Reflective Pause
After publishing the below article introducing some ideas and visions for a “Polymath Era” in the future, I hit a wall of doubt and discouragement. Hence a pause in drafting and publishing something over the past several weeks. Despite a break in publishing content, my mind hasn’t taken a break from analyzing various angles to break through the wall.
Here are some things weighing on my mind, forming a wall through which I’m trying to break.
Politically Polar Climate
The current political environment is becoming increasingly divisive every day, especially in the United States of America. The challenge is I’m torn between doing something about it or just accepting it is what it is and there isn’t much I can do—without taking on a lot of risks depending on how involved I would become. I believe many people are working through the same dilemma.
The left side believes the current administration is attempting to move the country into a fascist regime controlled by an oligarchy and dictator. The right side believes the current administration is doing what is necessary to prevent the government from becoming insolvent and/or becoming a socialist government.
To help understand the difference between the extremes of Fascism vs Socialism, check out an explanation from the dictionary Merriam-Webster’s website below.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/difference-between-fascism-and-socialism
Political Middle Dilema
However, where does the political middle stand on the subject?
I shared the below political spectrum image from the Pew Research Center in previous posts that divides the spectrum into nine buckets. It can be further consolidated into three buckets comprised of the typical left, center, and right. The Outside Left, Stressed Sideliners, and Ambivalent Right can be grouped into the center/middle and collectively represent roughly 37% of the general public. I’m stuck in the middle as a Stressed Sideliner and can attest to the wisdom of the adjective to describe that group because I’m feeling the stress and frustration.
As I’ve been reading posts on social media from both political opposites, one thing I’ve come across multiple times from those on the far right to justify the bold, and to some extent, brazen, actions of the current administration is:
77,000,000 million people voted for President Trump, so…
and then they would follow with things like “you lost” or “the President has the will of the people”.
Let’s put those claims into a larger context along two variables.
Variable 1: Margin of Victory
Kamala Harris received 75,019,230 popular votes (226 electoral) and Donald Trump received 77,303,568 popular votes (312 electoral). Below are the four ways to measure the margin of victory of President Trump compared to Kamala:
Popular Votes = 2,284,338 more
% of Total Popular Votes = 1.47% more
Electoral Votes = 86 more
% of Total Electoral Votes = 16% more
Would you consider it a landslide victory as a referendum for drastic change?
To evaluate this variable further, I recommend comparing the margin of victory of other presidential races using the website below, maintained by UC Santa Barbara called The American Presidency Project. It enables you to easily look at past results going back to 1789.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections
Variable 2: Unknown and Unheard Voices
The other important variable to consider is how many eligible voters did NOT vote.
According to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, the national voter turnout rate was 64.06%. 1
This percentage is significant because it represents 87,934,619 eligible voters who chose to not vote for any of the candidates and it exceeds the total votes that each of the top two candidates received.
How many of these individuals are politically in the middle? I don’t know the answer to that question but those individuals represent 35.9% of the voting-eligible population and the estimated middle based on the Pew Research Center mentioned earlier represents 37% of the public. So it makes you wonder…
For those of you who are in the middle and are looking for some type of incremental improvement in our political system (before venturing into an unknown world of a Polymath Lottoracy), I recently discovered a somewhat nascent political party with a mission to represent the center. Their choice of colors is indicative of their purpose—the color purple.
Polymath Lottocracy Benefits
One of the ideas I presented in the previous article is a lottery-type of government instead of elections. This isn’t an entirely new concept and you can learn more about it from the site www.lottocracy.org. A key factor for the success of that political system is a well-educated populace, such as a society full of polymaths and aspiring polymaths. However, I started to ponder a thought experiment.
What would be different with our political and economic system if we had such a representative governance structure, and the vast majority of society was a polymath? What would be the incremental benefits compared to our current system?
Could people who were randomly selected be able to come together and work through political, economic, and religious differences to find common ground to effectively problem solve? This question requires a more detailed investigation. However, I’m quite confident of one quasi-benefit, it will be more difficult to waste energy blaming the “other side”, and the lack of real representation. Plus, it may engage more people who are currently feeling disenfranchised toward the current system.
Polymath Lottocracy Costs
Estimating the incremental benefits is important when comparing them against projected incremental costs. The costs are proportionate to the political level (local, state, and national).
Starting at the highest level, the financial and political costs at the national scale can almost feel insurmountable. During the last few weeks, I’ve been delving into the world of campaign finance using data from Open Secrets, the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and Propublica, among others.
Going into this investigation I was already prepared to analyze data associated with stakeholders potentially impacted by the idea of a Polymath Lottocracy such as political parties, political candidates, existing elected officials, lobbying firms, influential corporations and industry groups, and wealthy individuals. This combined group alone represents a Goliath of sorts.
However, I discovered another key stakeholder group while digging into the data and the following screenshot from Open Secrets summarizes it well. It shows how total campaign contributions for the 2024 national election cycle (using data from the FEC) were spent across all candidates. Running a campaign is a multi-billion dollar business with almost 50% going to the media industry.
Consequently, how would all of those influential stakeholders perceive and respond to a concept like a Polymath Lottocracy that could potentially replace the election process as we know it today? Contemplating this question results in some uneasy feelings and concerns regarding the risks of actively promoting the concept; therefore, I am treading cautiously.
More Than Politics
The Polymath Paradigm is more than just changes in our political system related to government services. It has the potential to change the organizational dynamics of various types of enterprises because if the majority of society has polymathic abilities, how will that impact various societal institutions? How would it impact corporate governance when it comes to shareholders, board members, and executive officers? How will it impact organizational design in terms of layers of management? How will it impact how successfully people can change careers either by choice or in response to the impacts AI will bring to the labor market?
More to come on this topic.
Focused & Structured Teamwork
To accelerate progress and break through walls of discouragement, it is time this one-man side-hustle evolves into a team effort. So hopefully you will see new names associated with this endeavor soon.
For now, here is a preview of a concept I’ve been developing to further organize content and test ideas regarding the dynamics of a team comprised of polymaths.
One of the challenges of defining a polymath is first organizing human knowledge into a useful and manageable structure. The next challenge is knowing how much you need to know to qualify as a polymath. After several iterations, below is the current version of that structure that splits knowledge into two main categories and three subcategories for each. As further clarification, the Humanities subcategory Expression includes topics such as visual art, performance art, literature, and music. The Science subcategory Formal Science includes topics such as mathematics, statistics, information science, etc.
Humanities
Philosophy
Expression
History
Science
Natural Science
Formal Science
Social Science
I translated the above outline into the radar chart below with the three categories from the Humanities main category on the top and the three subcategories from the Science main category on the bottom. The Maximum line represents a theoretical limit of all human knowledge of that subject at a given point in time. I don’t know what that limit is, so what you see is just conceptual. However, you may notice History is close to the max…I figure we are accumulating “history” across all subjects every second…so there is a lot of history out there. The Actual line represents the knowledge of a hypothetical individual along those six areas.
More to come on this subject but I have two questions for you to ponder:
Is there a pattern to how I organized opposing points on this hexagon? For example, why is Expression paired with Formal Science?
How would you represent the cumulative knowledge of multiple individuals working together on a team in a chart like this? If you were the leader of that team, how would you use this information to maximize their potential?
Enlightening article on politics. The recent election was much closer than reported in the news and was nowhere near the landslide claimed by POTUS when compared to other elections which were landslides. Also, the fact that close to 80 million didn't even vote indicates a silent majority that is untapped.