The Wisdom of Crowds-Singapore Election Perspectives

Sir Francis Galton who is a half cousin of the Charles Darwin and a person steep in aristocracy and the study of inheritance of intelligence during the early 1900s was surprised that the crowd at a county fair was able to guess the weight of an ox better than the estimates of the cattle experts at hand. Although no single guess of the crowd and cattle experts were correct, the mean of their collective guess of the crowd was more accurate than that of the cattle experts. For Francis Galton, this was not only a surprise but most probably represented an unlearning of his basic belief in the superior wisdom of the intelligentsia proxied by the aristocrats of his time relative to the wisdom of the crowd.

Many years ago, the elder statesman of Singapore; Lee Kuan Yew once made a comment that perhaps there should be a re-examination of the 1 man 1 vote system which is the cornerstone of democracy. Such a comment by a politician would have been equated to a politician committing career hara-kiri. However, in Singapore Lee Kuan Yew was commended for his candor in being willing to surface such a sensitive topic for the public to start pondering about. The topic did not take much root and died a natural death on the media and eventually in much of Singapore.

It was an old Washington Post editorial where Francis Galton experiment was mentioned that revived my memory of the comment made by Lee Kuan Yew. What unsettled me was that Lee Kuan Yew have a few parallel in terms of beliefs with Francis Galton with both of them being highly intelligent, influential members of society and thought leaders. In addition, the topic of inheritance of intelligence has also some parallel in the 'Graduate Mother Scheme' that has been abolished. This scheme provided off-springs of graduate mothers priority points in getting into choice schools. This scheme was relatively short-lived as it saw opposition not only from non-graduate mothers who were dis-advantaged by it but also by the graduate mothers themselves I believe on an altruistic heart chord of preserving the scared equal opportunity for all and sundry. At least it proves that political apathy has not gone as far into the woods as some might have thought. To be fair to Lee Kuan Yew, it was a Ministry of Education policy and not entirely his making.

Perhaps, we all should be mindful that though the 1 man 1 vote system is not perfect, it is most probably the best that we have. To me, this is so scared that most attempts to improve the system will more likely injure it than do any good to it and perhaps should be considered an out of bounds topic for a long time.

Peter Lye aka lkypeter

Safe Harbor. Please note that information contained in these pages are of a personal nature and does not necessarily reflect that of any companies, organizations or individuals. In addition, some of these opinions are of a forward looking nature. Lastly the facts and opinions contained in these pages might not have been verified for correctness, so please use with caution. Happy Reading. Peter Lye