POSC150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Rational Ignorance
1 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
The people that have the power, they are the ones making decision about who gets what, when, and how: different views of what the public is capable of, ideal democratic citizens. Only about 1/3 know about the constitution: most americans would fail the citizen test. Uniformed vs. misinformed voters: apolitical, self-interested actors. Costs of gathering information: takes time. Benefits of gathering information: more informed. The miracle of aggregation : though we don"t know a lot, society as a whole might turn out to know stuff that gets things right, logic of the argument. People use the little bit of information that they have to guess. Information shortcuts (heuristics: ways of inferring things from the information you have. We rarely go the long route and collect all the information we should before making a decision. Posc 150: gift for teacher- people with british accents like tea, so get him tea. Lack of information that people have about politics is a lot.
