To Understand the Tyranny of Majority and the Essence of Existing Democracies
Of Course, Nothing Is True Because a Majority Says It
On the Bias planet, the majority rule is quite influential.
Ah, I have heard that there is such a rule on the Bias planet.
How did Earthians pick up such a peculiar rule?
Peculiar? Hmm, how is it peculiar?
There is no reason why something should be deemed correct because a majority say it.
It is going too far to say that there is no reason.
Is there even a single case in which being a majority guarantees some correctness?
I don't think that being a majority guarantees any correctness, but I can think of a case in which being a majority increases the credibility of a hypothesis.
What is that?
Suppose that the police asks some witnesses of a robbery what color the robber's shirt was. If the majority of the witnesses say that it was black, that may increase the credibility of its having been black.
I wonder. Some of the witnesses may be colluding to incriminate a certain person, or just people might tend to associate black with evil deeds.
There are such possibilities.
And consider asking the robber's skin color. It may be influenced by a racial stereotype, the contrast to the shirt color, etc.
Certainly, there is a prerequisite for being a majority to have some say in correctness: individuals shouldn't have any shared bias.
Ah, it's important that there isn't any shared bias. The act of aggregating doesn't automatically make the result more correct: random biases may be offset in the aggregation, but shared biases are amplified in the aggregation.
That's the same with many people's measuring a length with the same false measure. If you claim that you have a fairly correct length because you took the average, you will be delusional.
Unfortunately, the majority measure things with the same false measure, which is called 'intuition'.
Ah-ha.
The intuition is a mechanism that makes speedy acts of recognition for survival. In order to be able to respond to emergencies, it sacrifices accuracy and follows some simplified fixed patterns.
That's the reason why the intuition loves, therefore the majority love, simplification.
Simplification of recognition is done at the sacrifice of accuracy. Stereotyping is a typical act of such simplification. There are some people who promote believing in the intuition or simplifying recognition, but they are promoting stereotyping, therefor wanton biases.
The intuition makes acts of false recognition in some fixed patterns, and the majority do so because they believe in the intuition.
That means shared biases, and the majority rule means the rule by amplified biases.
Correctness can't be judged by the majority rule in most cases, which, I guess, many Earthians understand.
Do they?
I don't know for sure, but I am sure that all the Earthians who have at least a certain level of intelligence understand.
And Nothing Is Excellent Because a Majority Like It, Of Course
And there is no reason why something should be deemed excellent because a majority like it.
Well, that depends on what is the definition of being excellent. In fact, for some people, the definition of being excellent is the capacity to be liked by the majority.
So, fake news sites are excellent?
Popular fake news sites are excellent, according to their definition.
Ah-ha. . . . Telling truths is an absolute prerequisite of being excellent, for me.
You are free to adopt any definition of being excellent; arguing for the definition of a term is futile as any definition is arbitrary. Just define terms unambiguously and use the terms consistently according to the definitions.
For example, a book is excellent when it tells truths unknown before or it explains truths more understandably than done before.
That's about nonfictions, right?
In fact, that's the same with fictions for me: I read fictions to find truths even if the settings are fictional; I read them as thought experiments.
Thought experiments as how someone would act in a certain situation?
Yes. A setting can be fictional, but if the experiment isn't executed truthfully, the book is valueless for me.
As far as I see, the majority don't necessarily read books that way. They often read books in order to have their delusions approved.
I know. Many nonbelievers of the climate change want to be told that the climate change is a hoax while many data suggest otherwise; many romantic people want to be told that the love between a man and a woman is somehow divine while it's just a mechanism developed by the evolution process, which is fundamentally similar among various kinds of animals; the majority want to be told the intuition has a supernatural power to detect truths while the intuition is as we have discussed. Books that meet those demands are liked by many, and therefore are excellent, according to the definition of being excellent by some people.
As the majority are dominated by the intuition, what please the intuition are liked by the majority. That's inevitable, at least in the foreseeable future.
