Voting and "cheating"

[Mister Mister]

  Just an insight I had recently that I wanted to share and get feedback on.  One of the themes of FDR and of philosophy in general is the emphasis on methodology rather than conclusions.  It is more important that we share the same methodology of thinking rather than the same conclusions.  Correct conclusions derived from irrational methodology, i.e. "don't kill because God says so", "evolution is true because my teacher told me", can actually be very dangerous.  
 
 However in public school, we are taught the importance of conclusions, and usually only a tiny few of the "smart kids" if any, concern themselves with the reasoning that leads to a given conclusion.  I remember, as a strong math student, I used to give answers to the tests to some of my friends.  Of course I was just giving them the "answers", and they did not have to learn the steps to get there.

 The insight I had was how similar this is to voting.  When you vote for a given candidate or policy, it is only the vote that matters, not the reasoning that led you there.  People might vote for Obama because he is handsome, because he is black, because he seems cool, because he will give them free healthcare, or because they are well studied in certain schools of ideology and economics that are consistent with Obama's views.  The mentality of the leftist academic, for example, is very similar to the "smart student" who gives answers to the dumb students.  They don't think that the majority are capable of understanding Marxism, Keynesian Economics, or foreign policy, but are satisfied to give them the "answer" of a candidate, who sells himself to the majority with charisma and promise of free stuff, appeals to vanity and hopes and fears rather than a philosophical argument from first principles.

  The rational, philosophical libertarian mentality, however, is that we have a much simpler code of ethics that actually CAN be understood intellectually, by most people, and we want to encourage, to persuade, to demonstrate, the totality of the virtue of freedom and self-ownership in every aspect of life.  Obviously this is far more challenging.

[Daniel Unplugged]

Below is a fairly standard question found in IQ tests:

 

All wicks are bicks and all bicks are ticks.

The statement 'All wicks are ticks.' is:

A) True

B) Not true

 

About 2/3 of people give the correct answer (roughly accurate), and half of them accidently guessed right. Therefore 2/3 of people are not even capable of the most basic logic/reasoning, let alone able to understand anything of substance.

 

A few reasons why government schools prefer conclusions over reasoning are:

 

It is largely pointless to teach reason, given that most people have reasoning capability of a toaster.

 

Many of the conclusions they wish teach, cannot be reached by reasoning.

 

A public that is taught how to reason, will reason their way to conclusions that do not suit the governments agenda.

 

(Most) public school teachers don't even know what reason is to begin with, so are incapable of teaching it to begin with (I suspect most would have answered the above question incorrectly).