Democracy is fucked up

[Zenith]

I disagree. Sorry, but I don't understand how that could work (I only read a few lines from the article). If people just guess, then that's basically just as people throwing dices. And if one guy throws one dice and decides on that, or he throws the dice a dozen of times and averages out, or a bunch of people throw the dice, I don't see how there could be a difference among them, how the odds could change for the better.

The way I see it, democracy can improve a country as best as the average citizen can. You may have brilliant and extremely competent people in a country, but since the best make up less than 5%, they have little to no chance to make a difference - the average people make up 60-90% of the people and they think differently. (and yes, the average people can be idiots)

To make an alegory:

Let's say there is a cat in a room, and the cat needs a surgery because of a health problem.
You select 20 people (1->20), who have a knowledge about surgering a cat, like this:
1,2 - "what's that a cat?"
3->6 - "Yeah, I know what a cat is. What is surgery?"
7->14 - ordinary people who know what surgery is and what a cat is, but have no idea how to treat a cat.
15->18 - inexperienced veterinarians and ordinary medics.
19,20 - experienced veterinarians, who can do surgery on cats.

Now you go to each in his turn and present him the problem - the symptoms the cat experiences. And you give each a piece of paper and tell him "write there what you think should be done, and if it needs a surgery, how it should be done."
Then you pick the notes from everyone, average out the result, or find the most common response.

In this scenario, what chances do you think the cat has to be healed?

That's quite how democracy works. And yes, if such an experiment were to be attempted by hundreds of groups, I suppose some of them would be able to heal the cat.

It doesn't matter if you don't think it would work, it does work. People in large groups play as a grandmaster. 50,000 people on plurality vote played a very close game with Gary Kasporav, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World Also the thing about the Jelly beans is a repeatable experiment that's been done hundreds, if not thousands of times. People make more accurate decisions in large group votes.

I took the time to read the article (diplomacy.edu). It found it interesting.

There was a deficiency in my allegory, which was intentional. The people to perform sugery on the cat were to give their answers independently from one another, rather than stand and discuss it as a group. So in my allegory I don't think we can talk about "collective wisdom", since the individuals were isolated. And this, I believe, corresponds pretty well with how society is - people usually stand in their own silos, i.e. with people who think like them, agree with them, and are thus isolated from the rest.

Now, if I leave that allegory aside, in politics I fear you still do have other deficiencies also. One is "herding", and as such, lack of "a) true diversity of opinions; (b) independence of opinion" -- lacks that are also heavily influenced by propaganda.

So, your statement,
> That's why even when individuals make it seem like democracy is just a collection of dumbshits making decisions, it works very well.

Perhaps it would work well in democracy / politics if:
a) people understood the matters as much as the politicians do, or at least one could rely on honesty and transparency from the politicians and the media.
and
b) people discussed their views with others of differing (and even opposing) opinions.
and
c) the knowledge & understanding that people have about the subject at hand goes beyond a minimum.