Plato criticizes democracy throughout The Republic. In Chapter 8, for example, he compares the state to a ship. He argues that it is better to have a captain knowledgeable about navigation steer the ship rather than untrained crewmembers. The crewmembers may be able to persuade the owners to let them sail the ship, but without the proper expertise, the ship will not reach its destination. In other words, Plato argues that democracy rewards popularity over expertise, but it is expertise that is essential for good government. Is he right? Consider some examples from class. Can democracy deal with such long-term issues as global warming when most people would prefer to ignore them? Can it deal with economic recovery when most citizens don't understand economic theory? Or can you give a point in democracy's favor?
Introducing… ChatGPTocracy (but actually this time)
ReplyDeleteIt is safe to say that the political climate of the United States and much of the world is centered around popularity, rather than relevant experience in (geo)politics and economics. Withstanding comment on the “quality” of his presidency, the former U.S. president rose to power by amassing a tremendous following on likeability alone. Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Beppe Grillo of Italy, and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala were elected with a similar lack of experience to Trump.
As Socrates points out in his philosopher-king analogy, a state would be better off led by an extremely wise and knowledgeable individual, as they would always possess knowledge of the ideal direction of a state and the means to achieve it. The philosopher-king is not steered by greed and often employs a utilitarian framework of policy. In practice, though, there is no such thing as an infallible leader, and finding a person respected enough for the role would be inconceivable. But with the exponentially advancing field of mathematical modeling, an entity well-fit for the role could perhaps emerge within the next decade.
Imagine an artificial intelligence agent trained on every bit of data pertaining to politics, economics, strategy, military, etc. Assume the agent is trained to target economic stability, homeland security, and other attributes of an “ideal” state. Given a certain situation, the agent would be able to simulate millions of policies and predict the outcome of each, considering all that it knows about the state of the nation politically, economically, climate-ly, etc. After the agent selects the course of action most strongly correlated to its values, government leaders would be able to implement it as they would with a “normal” leader.
Although this sounds like some far-off futuristic framework for government, it is not too far from current technological capacity. For the first time ever, government policies would be able to take every factor into consideration—after all, there is a ridiculous amount of data available about citizens, the economy, the environment, etc. Furthermore, the model would obviously not be swayed by economic incentives, would not be subject to pressure, would improve rather than diminish over time, and would be able to work infinitely more hours than a current leader would.
While it sounds scary, a system like this would provide unprecedented solutions to the needs of a people, taking truly everything into consideration for the first time in history. As artificial intelligence has already shown, the best solutions to human problems are often not devisable by humans.
Would Socrates approve of the ChatGPTocracy?
Dual Leader Philosophy:
ReplyDeleteTo effectively run a state, a balance between the popularity and leadership prowess of any one leader is a necessity. In the modern age, popularity is a requirement many consider impossible to avoid, yet experience as proved by Socrates is a great necessity. Thus, the most efficient implementation of Socrates's wishes is a single, yet popular, experienced, and knowledgeable leader. Such a leader would have the experience to know the right policies and courses of action, along with the skill and social influence to convince the population of its correctness. Unfortunately, this requirement of a leader is extremely rare in reality and would be incredibly difficult and unreliable to implement due to current subpar methods of determining knowledge and skill through standardized testing. In hopes of finding such a leader, entirely new testing equipment and processes would need to be developed to even begin the search for such a talented person.
For simplicity's sake, one leader would be far preferable when compared to multiple to prevent conflict in the captaincy of any one state. Using Socrates’s ship comparison, it could be argued, in an attempt to implement the qualities of a leader required in reality, that a “ship's” elected leader could be un-knowledgeable yet popular, only if guided by an expert captain. In other words, the delicate balance of required qualities could be far more easily fulfilled in reality, by permitting a single academic individual, possibly a “pure” philosopher as described by Socrates in chapter 8 of The Republic, as a counsel to guide an elected individual. A pure philosopher is an individual with a love and abundance of knowledge with the training to effectively link it and come to holistic conclusions. The balance between these more easily found skill sets allows any popular elected leader to receive the necessary directions and guidance from a more knowledgeable guide, and to still have the popularity and social prowess to effectively convince the citizens of a state to any single policy. The power roles described between guided and guide would effectively create and implement important policy while still protecting democracy’s ideology and longevity. If effectively guided, any popular leader, with the ability to accept the guidance, would solve the democracy’s shortsighted issues raised by Socrates.
Giving the people an actual voice in government is worth it, but there need to be stipulations. Popularity is perhaps not the best way to elect leaders, but it is almost definitely the best way to create laws, and a democratic creation of laws is highly unlikely in the event that the society itself is not democratic. To this end, I propose a test on current events, historical fallacies, and policymaking that anyone applying to run for leader must pass before they are approved as a candidate. If they can do this for an AP History Exam, for example, it seems reasonable to assume that this could be created for government -- and AP Leadership test, if you will. This will ensure that the person who is elected is not just popular, but also competent. Additionally, the system by which debates are held (for the position of president in the current US) should be revised. There should be individual interviews in which the candidates are separately asked the same questions and their answers are publicized. If some measure of anonymity could be given to the presedential candidates during their election period, that would be beneficial, so that people don't just vote for the candidate they know, but for the one whose views most clearly align with their own. This would also help to minimize the partisan binopoly, even if it didn't eliminate it entirely.
ReplyDeleteIn doing this, we attain a society in which people are able to choose the kind of leader whose views align with their own, which is the definition of a democracy. However, we have nearly eliminated the possibility of this popularly elected person being incompetent. In minimizing the pool of candidates for rule with our Leadership Exam, we basically get to what Plato considers an aristocracy (rule by the best) without actually having to force the education of some random children from the time of their birth.
Additionally, we could institute a test given to the voting body before they vote. In the current society this would almost inevitably end up being used as a discriminatory tactic (as has happened in the past), but if we focus attention on educating the people (in my opinion a worthwhile pursuit even without a democracy), then we can eventually attain a society where people are able to make wise decisions and make educated choices on educated leaders. This wisdom of both the society and the people that make it up will lead to a more philosophical society, and therefore a more moral one, proving once and for all that an educated democracy is, in fact, the best form of society.
Expertise and popularity tend to correlate, and with other benefits to democracy, the representation outweighs the harms. Democracy, unlike other forms of government, relies on the education of the people. For example, in a republic, voters choose representatives who they consider to be more qualified than them to create legislation, rather than voters directly casting a ballot on each amendment. When people are educated properly on candidates and issues like global warming and climate change, we see people voting for the candidate most likely to create positive and meaningful change. Even with notable counterexamples, people vote for the candidate with a platform discussing issues that matter to them. Only 6 presidents have ever been elected with no past political experience- yet 3 of those had military experience, and the others had experience in legal areas or economics. Donald Trump, for example, ran his campaign precisely on being outside of the political sphere, in an attempt to “drain the swamp”. In addition, voters believed his business experience was sufficient to manage the presidency, and his knowledge of economics would support the U.S. better than Hilary Clinton’s. Whether or not this ended up being the case, voters choosing Trump over Clinton shows that even if Clinton had more expertise, the platform Trump ran on resonated more with voters, and his promise of draining the swamp is what voters needed to hear. Democracy’s prioritizing of popularity can and has hurt the U.S., but history tells us that the most popular candidates win for a reason.
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