Hamas War

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The Majority May Rule, but It Doesn't Mean They are Correct

This is not a very PC (politically correct) thing to say:
  • Democracy is a pretty crummy, dangerous form of government.  
  • It's the rule of idiots.  
  • The majority isn't always right.  
  • It's frequently totally wrong.
That's making me very nervous concerning the upcoming Israeli Elections.

Jewish History is full of incorrect majority decisions. In the Bible ten out of twelve tribal leaders decided that it was too dangerous to enter the HolyLand causing the forty years (minimum) of wandering in the wilderness.

European Jewish leaders, both rabbinic and secular, in the 1930's recommended staying put as the Nazi anti-Semitic holocaust crept in eventually causing the death of at least six million Jews.

These aren't the only examples in Jewish and secular history.

The Israeli Left, Herzog, Livni, the media and the Obama government have been doing their best in a well-funded campaign to dump the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu, and if voter turnout from the Left is high, they may succeed, G-d forbid.

Yitzhak Herzog, Tzipi Livni
Flash90

I am not a great fan of Bibi's but he is the best we have right now to lead the country.

The only way to save the country right now is to get out and vote for Likud, Bayit Yehudi or Yachad.

3 comments:

Sammy Finkelman said...

One problem is that there is no other general principle but to count up the number of people on each side.

And in the case of the spies, we're dealing with dishonest people. In the case of the Rabbis, we are dealing maybe with groupthink, and maybe with the fact nobody was arguing really the other side - and also there is the question what did ordinary people think?

There is the cow weighing test:

http://www.all-about-psychology.com/the-wisdom-of-crowds.html

It was in 1906 that Galton made his discovery of what is known as the wisdom of crowds. He attended a farmers' fair in Plymouth where he was intrigued by a weight guessing contest. The goal was to guess the weight of an ox when it was butchered and dressed.

Around 800 people entered the contest and wrote their guesses on tickets. The person who guessed closest to the butchered weight of the ox won a prize.

After the contest Galton took the tickets and ran a statistical analysis on them. He discovered that the average guess of all the entrants was remarkably close to the actual weight of the butchered ox.

In fact it was under by only 1lb for an ox that weighed 1,198 lbs.

This collective guess was not only better than the actual winner of the contest but also better than the guesses made by cattle experts at the fair. It seemed that democracy of thought could produce amazing results.

However, to benefit from the wisdom of crowds several conditions must be in place.

First each individual member of the crowd must have their own independent source of information.

Second they must make individual decisions and not be swayed by the decisions of those around them.

And third, there must be a mechanism in place that can collate these diverse opinions. M.


The Chazon Ish advocated counting
medical oppinion - provided they were actually indepedent.

And now here with this.

The majority of the Israeli electorate actually favors Netanyahu. But how it gets translated is another thing.

Koolanu and Yisroel Beytenu might side with the left and Yachad fail to meet the threshhold while Meretz does.

Evaluation of people is alwasys more problematical than evaluation of issues.

Batya said...

It has happened too often that the majority of Israeli voters voted Right and got Left.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Aaron Lerner of IMRA says

A vote for Lapid’s party is a vote for Herzog – not Netanyahu.

http://youtu.be/jwjUdsBItBs

Which is pretty clear.

And a vote for Kachlon’s party is a vote for Herzog – not Netanyahu.

https://youtu.be/CANIlTJBM0M

And almost all coalitions depend upon Kachlon.

And even, he says:

And a vote for Deeri’s Shas party is a vote for Herzog – not Netanyahu.

https://youtu.be/o0KyvcStfEc

That's actually somewhat unlikely, and Lapid wouldn't want that.