> Students are just as much a part of the system as teachers, so I don't think this elitism about who can have an opinion is helpful.
Of course everyone can have an opinion! But are these truly likely to contribute to solving the problem? Of course not. Some people are more likely to have the experience and skills to comprehend and advocate for better solutions.
Yes, I tend to support democratic forms of government over others. However, I'm under no illusion that democracy's broad, sweeping claims about what government are "best" are really defensible when applied to the general problem of collective problem solving under real-world constraints.
Having one person, one vote seems intuitive and valuable for certain decisions. In particular, it seems useful and practical for selecting certain representatives. But I (and many others) don't think it is a great way of making policy decisions in general. Just as one example: committees of experts can make sense in some contexts.
But in general, we can do better than what most of us have seen so far. We have to do better than that. Look at how well government(s) at all levels are serving their constituents. I think it is self-evident that all can stand tremendous improvement.
So, for any particular context, think about how to design mechanisms that are likely to work well. In so doing, one must account for many factors, including: human biases, cognitive limitations, cultural differences, imperfect communication, economic costs, time constraints, factions, self-interest, lack of experience, and so on.
Keeping these in mind, how exactly would you select, organize, and structure an ongoing set of interactions between, say 1,000 people such that one can maximize the quality of their resulting collective recommendations?
One option is to choose 1,000 people at random and weight their opinions evenly. But this is underspecified. How do you compress those recommendations into a form that others are likely to read? How do you discover collective preferences? There are dozens of key questions even if you generally adhere to the idea of "equally weighting each person's opinion".
But there are manifold other options where each individual's starting opinion is not the driving factor.
I encourage everyone here to study political economy, history, philosophy, and anthropology. Disregard your preconceived framings of how people make decisions. Look at how others have done it. Look at what theorists suggest might be alternatives. It is an amazing journey. I've been thinking about it for almost twenty years, and it is just as fascinating, if not more, as when I first got exposed to these ideas in policy school.
Well, in the private world its customer feedback. Sure you dont use their ideas neccessarily, but if, as in this case, 75% of your customers find your product bad then expecting people already part of the system to make radical changes sounds foolish. Theyll just list why it cant change. I admire this teachers cleverness getting his students to pass, but the reality is that it was so big a problem that the system can only be vastly broken and I dont expect people too involved to fix it
Of course everyone can have an opinion! But are these truly likely to contribute to solving the problem? Of course not. Some people are more likely to have the experience and skills to comprehend and advocate for better solutions.
Yes, I tend to support democratic forms of government over others. However, I'm under no illusion that democracy's broad, sweeping claims about what government are "best" are really defensible when applied to the general problem of collective problem solving under real-world constraints.
Having one person, one vote seems intuitive and valuable for certain decisions. In particular, it seems useful and practical for selecting certain representatives. But I (and many others) don't think it is a great way of making policy decisions in general. Just as one example: committees of experts can make sense in some contexts.
But in general, we can do better than what most of us have seen so far. We have to do better than that. Look at how well government(s) at all levels are serving their constituents. I think it is self-evident that all can stand tremendous improvement.
So, for any particular context, think about how to design mechanisms that are likely to work well. In so doing, one must account for many factors, including: human biases, cognitive limitations, cultural differences, imperfect communication, economic costs, time constraints, factions, self-interest, lack of experience, and so on.
Keeping these in mind, how exactly would you select, organize, and structure an ongoing set of interactions between, say 1,000 people such that one can maximize the quality of their resulting collective recommendations?
One option is to choose 1,000 people at random and weight their opinions evenly. But this is underspecified. How do you compress those recommendations into a form that others are likely to read? How do you discover collective preferences? There are dozens of key questions even if you generally adhere to the idea of "equally weighting each person's opinion".
But there are manifold other options where each individual's starting opinion is not the driving factor.
I encourage everyone here to study political economy, history, philosophy, and anthropology. Disregard your preconceived framings of how people make decisions. Look at how others have done it. Look at what theorists suggest might be alternatives. It is an amazing journey. I've been thinking about it for almost twenty years, and it is just as fascinating, if not more, as when I first got exposed to these ideas in policy school.