Friday 19 August 2016

Should we trust unanimous vote?

Source background
The article, "US election: The team shaping Donald Trump's campaign", shows the people who are in the Donald Trump team who help his campaign with less than 3 months left for the presidential election. (2016)
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My Yes/No question is:
Should we trust unanimous vote?

My answer is:
No, but it is worth consider.


Nowadays people are relied on the majority vote; for example, Thailand constitution referendum or the presidential election in the United State. However, when comes to Peter's class in Reading and Writing, I found that many times that we have a unanimous answer for the question. For example, last Monday on week 3, We have to find the Thesis Statement for the essay on "African American". Everyone agrees on the on the second sentence. However, the actual answer is the last sentence.

Why? I asked myself. Isn't the more people we have the better idea/decision than only one person? For me, at least when it comes to voting there must be a little of disagreement. However, in"North Korea Voting" everyone vote for Kim Jong-un, no body would think that it is fair; there must be some unknown factors that make everyone voted for Kim. Of course, we suspect the voting system of this because we are expected to get some error(what i mean is we expect some one to disagree with the vote). Just like Flipping the coin where we expected it to be about 50% head and 50% tails. Furthermore, in this class we are expected to have disagreement between us. People have different ideas on what the answer is. So what is hidden error in our class?

"If all 10 people agree on the same person as a bank robberer. Imagine a police lineup where ten witnesses are asked to identify a bank robber they glimpsed fleeing the scene. If six of them pick the same person, there’s a good chance that’s the culprit. And if all ten do, you might think the case is rock solid. But sometimes, the closer you start to get to total agreement, the less reliable the result becomes."  The error maybe what the video suggest: all witnesses must have the fade or some way.

When it come to group discussion people like me and maybe other tends to go with the majority of people. Or when I hear what other group is talking about if they are talking and agree one the same question as my group, I would consider that my group got correct answer. The hidden error may be other people ideas because they have the influence over our answer. I would consider homework as a example, there are many variations in some of the homework because we do homework by ourselves and did not talk to other people(That's what I assume).



The best solution may be what Dan suggest : believe in yourself.

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Reference
Abbott, D. [Ted-Ed] (2016, April 18) Should you trust unanimous decisions? - Derek Abbott . Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heCSbA8w57A.

North Koreans vote in rubber-stamp elections. (2014, March 9). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26502900. 

US election: The team shaping Donald Trump's campaign(2016, August 18).  BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37108732


7 comments:

  1. You brought up a good point about when should we trust something. However, I don't agree that you should trust yourself. People believe in information that they receive without contemplating the reliability. Your example of North Korea is a good representation on this case. North Korean people are taught to believe in their leader since they were young. They think Kim Jong-un is the omnipotent god. Thus, it is logical for them to have unanimous votes on Kim. We are the victim of the media as well. You might have heard about why fried foods are bad because cholesterol can increase the risk of cardiac arrest. But have you ever look up the reasons? What research supports this claim? And are those research really trustworthy? Are the researches done properly, or are they funded by some people who want the information to be that way. Our brain overlook that and just accept what we frequently experience as the truth. However, the information that we hear often will become personal truth, not absolute truth. You can believe it, but you shouldn't depend on it.

    But what is absolute truth? I'm not sure if such a thing exists. However, I have read about it a little bit. I suggest you start with Descartes' famous quote, Cogito Ergo Sum which is translated into I think therefore I am. I'm not experienced on this topic and Peter might have better explanation, but maybe what you can trust is your unadulterated thoughts—your ideas that are not affected by past experience. I know that those ideas are neither useful nor practical. You might get nothing from them, but I think they're trustworthy.

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    Replies
    1. I am maybe not clear in this point. What I said is to pay attention to the minority because some of them is useful. Absolute truth may be like math where 1+1 always equal to 2. It is true everywhere in this universe.Or just like what the video suggests, we expected to get 100% from the distinction between apple and banana

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  2. A great discussion here, and not just because Phu said some encouraging things about what I do in class. But he is right that one reason I prefer you to give your ideas online before group discussion in class is that it's more likely, much more likely according to some of the research, to result in people actually saying what they think and reflecting on it. Related to this, I also like Oil's comment that we should have a healthy skepticism, and in every case where free speech on a topic is not allowed, as his North Korean example neatly shows, the popular opinion, however sincere and strongly held, is most likely both wrong and worthless. WHen I see images of North Koreans at ceremonies honouring their Dear Leader, the tears and other signs of emotion seem sincere, and all based on false myths that cannot legally be questioned, as a result of which North Koreans know less about North Korean affairs than we do.

    But Phu and Oil have given plenty of other interesting issues to follow up in this discussion. As it happens, I've just been rereading Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy. Oil's famous quotation "cogito ergo sum" is actually from another work (), but Descartes argument for it is first developed in the "Second Meditation."

    Descartes was as powerful a writer as he was a brilliant mathematician, philosopher and scientist, but although I'm planning a bit of philosophy for extended reading later in the term, it won't be Descartes.

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  3. This reminds me of Thailand's referendum. At that time, I also questioned to myself that should we trust the majority. This time when you ask should we trust the unanimous vote even give me more headache. Apparently, some answers which we all agreed on in Peter's class are completely wrong but sometimes what we agree on is right. So I'm not sure that we should trust it or not because the decisions we make sometimes based on the influence of others and the lack of knowledge.

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    Replies
    1. Happily, the vote on the referendum was not unanimous, which is a healthy sign. It would have been extremely surprising, beyond belief, had the vote been 100% either way.

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  4. I like your idea N' Phu. Your topic makes me think about buying people to vote someone who will become politicians in the future. It leads many problems to our society if we choose a person who aren't good people and they will corrupt and finally, they don't improve or solve any problems which are still existed. Furthermore, I like your example that you describe about our Peter's class. That is absolutely true and also relevant the topic you said.

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  5. I agree with you that people tent to comply with the majority or believed that is the right answer however it can be very dangerous. For example: "About 63 per cent of 3,880 respondents countrywide said they believed graft is part and parcel of every government." More than half of the representative sample believed that corruption is acceptable but don't you think it totally wrong? When the majority of people do it then some people think that it's normal so they followed it and it will become parts of the culture even if it wrong.

    https://thaicrisis.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/the-most-depressing-opinion-poll-corruption-is-acceptable/

    ReplyDelete

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