In March 2014, the Washington Post conducted a survey in the US on a national sample on Russia`s invasion of Crimea. The question asked was: how should the US act in Ukraine?
Given that two thirds of Americans claimed that they were watching the situation “somewhat closely”, the survey findings came as a surprise. Only one out of six Americans could locate Ukraine on the map. However, it was found that there was a close link between their ignorance and the path they preferred the US to take: the less they knew about Ukraine`s location, the higher their appetite for an US military intervention. To put it differently, the more ignorant the public was about geopolitics, the stronger they felt about a US military intervention.
This is just a facet of an extremely worrying trend that we are seeing and Romania is no exception. It is a general aversion to subject-matter experts` opinion across all fields. Whether we are discussing vaccines, the shape of the Earth, central bank monetary policy, among others, anyone feels entitled to have a say and decide. The flimsy knowledge that the Internet can provide the laymen of yesterday creates the illusion of a debate among equals with those who have spent a lifetime accumulating knowledge in the field. The delusion of this empty equalitarianism removed competence as the major criterion when appointing high-level officials as we are all equally competent, are we not? Against this backdrop criteria have more to do with relations to various power groups and networks while public`s support is obtained through populist slogans instead of rational and scientific approaches to the problems the society confronts.
We thus end up in situations where people with very little training if any, fill responsible positions where they ultimately get qualified on the job. The most expensive training there is … There is just a small step from here to decisions defying scientific argument, decisions made haphazardly and without any substantiation that have to be reversed by professionals using huge amounts of resources. And sometimes it happens after they have had a devastating toll.
No wonder, then, that we end up debating on how fictitious climate change is, freezing foreign exchange rates, or interest rates or God knows what. The abundance of the absurd topics shows that this is not only about people who get drunk on power and feel omniscient. They are regular people who very easily fall in the trap of the same misperception especially now that social media gives them the chance to group around the same “irrefutable truths”.
These collective action approaches act as a multiplier of individual tendencies that psychologists documented as the Dunning Kruger effect after the names of the two psychologists who studied it. The finding of their research is alarming: the more incompetent someone is, the better qualified for their job they are convinced to be. Not only does this bias affect decision-making and ensuing results, but it also prevents the person from becoming aware of and consequently correct the situation they are in.
We are so self-confident and so convinced that our Truths lie above the truths of others, no matter who the others are, that more often than not, the incompetent end up being the last to realize their misjudgment. Should facts disagree, they will turn to either fashioning a parallel reality or the infallible way out: the conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories are at times popular with some categories of the public, but on occasion also with elites, particularly in countries with a penchant for autocratic government. As I was writing in the “The failures are also ours” post, an European University Institute research noted that, unlike the 20th century perspective, modern day autocratic regimes have a completely different approach: “Instead of inaugurating “new orders,” such regimes simulate democracy, holding elections that they make sure to win, bribing and censoring the private press rather than abolishing it, and replacing ideology with an amorphous anti-Western resentment. Their leaders often enjoy genuine popularity—albeit after eliminating plausible rivals—that is based on “performance legitimacy,” a perceived competence at securing prosperity and defending the nation against external or internal threats”. For this reason defending the “performance legitimacy” at any cost is paramount and any failure must be attributed to external changes which cannot threaten the leaders` perceived competence.
The illusion of inexistent competences is present all over the world, and it is all the more dangerous as access to positions of power is not based on a clear set of criteria of competence, and thus tilts the balance towards populist and utopic approaches. And the lack of people`s education does nothing more than encourage fraud. This is the ticking bomb at the foundation of every nation.
Have a nice weekend!
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