Deliberate cargo cult theory

Looking at my blog made me realize that my arguments have been a tat circular and centered around single issue. It made me realize that, after all, I have been trained as a theoretical physicist at Cambridge and therefore forwarding theories runs through my scientific veins like honey used to run through the fountains of security options before the credit crunch.

Cargo cult is a curious thing, it takes root in primitive civilizations as a fundamental logical misunderstanding of causation. Richard Feynman, the Physics nobel prize winner made an influential speech about the subject that is a classic for any natural scientist. Like primitives invented the wheel, Archimedes the buoyancy principle, Einstein the theory of relativity and Darwin the evolution of species, so has Feynman discovered the fundamental trappings of modern policy making: Cargo cult.

Let us analyze the premises that any politician fulfills in their path to glory.

First, let us define politics:

Politics is popular action through representatives.

Necessary conditions for a politician:

1) Must be representative of an opinion that is general enough and accurate enough to warrant a sufficient number of supporters.

Therefore :

2) Must find a way to transmit and produce his views to the masses.

Therefore:

3) Must get elected for office.

When adequatelly implemented this results in a vehicle for popular action.

How can these conditions be changed to allow perversion, or if you prefer, subversion of the electoral process ? Simple !

1) Must get elected for office.

Therefore - spin - :

2) Must find a way to transmit and produce his views to the masses.

Therfore - spin - :

3) Must be representative of an opinion that is general enough and accurate enough to warrant a sufficient number of supporters.

The causation between the first set of necessary conditions and the second is not the same and they are, in fact, in direct opposition to one another. The second set is cargo cult and is anti-democratic.

QED.

The reader will tend to say that he already knew the theorem. Like the Pythagoras theorem, it is the one that everyone understands but during the GCSE's fails to apply. To the practitioners of politics it is also a deliberate fallacy.