The Uninformed in Democracies

I came across this study recently, while looking into studies about misinformation. It looks at what could potentially be the right percentage of uniformed population to make the right decision as a group. While this study is more than 10 years old, the rise of polarised politics and (especially scientific) misinformation on social media really brings to light the issue of consensus - as we face this ongoing struggle to communicate science to the greater public, whether it be vaccines or climate change.

The word uninformed tends to invoke strong reactions in people. Whether it be disdain for the lack of knowledge, or an anger evoked due to feeling lesser, or spoken down to, being uninformed isn’t seen as valuable in any shape or form. It’s seen as laziness, the lack of interest in (to others at least) what might be a very important part of society. It’s much rather seen as preferable to be knowledgeable and make the decision individually.

However, it’s quite easy to argue that our society is built upon it - I know next to nothing about the complexity of chemistry that supports most of our energy and raw material needs, very little about the biology underlying our genetics nor the medicines that keep me healthy, and only a bit about the computers that now run our world, and that too only thanks to an entire degree in computer science. We abstract a lot of the complexity from our lives, and trust the experts, trust the subset who have actually devoted their lives to being at the frontier of that particular aspect of some science to push the boundaries and come up with new solutions and products we use.

There is of course, a balance here - it makes sense for people to understand on a superficial level how vaccines work, how we know they are safe, to have a basic level of scientific knowledge to know what greenhouse gases are and how they affect our atmosphere.

There are many fine lines to walk here. How do we develop an understanding that allows people to trust experts, but not blindly? What should the balance of trust be here? Can we find some way to inspire trust in scientific bodies, but yet allow for criticism and debate, and a diverse set of information? Should we be de-stigmatising the uninformed, to make it acceptable to not know the details?

Personally I feel that stigmatising the lack of knowledge is almost a weapon in the hands of people spreading misinformation. “I did my research, do your own research, and you’ll find out”. Doing your own research, without a relevant background, starting from a position of mistrust, hunting for a pre-defined answer? That’s a shortcut to conspiracy theory land..

However, at the same time, they’ve also been research that liquid democracy (one where voters can delegate votes to others) is not particularly successful, due to difficulties in identifying experts, and over-delegation, which reduces the variety of information hugely and is thus detrimental to finding the right solution.