being in parliament pressing the buttons, but it's still happening there and there are many cases where party members go against their own members if they think their own party has it wrong. The debates taking place in parliament is there in order to discuss proposals, to recruit votes within the parliament. So if those debates had a much higher level of quality, the expert input from the staff of each party can be debated at a higher level of quality.
Also, remember that representative democracise in the world can be very different from each other. US, British, Nordic democracies differ very much from each other and that might be part of the confusion when talking about epistemic democracy.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I still think that raising the bar for debate quality and having a fact-checker present who can stop politicians with bad arguments, demanding them to improve them before continuing, would lead to that and be easier to accomplish than educating the entire people.
The basic question I'm asking is why politicians who can make decisions of life and death for the people, aren't demanded to have a license, just like any other job with such risks? The first thing to counter-argue would be to ask why not having such licenses is better than having them.
What do politicians do? What decisions are they making? You mean to say that we don't know these things? If they debate about new laws, if they discuss ideological differences, if they are solving a migrant crisis, if they are deciding on how to handle a pandemic etc. you mean that they won't be better at it with an education mentioned? If they have a broader spectrum knowledge about these things and the experts in staff have a deeper knowledge in specific topics, they will be much better at actually forming educated proposals.
Quoting Judaka
What would you have in an education that aims to give a broad spectrum overview of subjects a politician needs to handle and discuss as well as the necessary knowledge in deductive and inductive arguments for dialectic debates? Which topics should be included in such an education that aims to get you a political license?
Quoting Judaka
It's been about that since the beginning argument. Did you read my OP in detail?
You have repeatedly said this, but I've yet to hear why it wouldn't change how things are today? Politicians today debate with no respect to making good rational arguments and it clogs the democratic system with populistic nonsense. How would a fact-checker who conducts the debates towards better quality arguments from each side, not be an improvement, I'd like to hear the why and why it's dangerous. You only say that, but not in what way?
Quoting Judaka
So your counter-argument is based on personal experience of the mods of this forum? That is not a valid counter-argument.
Quoting Judaka
I think you have made up an idea about the fact-checker based on your own experiences with mods on this forum and probably people elsewhere, but that is not any explanation to why such a role in parliament would be dangerous. To spot biases and fallacies, to demand correct facts in the arguments is about getting rid of populistic bullshit and demagogical practices.
If you ever watched the debates in the British parliament you would understand what I'm getting at here.
You need to make a proper counter-argument for why such a role would be dangerous, not your own personal experience, that has no value for me and this theory.
No, I do dig it. It keeps coming back to a belief that seems unjustified to me. I wonder if your experience of others really verifies that this brew of education has so consistently churned out top drawer politicians.
My point is that this is not necessary. Your plan requires a separate qualification for ministerial posts, which presumably means that, to occupy such a post, a politician must fulfil two distinct educational criteria. Why? Does an economist who might become a minister not have a sounder basis to debate economics, even if nothing else? I think what she brings to the table is more valuable and more conducive to eradicating incompetence than better general debating skills, etc.
Yes, she's maybe not going to be able to debate foreign policy as well as someone with a general political education, but no matter, since she is one of hundreds.
Also, I think the idea of requiring further specialism in addition to general philosophy, etc. is moving away from the philosopher king idea, since it is the executive that creates law: the representatives debate and vote.
Overall, I'm not opposed to a general grounding in salient fields as a requisite. But I think a broader meritocracy covers that. You can have morally sound politicians, great economists, great debaters, great diplomats, great lawyers, the works, and that melting point of experience and achievement would far outdo an identikit political education.
Sure, I'm not saying it wouldn't matter at all, I'm just saying there might be better ways of achieving the goal. Things like diminishing power of political parties, better accountability through review of representatives, better press reporting through regulation of the media, etc etc... might be more effective.
Quoting Christoffer
I certainly can think of some reasons.... By licensing a profession you create an additional barrier of entry into the profession, which does fly a bit into the face of the principle of democracy. It's hard as it is now to get into politics as an average Joe, and then you are only making it harder.
Licensing through education also typically favours those with the means to finance the education, so there is also the risk you skew political representation in favour of certain classes. And then there is the risk that it ends up in a sort of closed club of people favouring eachother in the licensing proces. I don't think it would be evident at all to keep the whole proces fair and free from corruption, especially since so much is at stake.
A typical alternative for licensing, and less restrictive, is quality labels. The goal is the same, namely increasing quality in the profession, but the difference is that you do not legally restrict entry into the profession, but you grant labels based on objective reviews, and let the customer decide if they want to buy product from someone who doesn't get the label. That's basically what i'd propose instead, because it seems to jive better with the principle of democracy and you also avoid some of the risks that come with licenses.
On which, it seems dangerous to have a curriculum for representation. I suspect such a thing would end up being representative of the educators, not the electorate.
The problem with only meritocracy is that it's easier to corrupt with nepotism in systems where education isn't funded by the state and taxes. The education I propose is free for all in order to enable anyone in society to pursue the role of parliament politician.
It could be argued however that a synthesis of the two is the best version. That the ministers coming from more spearheaded education, like the minister of economy having a higher education for that role. However, I think that the foundational education for being a politician has the knowledge needed for better application of parliamentary praxis, while improving the quality of discussions and arguments held within and before actual votes.
Even if experts create the foundation for decisions, they will go through debate and voting as the last instance before being put into national practice. Right now it's like having experts recommending actions taken and those recommendations are given to amateurs to decide upon.
Epistemic Democracy is in its simplest form a request for better parliamentary praxis and educational baseline for all at those power positions. To represent the people shouldn't be to represent stupidity, it should be to represent by interpreting the will of the people through rational thought rather than populism.
No solution is a final solution to all problems. I'm behind those ideas as well, but still thinks a baseline knowledge for the praxis of parliamentary politicians would help get rid of much of the post-truth populism we see today.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The average joes can't all become doctors either, even if they want to. I think the idea basically has to do with how we view the work of politicians. I see it as having a tremendous responsibility over the people and therefore I see it as equally important to have a license in order to practice it without harm towards the people.
I may not have all the knits and bolts figured out about the actual education, but I am quite certain of the possible benefits this would have on the praxis of parliament.
I also mentioned that you can as an average joe still be part of the party you want to influence. You just can't work within parliament and vote. But you can be part of the staff of the party and you can get the education any time you want if you have the career of being a politician in mind.
Having great power over the people requires great responsibility (insert Spider-Man quote here)
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Not if it's free. That's the reason it's an important part of the system even in countries that doesn't have free education. In a country like Sweden, education is free for all so it's not a problem, but in a country like the US you would need to have this specific education free of charge, maybe with funding for living at a campus in order to make the position available for anyone who wants to pursue the role of politicians.
That is an essential part in order to not skew the democracy into a power class system.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
There are no risks if the education is available for all and at no cost. If someone can't pass the education, they don't have the qualification to do that specific job, but could still work as staff within the party. There are better ways of education than the faulty version the US has, which is a neoliberal nightmare of exclusion.
Yeah, I do like the idea, but we have to acknowledge its limitations and vulnerabilities. It is still a kind of meritocracy and suffers the same flaws as that. An intuitively moral person who could make a difference in a vote but lacks the academic skill to get a degree will be disqualified, while an academically gifted villain will not.
A universal baseline education seems easy to corrupt to me, more so than the current melting pot approach. I'm not sure how it would respond to progress. Philosophy, for instance, is very slow-moving; psychology is new and rapidly evolving. Have you given any thought to how one might stop would-be politicians all being taught the same wrong or immoral thing? That said, we're at a time in the UK where everyone had more or less the same childhood education. I hope that hasn't contributed to the failure of our politics :D
I doubt it, post-truth populism is a much wider phenomenon than parliament, then politics even.
Quoting Christoffer
There's a big difference though, doctors aren't supposed to be elected democratically, and there are more tangible ways to objectively evaluate the skills of a doctor than those of a politician.
Quoting Christoffer
It's never totally "free", in the sense that even if you don't have to pay for the education itself, there are costs of living and the opportunity cost of not having an income while you get the education. I live in a country with free education and there is still a class divide in those that get an education and those that do not. Poor people need to earn money to pay for the costs of living. And even aside from the money issues, there would be class differences just because of the values and skills one gets from their parents.
With the education available for all, it would still be better than having none. So the villain would be an uneducated villain as it is now and the intuitively moral person as well. But with the education system, we get an educated villain, but also an intuitively moral person with even better perspective on their moral intuition.
For me, philosophy is probably the least corruptable within academia. The reason being that one primary goal of it is to be skeptical of the knowledge you learn within it. While scientific educations may look unbiased, they can be corrupted. So philosophy is a great way to force people to see past their biases and if the praxis within the job they have educated towards feature a focus on philosophical unbiased rationality, it's even harder to maintain a bias.
I think that if we compare a system without this education and a system with such an education, the probability of higher quality praxis in parliament increases. So, not a utopia, but an improvement over current representative democratic norms.
Agree, it's a normalized behavior of today. But I think that this is part in solving these issues, not "the" solution.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, they differ, but the key point of the politician is unbiased praxis. What I'm aiming at is that even though politicians come from different ideologies, they need to rationally argue their proposals in parliament without biases. Right now we have no actual fact-checking and no actual focus on quality of arguments in any parliament. We could argue that media has the role of fact-checking, but since media tends to focus on drama rather than the quality of truth, their role has somewhat diminished as a "reviewer" of power. All while people's apathy towards both politics and truth in media makes room for populism to grow easier.
If we take steps towards increasing the quality of rationality and facts in parliament and politics we could increase the probability of keeping some of that populism out.
All we can do in a political system is to increase the probability of quality, not guarantee it.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
In Sweden, you get paid to go to higher education. If you need more than the base sum, you take a low-interest loan specifically aimed at education that is paid back through the job you get later on. There are ways to battle the problems with enabling this education for anyone, but since it is a fundamental part of the democracy where it is applied, it might need to have special rules of funding in order to maintain that equality. You should be able to get this education even if you come from absolutely nothing (of course normal education is needed as a foundation, but that is true even for how politics is today).
This might even be an incentive to poor people to get out of poor conditions and wouldn't that be an interesting way to increase diversity in politics and get other voices than the privileged in power? I mean, even if you aren't directly working within parliament, getting the education and a license has a weight towards working in other parts of a party constellation.
But not necessarily the requisite qualification to stand for election. That's the issue: it holds academic achievement, albeit in a particular and apt domain, above other qualities that the electorate may discern.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, this is the philosophy degree -> better politician determinism I asked about before. You've obviously derived this ab initio from the superiority of philosophy that you perceive, and I don't deny that philosophy teaches good things like scepticism. I do deny that the output of that is good sceptics or good politicians, in the same way that a medical degree is not a thing that generally yields good gynaecologists.
I'm clearly not here to piss on philosophy, I love philosophy, and you're obviously in good company. I'm sure most philosophy students, graduates, and pedagogues are equally convinced of philosophy's superiority in producing superior people fit for politics. But a) that's what I mean when I say: "according to a philosopher" -- communists will see the superior value in what communism teaches, for instance -- and b) to me that counts against you. I personally don't see it. I see that the potential for it is there in what you learn in philosophy, but I do not see the determinism in producing such people. It does not accord with my experience, and a failure to address that makes me suspicious.
But we can cover that over and agree that some passing grade in some yet-to-be-perfected curriculum could be a requirement for wanting to stand for election. I would say that, if this produces 'good' (moral and capable) politicians and not just people good at winning at politics, it would be a good thing to teach everyone at school. I feel this would solve a much larger class of problems.
I don't know if it really possible to use ideology and unbiased in the same sentence. That's maybe a bit hyperbolic, but isn't politics and ideology essentially viewing the world through the lens of a certain group or values associated with particular groups. So a certain bias seems part and parcel of the politician. If you want them to act more like scientists or philosophers, that will be an uphill battle it seems to me.
Quoting Christoffer
Okay, maybe there is a way to make it less unequal, don't really want to push that point... that way seems a long way for a lot of countries though, maybe not for a country like Sweden, because they'll have to reform their entire education system. Only financing this one education seems like a bad idea because you will get a giant influx of students only in that one education then, just because it's the only one that is financed.
Anyway, I think I said most of what I had to say on the topic, and I don't think I will entirely agree with the proposal... but still, it was a good discussion.
Maybe I'll just add this one point, I don't think populist votes are the result of a lack of quality in political debate, I think rather it's the result of a lack of true committent to the biases politicians supposed to have. All ideologies have become to much empty window-dressing to sell themselves to the public so that they can remain in or get into power, and so in that sense they are all more or less interchangeable... and nothing really changes either way. That's what's breeding the apathy in politics.
How do you deal with a migrant crisis then? How do you educate someone on how to handle that without your biases coming into play? The right-wing and left-wing responses are totally different. This applies to most situations.
I don't feel you're even trying to make a compelling argument for the education you've suggested and instead you're just saying that some form of education would be preferable for you. Even if I conceded that this were true, I see huge issues with the licence. Just look at universities today, they are far from politically impartial, many are famous for their political leanings. Who teaches the licence, what kind of thinker does it produce and does it restrict the types of politicians that can be elected.
As I've said a few times now, I just don't have any confidence in your proposals to be implemented fairly. I haven't been sold on why the fact-checker is necessary and I am concerned that politicians can be silenced or forced to reword their arguments based on the fact-checkers opinions about biases or fallacies.
Facts are one thing because something either is or isn't a fact but everyone is biased and as for fallacies, there's a lot of leeway for interpretation. Just as you accused me of using a fallacy, who's right on that? It's dangerous because if the fact-checker is being uncharitable with people or parties he doesn't like or if he's just incompetent then that's going to be a huge problem.
Fair enough.
For the education part of the argument, I'd add the psychological Dual Process Theory to the mix. Popularized by Daniel Kahneman it speaks of the two systems our brain is using to make decisions, where system 1 acts on impulse and system 2 acts through reflectability. Why I bring up these is because studies have shown that through experience and training you can improve the speed of system 2 which is slower and often overlooked when making decisions. The act of doing philosophy, training in philosophy can in itself improve the use and speed of system 2, reducing the biases you have when making decisions and forming conclusions.
So with education in, primarily, philosophy, you will not only give knowledge in deductive and inductive methods of dialectics, but you will also improve the use of system 2 compared to without education the overuse of system 1.
Quoting Judaka
For this objection to be valid you need to prove that universities today produce biased educated people and that they are in fact acting with those imprinted biases after education is over. The objection that universities are politically impartial is often used in a fallacious way to argue that education is broken and nothing good can come out of it or at least nothing that fits your biases about the world is taught within them. So this objection is pretty weak for arguing against the need for politics based-education of politicians.
Quoting Judaka
Is this system fairer than how regular representative democracy system is now in most parts of the world? Why is the current system fairer? Education, in order to be a licensed decision-maker, does not mean you are less rooted in ideological opinions, but it creates better praxis of parliament and less populistic ideals. Is it fairer that by people's choice we vote in specific names into parliament, but the majority of people in parliament actually voting on decisions are people who get put there by the parties and in so doing the people have no control of those agents? Either we get people to vote on all members of parliamentary seats or we demand better praxis and knowledge of the people making decisions.
Quoting Judaka
In what way would a fact-checker be biased or have fallacies? The fact-checkers only purpose is to spot factual errors, fallacies and biases. If the fact-checker points out a bias that isn't a bias, a fallacy that isn't a fallacy or corrects on facts with their own factual errors, those things can be objected against. You could also object that the fact-checker didn't spot a bias or fallacy in someone else's argument. But we already have a speaker seat in parliament and that speaker has the job to be unbiased and impartial to the debates in parliament. This is extending the toolset to improve the quality of debates.
To say that it can lead to silencing politicians is to do a slippery slope and in so too simplified as an objection to the praxis of this parliament position.
Quoting Judaka
Let's take that last fallacy as an example. How do I conclude that it is? You say that the fact-checker leads to silencing? Wouldn't that also be the same if you apply it to the speakers role in parliament today? What is the difference? Why does the fact-checker lead to silencing and how do you conclude this without jumping to the conclusion that the fact-checker has power beyond their actual role? And ignoring any possibility of objection to the fact-checker if they conduct a weak support for calling out a fallacy or bias. You assume absolute power to fit your conclusion that they will have so over politicians debating, but there's no premise that says they have absolute power so saying "it leads to silencing" and unfair practice based on the fact-checkers biases becomes a slippery slope fallacy. If you examine your own counter-argument right here, isn't it clearly a fallacy in your reasoning?
Fallacies and biases are pretty straight forward in their meaning and spotting these help to fine-tune a dialectic past emotional opinions and system 1 type arguments. If the fact-checker is incompetent, that will instantly show when he is unable to underline why something is a fallacy or a bias. Malpractice or incompetence leads to termination of that position, just like if a doctor is incompetent they won't be able to continue practice medicine.
Your counter-arguments assumes a lot of extremes that either already should exist within parliaments right now or they are deliberate simplifications of my premises.
Skepticism is only part of it and I'll quote what I wrote about the psychological aspect.
Quoting Christoffer
Universities don't try to ensure equal representation in their courses or of their lecturers in political persuasions, why wouldn't there be an imbalance? Universities have always been involved in politics and university students have always been interested in politics. Especially in the arts where people are encouraged to think about these kinds of ideas. I don't want to respond to your obsession with fallacies that have nothing to do with what I said.
Quoting Christoffer
It's barely different, barely addresses any of the problems and you don't take any of the potential problems it could cause seriously. Populism works not because of politicians but because of voters, I don't know how much of an issue populism is. Populism comes about because people feel disenfranchised and failed by democracy in the first place.
Quoting Christoffer
Aren't you just being silly at this point? Your following counterarguments are, who are you even talking to? I never made a slippery slope argument but I'm sure your biases have nothing to do with your conclusion that I did.
As for your objections about the fact-checker, I never made any assumptions, I have simply not received an adequate explanation around the specifics of how the fact-checker system would operate. I have given different scenarios and questioned how they might work. I never assumed what kind of authority the fact-checker might have, I have always said "if he has this level of authority then.." and so on.
I think you're just being silly, you have regularly argued that my arguments are fallacious but you don't see the topic as being controversial. You don't see the potential for abuse or bias. You've put me in a quite a difficult position. I don't really want to debate this topic anymore, let's end things here.
So in what way is the current system better than what I propose? In what way do you mean that their education, in terms of primarily economics and philosophy would lead to political biases? What kind of biases are you talking about here? Out of the proposed risk of universities having imbalanced representation, how can you conclude the amount at which current universities have imbalanced representation and to which amount it changes the outcome of their education, and specifically the outcome within the areas of education I proposed?
So far you seem to argue: "some universities have an imbalance in political positions, therefore politician education distorts the neutrality of parliament."
Disregarding the fact that people don't get a politician license after learning a political ideology, but instead, already have a foundational ideology. The education isn't there to reprogram and even if there was a political imbalance at the university, that doesn't change the education taught in these areas of knowledge. Students can today absolutely call out if the knowledge taught has a political bias instead of neutrality and if they have a specific political ideology, the education won't interfere with that.
You still need to prove the correlation between university political imbalance to the education taught and the consequences of that education. The objection can't just be "Some universities have political imbalance - Therefore a political license will be biased".
Quoting Judaka
By saying it's barley different you effectively straw man the entire idea or ignore portions of my argument, like the Dual Process effect on parliamentary members. And the problems you raise are still too weak and closer to slippery slope ideas of the consequences.
Populism may have been the wrong wording here as, like you say, it has more to do with the people than politicians. What I mean is demagogical politicians and the populist result among the people. Epistemic Democracy helps reduce the demagogical nature of today's representative democracies.
Essentially,
At the moment, demagogical politics is all over nations like Britain and US. A change in political praxis and higher dialectic quality is needed to combat these things from happening. The challenge is to change it without blocking democratic voices in society, meaning, the risk of an elite or specific ideology taking over. While there are many changes that can be done to the representative democracy that exists today, my thesis is that we need to change some fundamental parts of how representative democracy works in order to reduce demagogical politics from rising and populism taking over public discourse.
You bring up fallacy arguments so much lol. Most of your responses are really just you theorising about the ways in which you think my arguments might go without actually finding that out first.
Quoting Christoffer
Was this my argument? That fact is only important to you, why should I care?
Quoting Christoffer
It's not even just about the "knowledge taught", even if the classes were totally apolitical. When you say political candidates must spend 3-6 years at a university and universities aren't apolitical places, it has an impact on the candidates. The spread of communism and its relationship with universities is extensive, that's half of the story of the 20th-century spread of communism. Look at Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Lenin and many others. The point here isn't to say "US will become communist if political licence" but that you cannot treat universities as being apolitical.
Quoting Christoffer
STRAW MAN? I've written like 2k words on your thread, you know what I think about the individual components which have all been addressed. I haven't made any slippery slope arguments.
I am done, please stop replying to me.
That's why I ask for clarification since you don't give one, all I have is the outlines of your objections.
Quoting Judaka
You connect political imbalance within universities to form a conclusion that it would create biased politicians. If that is not the case, what is your point with universities' political imbalance? Clarify
Quoting Judaka
And we still have educated people on all sides of politics, what evidence do you have that education at universities produces a shift in political ideology? How can you differentiate that to normal ideological shifts in society at the same time? That university has an impact on candidates outside of the education itself is true because it's true throughout the life of a person to change according to the environment. But you are very specific about what type of change we are talking about so you need to prove that with much better scrutiny.
That people change is not the same as change in a way negative to one's initial ideology. And even if someone changes ideologically, how do you know that is because of the university outside of education and not out of the reason more knowledge puts more perspective on political questions? If the latter, that is a good outcome for the individual. Having more perspective gives better insight in the good and bad of each ideological position you can be in.
Quoting Judaka
How is this in any way linked to what I'm proposing? How is this not a Reductio ad absurdum? Or guilt by association through the fact that they had universities and so do we, therefore extreme consequence?
This is in no way evidence for negative consequences of a politician education and license. Why would this be in any difference to how doctors go through medical education? Would that result in them being politically biased towards health care and practice? What about lawyers and law school? There are plenty of areas of expertise that require neutrality.
This objection just sounds like fearing ideological indoctrination rather than a sound critique of the required education to practice parliamentary duties. You have to prove actual consequences outside of historical accounts that really has little to do with solely university reasons alone for their rise.
The irony here is that it seems your argument has more ideological reasons than rational ones. The example of the rise of communism in universities, without nuance to the fact that there was more happening in society than just what happened in those universities, and the fact that your entire line of logic here is: [The old rise of communism was because communism in universities] > [Universities are not good for learning]
What if the education was part of the state instead and separated from any faculty or candidates of current universities and that these universities focus entirely on the education of politicians? With clear standards for education guidelines and review of political neutrality. Would that be better? Since I'm proposing a fundamental change in democratic practice it could easily be a part of that change.
Quoting Judaka
Still, you sum up my premise about education to be bad because it produces indoctrinated politicians because communism started in universities. I ask for clear evidence for any indoctrinated ideologies as consequences in people who went to universities, but all you do is point to the rise of communism as if that proves against the need for education.
Writing 2k words that repeat the same objections without deeper clarifications and inclusion of futher points mean little if it doesn't clearly prove my points wrong here. Assumptions and fearmongering communism are not valid support of the objections you've made. That is why this keeps going.
Quoting Judaka
You only have the choice of not continuing the discussion, not that your objections are the final words of a discussion.
Quoting Christoffer
Am I? I don't think I have been very specific and my argument isn't very specific. Currently, the requirements to run for office are age, nationality etc and you want to add something very substantial to that. You have unsurprisingly, absurdly, taken my example to be utilising the shock value of communism. Communism is just a big, easily identifiable example of how university culture influenced future politicians. It just proves that I'm not baselessly speculating, we have examples. You say you want proof but I'm not sure that exists, it's a nearly impossible thing to prove. We don't record what your political positions were before and after taking a course at a university. We can only note that universities are not apolitical.
You ask "what evidence do you have that it can produce ideological shifts" but within communism you have clear examples of world-famous communist leaders who picked up their ideological leanings at university. It did produce ideological shifts in those people, if you forced future leaders to go to universities which debate political theories such as communism then it increases the likelihood of them being influenced by those theories. That's assuming the course itself is entirely apolitical which hasn't been established. If you won't accept that without some kind of concrete evidence then go look for it yourself, don't need to rely on me. I am not really sure what you'd be hoping to find.
It is not the nail in the coffin for your suggestions and honestly, I am not really trying to prove anything. I asked how things would work, pointed out problems I saw and I'm not looking for any particular resolution. It makes no difference for you whether I agree or not and that's how I view things too.
You just continually put words in my mouth like "Quoting Christoffer. Really, that's my "line of logic"? But I never said anything like that. Isn't that what we call a strawman?
Quoting Christoffer
More of the same strawman, that is absolutely not what I said, not even close to what I said. It's an outrageous interpretation of my argument. I'm not fearmongering communism and I even went out of my way to specify as such.
Fair enough though, I will stop asking you to not reply, you can have your final word but I don't think this conversation is going anywhere. The fact that we're waist-deep in accusations of fallacies at this point really highlights where my concerns came from to begin with. There's a lot left unaddressed between us but I do not feel that I can trust you to interpret my arguments in a fair manner. You choose instead to put words in my mouth and interpret my arguments in ways that undermine them, so I will not respond to whatever you may comment further.
So, how is your objection then valid? The example of communism ignores everything else that went on with society, but pretty much blames the rise of it on universities' lack of neutrality. So you first don't have a clear example and no evidence of there even being ideological shifts between first and last year of candidates.
So how is this objection really of quality value?
Quoting Judaka
Ignoring everything else that went down during these times, communism or rather marxism was a radical theory at the time and it was applied to something that didn't even match up with what Marx and Engels talked about. All these people tried to force marxism into system when Marx and Engels proposed them to be a consequence of capitalism. The theories were popular because they were part of the discourse, not some ideological indoctrination thing happening outside of the lecture halls as you put this forward.
So how is these historical events evidence for how universities function today and in what way do it even remotely affect the idea of politician education and license? The link is very thin here and I'm asking for a little better clarification of what the actual consequences would be for the licensed politicians in the end.
Quoting Judaka
So, if you have a balanced education that neutrally goes through capitalism and marxism there's a risk that some of them find marxism intriguing?
Do you realize what you are actually saying here? That it's better that we keep people in the dark about political theories because if people learn about all of that they might find some ideas that are considered taboo in this neoliberal world we currently live in to be more interesting than the status quo. Seriously?
Bring all knowledge, all theories and facts into light, discuss them critically and if that leads to some educated people finding something more aligned with themselves than what they believed before that knowledge, that is not the kind of indoctrination you are talking about and that is nothing but anti-intellectualism out of fearmongering the left and marxism.
Quoting Judaka
The nail in the coffin is that when people learn knowledge about political theories they might learn marxism and therefore it leads to communist takeover? You object by specifically point out that people might learn some, in your opinion, "bad knowledge" that could change how they view the world after education.
Knowledge is knowledge. I could argue that knowledge is always better than no knowledge.
p1 Broad knowledge always leads to more informed conclusions.
p2 Informed conclusions always lead to a higher probability of positive outcomes than uninformed ones.
Therefore, broad knowledge is always better than no knowledge when making conclusions and taking decisions.
How does that fit with the comparison of politicians today and the ones in epistemic democracy? Politicians today can be uneducated and have very little knowledge while practicing parliamentary actions. How is that better than them also having a politician education as a foundation? Because they risk learning something in university that they might like? And because of that risk, it's the nail in coffin of the idea of education for politicians?
How about the current practice of representative democracy? Where we can have neo-nazis dressed in suits taking power because they were indoctrinated into that by the alt-right and there are nothing to prevent uneducated ideas to infiltrate parliament? How is the risk of influence as it is now better than how it would be if we risk getting influenced by having more and broader knowledge of political ideas, ideologies and theories?
You must explain why learning more about political theory and ideologies risks indoctrinating into bad politics while at the same time point out how the current system is better keeping bad politics out of power when the logic of knowledge points to the contrary?
Otherwise, the only thing I can see you making an argument for is that people shouldn't learn stuff about political theories because that can lead to them liking something else than they previously did.
How is that logical as an objection against epistemic democracy in any way? It's more of an argument for anti-intellectualism.
Quoting Judaka
Tu quoquo. You explained your logic behind it, but it still doesn't hold up. Previously I had to guess, that is not equal to a strawman.
Quoting Judaka
But they might learn about communism in their education and therefore bad politicians? Circling back to your nail in the coffin. So I take back my guess about your conclusion, because it's not fearmongering the left, it's fearmongering the idea of education as education can lead to knowledge that is considered "bad".
There is no "bad knowledge", there's only knowledge. "Bad knowledge" is essentially biased ideas and biased ideas are a feature much closer to the uneducated than the educated. Epistemic democracy is much lower in risking bad politics entering parliament than the opposite, just through logic alone.
Quoting Judaka
No, I'm scrutinizing your objections in order to see if there's any valid criticism that has any sound foundation, but so far I haven't remotely been convinced by the reasoning you give here. That's what philosophy is. You can't just say an opinion that is ill-supported with fallacious arguments about how people might learn "too much" during their education and risk learning stuff like communism and therefore conclude that epistemic democracy is bad or worse than the status quo. It's surface-level opinion in the same class as the infamous Michael Gove quote that the people have "had enough of experts".
I've had enough of demagogues in politics.