Our best defense against stupidity is diversity
Appealing as it is want an expert in charge, the last thing we need is a committee of enlightened despots ruling the world. Tyranny is still tyranny even when the tyrants have high IQs and the right diplomas on the wall.
In college, I knew this guy who was always talking about how the world should be ruled by a “panel of experts.” It went without saying, of course, that he would be on the panel—who better to serve than the person who had come up with the idea of the panel in the first place?
I get the appeal of a Committee of Enlightened Despots. The word “enlightened” is right there! Unfortunately, it’s followed by the word despot. The problem with despots is not that they haven’t read enough books, or even that they believe the wrong things. It’s that they’re despots. Tyranny is a bad form of government even when the tyrants have liberal arts degrees.
We yearn for an enlightened despot because the world is complicated and change is slow and incomplete and frustrating. But that’s exactly why we shouldn’t have one person in charge. What are the chances that all of the correct beliefs happen to coexist inside one person’s brain? Or even within a few people’s brains, however expert they may be? And what are the chances that the correct beliefs also just happen to be the ones you agree with?
When things are complicated and you don’t know what’s going on, your best bet is to make many bets. Which is to say: our best defense against stupidity is not authority, but diversity. I don’t mean corporate-compatible diversity like where a soap commercial has one person who is multiracial and one who has alopecia. I mean a bunch of weirdos trying to figure things out together, and nobody gets to stomp on anyone else’s neck, even when they really want to. —Adam Mastroianni, Good Ideas Don’t Need Bayonets
- previously: the most hideous ideologies are the ones we believe without realizing it, which is exactly why we shouldn’t yearn for the authoritarian school of social change
- see also: all of us are embedded in our own safe reality, and it doesn’t mean it’s the smartest or best one
- see also: diversity provides stability in both ecosystems and societies