The mother feels betrayed. She feels that the daughter has deviated, diverged from the internal object in her mind that represents the daughter. She has an idealized daughter in her mind, and her real daughter, the external object outside her mind, is misbehaving by contradicting this internal object. For example, the real object, the real flesh and blood daughter, is becoming independent, has personal autonomy, makes decisions, has agency, teams up with another person, and so on and so forth. So this is betrayal. The daughter is a traitor. Now, in many countries, you execute traitors. Unfortunately for the mother, this is not an option. So what she is doing is she is transforming the internal object into a persecutory object, an enemy. And now comes the punitive part, the punishment. The daughter needs to be punished for no longer playing the role of an obedient submissive internal object.  And so she reacts to her frustration with aggression. This is not Samvaknin, this is Dolad. So the mother now becomes aggressive and she wants to eliminate the source of the frustration and the traitor, to punish the traitor and to eliminate the source of frustration. So the mother now has an enormous motivation to devalue her daughter and then discard her. But how to do that? You push the daughter to devalue herself. You push the daughter to self-trash, to self-destruct. And this is what narcissistic mothers do. They push their offspring to self-destruct with the first sign of independence, disagreement, criticism, deviance from the internal object, first sign of life.     So better a dead child than a living child. And so the first stage is to push the child into an impossible situation where the only option would be essentially suicidal or self-destructive in the extreme, self-trashing to the point of losing one's identity and disintegrating psychotically, if possible. So she has betrayed her. She has abandoned her. She has frustrated her. She has contradicted her. She has rebelled. She is rebellious and defined. And for all these things, she needs to be obliterated as a maximum and severely punished as a minimum with the hope that she will learn a lesson and then dump everything and run back to mommy and become again an inert, lifeless object in the corner. Today we are going to discuss my favorite topic. No, not sex. Dead parents, emotionally absent parents, much more specifically selfish, narcissistic parents, egoistic, self-centered, oblivious to the existence, separateness and externality of their own children. Such narcissists who happen to have become parents are possessive. They're envious and they seek to destroy the object that keeps frustrating them, their own children or offspring. This is the mythology of narcissistic parents. My name is Sam Bakni. I'm the author of Malignance of Love, Narcissism Revisited, a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of CIAPS, Commonwealth Institute for Advanced Professional Studies. And having buttoned my revealing sweater, let us plunge right in. Now, we all know that narcissism breeds narcissism. But luckily, only a minority of children of narcissistic parents become narcissists. This may be due to some genetic predisposition or to different life circumstances, for example, not being the firstborn. And while not all children exposed to bed parenting become narcissists, most narcissists have been exposed to one or more narcissistic parents or caregivers. Remember the following. The narcissist never envies who you are. The narcissist envies what you possess and the narcissist envies what you accomplish. And what you possess could be anything, could be your age, your youth, your beauty, real possessions, physical objects, intangibles, your reputation, anything that you own is the target of the narcissist envy. Similarly, what you accomplish, all your accomplishments real or imagined, narcissists envy is virulent, nefarious, pernicious, seething and uncontrollable. This is 10 times more true. This order of magnitude more true when the target of the envy is the narcissist's own child or offspring, because the child is a copy of the narcissist, is a clone of the narcissist, 50% of the child's genetic material, 50% of the child's DNA had belonged to the narcissist. The narcissist regards the child as an extension of himself, but also as a reflection in the mirror of life, the mirror of time. And here is this copy, this replica, this clone, you know, outsmarting the narcissist, out accomplishing the narcissist, better than the narcissist, more famous than the narcissist, richer than the narcissist, more successful with the opposite sex than the narcissist.  In short, the narcissist's child and offspring are reminders of failure that make the narcissist feel as if he were some kind of loser. The narcissist's parent regards his or her child as a multifaceted source of narcissistic supply on the one hand and a competitor on the other. The child is considered and treated as an extension of the narcissist, as I've said, it is through the child that the narcissist seeks to settle open scores with the world. The child is supposed to realize and actualize the narcissistic parents unfulfilled dreams, his or her wishes and fantasies. That's what the child is for, an instrument, a tool, a way to even the scales, to regain a sense of cosmic justice. And this vicarious life by proxy can develop in two ways. The narcissist can either merge with his child, fuse with the child, create a symbiosis with the child, a single organism with two heads, or the narcissist can feel ambivalent about the child. The narcissist attempts to have a second go at life, a second chance at life through the child. The child's unfolding biography, the child's achievements, the child's adventures, the child's experiences are all appropriated by the narcissist as his. And so this creates, on the one hand, an enormous sense of closeness and intimacy, almost self-love. The narcissist falls in love with himself through the child. In short, the narcissist creates a shared fantasy with the child. On the one hand, on the other hand, the narcissist cannot deny the fact that the child is separate, is an individual, because, for example, the child relocates, walks away, moves to another country or another city, begins to have his own friends, circle of friends and peers later on gets married, maybe. These undeniable facts, they create a lot of ambivalence. It's as if the child refuses to remain a child. Refuses to succumb to his role, or her role, as an instrumentalized extension of the narcissist. And so the narcissist is angry at the child for this ostentatious, what he perceives as ostentatious, or conspicuous agency of personal autonomy and independence. And the ambivalence is the result of a conflict between the narcissist's wish to attain or obtain or secure his narcissistic goals through the child and his pathological destructive envy of the child and of the child's accomplishments and possessions. And to ameliorate, to ameliorate the unease and the anxiety bred by this emotional ambivalence, the narcissistic parents resorts to myriad control mechanisms. It's as if the narcissist is trying to objectify the child, to render the child an inert object, a corpse, a dead entity, a dead body, thereby removing the threat of loss and of challenge and of confrontation and of conflict. Signs of life, vital signs, are suppressed egregiously and actively in order to not reach a stage to avoid a stage or phase of confronting the reality of the child's separateness and perhaps transcendence and elevation above the narcissist's own accomplishments. And so what the narcissist does tries to control the child and he uses several types of mechanisms. Number one, the guilt driven mechanisms.  Number two, the goal driven mechanisms. We have a common goal which we can and must achieve. It's us against reality and then there's the shared psychosis which frequently manifests as a form of emotional incest. You and I are united against the whole world or at least against your monstrous no-good father or mother. You are my one and only true love and passion. You are the man in this house or you are the woman in this house. And the fourth type of, fourth class of mechanisms are the explicit mechanisms. If you do not adhere to my principles, to my beliefs, ideology, religion, values, if you do not obey my instructions and if you do not provide me with high-grade narcissistic supply, I'm going to punish you. I'm going to disinherit you. I'm going to throw you out.  I'm going to punish yourself. As Lydia Gangelovsko observed, the narcissistic parent often regards himself or herself as a martyr, as a victim. The parent uses her or his alleged suffering as a currency. This is a sacrifice. The sacrifice is emphasized. The whole relationship between the parent and the child is cast in terms of self-sacrifice. It's a sacrificial relationship. And I encourage you to watch my video about sacrificial entitlement. And this is a mode of communication and explanatory and organizing principle which endows the lives of the parent and of the parents nearest and dearest with meaning, sense, direction, message, and mission. I've sacrificed myself for you. I've denied myself for you.  Being introduced into the narcissistic drama is a privilege, an honor, and a right of passage, an initiation, the true hallmark of intimacy. Also, the child is led to believe. Now all this, of course, creates guilt, guilt and shame and rage, guilt, shame, and rage. In short, negative affectivity. The child feels guilty if he fails to meet the parent's expectations, if he has a shame for his own inadequacy and defeat.  The guilt trip induced by the narcissistic parent is not limited in time because it is not linked to a specific action of the child perpetrator. It is intended to elicit never ending compensation. The child needs to compensate the narcissistic parent for the child's own and mere existence. It is as if the existence of a child is a transgression of some kind because it abscondes with the parent's resources. It imposes on the parent. It burdens the parent. And this kind of guilt-tripping is not designed to bring on some kind of restoration of their relationship or rehabilitation of the offender, the child. It is a tool of control and an instrument of manipulation. The culprit, the poor offspring, is meant to feel guilty for merely existing and for as long as she exists. And this exercise of control helps to sustain the illusion that the child is a part of the narcissist, inseparable. But maintaining this illusion calls for extraordinary levels of control, micromanagement on the part of the parent, and, in parallel, obedience, submissiveness, obsequiousness, succumbing to the parent's narrative on the part of the child. The relationship is typically symbiotic and emotionally turbulent, dysregulated. The parent induces in the child dysregulation in order to become the child's external regulator. The child's emotions and moods are labile.  The child fulfills another important narcissistic function, the provision of narcissistic supply. There is no denying the implied or imaginary immortality in having a child, and you have a child as if even only forever. The early natural dependency of the child on his or her caregivers, on the parents, serves to assuage their fear of abandonment and loss. The narcissist tries to perpetuate this dependence, to carry it forward by not allowing the child to separate and individuate by using the aforementioned control mechanisms. The child is the ultimate secondary source of narcissistic supply. The child is always present. The child admires the narcissistic parent. The child witnesses the narcissistic moments of triumph and grandeur and can replay them in times of narcissistic supply deficiency. So the child is very useful for the regulation of the narcissistic supply, flow of narcissistic supply, and sense of self-worth. Owing to the child's innate wish to be loved, the child can be manipulated and extorted into a state of constant giving. As far as the narcissist is concerned, the child is a dream come true, but only in the most egotistical sense. When the child is perceived as reneging on his main obligation to provide the narcissistic parent with a constant supply of attention, the parent's emotional reaction is harsh and revealing. There's no love there. It's clear that the narcissistic parent's so-called love is utterly conditioned on performance and actually represents not love, but elation or gratification. It is when the narcissistic parent is disenchanted with his child that we see the true nature of this pathological relationship. We see the true face of the narcissistic parent. The child is totally objectified. The narcissist reacts to any bridge in the unwritten and a spoken contract with the child with wells of aggression and aggressive transformations, contempt, rage, emotional and psychological abuse, and even physical violence. The narcissist as a parent tries to annihilate the real external object which is disobedient. The child out there who keeps negating and conflicting with and contradicting the internal object that's not short in the narcissist's mind that represents the child. And then the narcissist is trying to substitute for the real child with a subservient edifying and fictitious version. It's as good as killing the child psychologically. It's a form of mental assassination. I granted an interview to your tango.com Samantha Cleaver. We spoke about daughters and narcissistic mothers. There's a private case of narcissistic parenting and she asks what are some common ways that the mother's narcissism can affect her daughter's relationships? And I told her depends on how narcissistic the mother is the outcome is different, could be different. Narcissistic parents fail to recognize and accept the personal autonomy and boundaries of their offspring. They treat their offspring, their children as instruments of gratification, gratification or as extension of themselves. Their love is conditioned on the performance of their children and on how well these children cater to the needs, wishes and priorities of the parent. Consequently, I told Samantha, narcissistic parents oscillate between clingy emotional blackmail when they seek the child's attention, adulation and compliance known as narcissistic supply and a kind of steely ice cold devaluation and silent treatment when they wish to punish the child for refusing to tow the line and act the part, follow the script in this theater production. And such inconstancy and unpredictability, such intermittent reinforcement, render the child insecure and codependent. When in relationships as adults these children feel that they have to earn, earn, work hard for each and every morsel of love, that they would be instantly and easily abandoned if they underperformed, that their primary role is to take care of their spouse, mate, partner or friend and that they are less important, less endowed, less skilled and less deserving than any significant other in their lives. These are the outcomes of instrumentalizing, adultifying and parentifying the child. And so it's a form of insecure attachment style. The child exposed to narcissistic parenting is trying to compensate future intimate partners by being the exact opposite of the narcissistic parent that he has grown up with. Someone asked, what are the top concerns when daughters of narcissistic mothers start relationships, when their relationships move forward and when their relationships end? And I told her children of narcissistic parents are ill-adapted, their personality is rigid and they are prone to deploy psychological defense mechanisms, primitive and infantile ones such as splitting or projection or projective identification. Consequently, when they become adults when they grow up, they display the same behaviors throughout their relationship from start to finish and irrespective of changing circumstances. As adults, offspring of narcissists tend to perpetuate a pathological primary relationship with their narcissistic parents, this is known as repetition compulsion. This kind of children turned adults depend on other people for their emotional gratification and for the performance of ego or daily functions.  No matter what abuse is inflicted on these children as adults, they remain in their relationship. By eagerly becoming victims, codependents seek to control the abusers, control from the bottom. And some of these children end up as inverted narcissists, it's a form of covert narcissists and it is a codependent who depends exclusively on narcissists. A narcissist is codependent. If you are living with a narcissist, if you have a relationship with a narcissist, if you're married to a narcissist, if you're working with a narcissist, that does not mean that you are an inverted narcissist. To qualify as an inverted narcissist, you must crave to be in a relationship with a narcissist regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by the narcissist. You must actively seek relationships with narcissists and only with narcissists, no matter what your bitter and traumatic past experience has been. You must feel empty and unhappy when you are in relationships with any other kind of person except the narcissist. Only then, and if you satisfy some other criteria or dependent personality disorder, only then can you be safely labeled as an inverted narcissist. A small minority of children who grow up with narcissistic parents end up being counter dependent and narcissistic themselves, emulating and imitating their parents' traits and conduct. The emotions of these children's children of narcissists, their needs are buried under scar tissue which had formed, coalesced and hardened during years of one form of abuse or another. They have grandiosity, they have a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy and overwinning autiness. Usually, these hide knowing insecurity and a fluctuating sense of self-worth, their compensatory. Now counterdependence are consumations, they reject and they despise authority. They are fiercely independent, they are controlling, they are self-centered, they are aggressive, they fear intimacy and they are locked into cycles of hesitant approach followed by avoidance of commitment, their lone wolves, the bad team players. Counterdependency is a reaction formation. The counterdependent dreads his own weaknesses and he seeks to overcome these self-imputed frailties and vulnerabilities by projecting an image of omnipotence, omniscience, defiance, success, self-sufficiently, superiority, unbridled aggression and dangerous personality. Some are asked, how do narcissistic mothers interfere or get involved with their daughter's love or dating lives? How does this compare to typical mothers? That's a very interesting question because of the envy, the envy that I mentioned. The narcissistic mother is a control freak and does not easily relinquish good and reliable sources of narcissistic supply, admiration, adulation, attention of any kind. She doesn't give up, she doesn't take it lying down. When someone else enters the family and tries to hijack her daughter or her son, it is the role of her children to replenish this supply, the children owe it to her and to make sure that the child does not develop boundaries, does not become independent or autonomous, the narcissistic parent micromanages the child's life and encourages dependent and infantile behaviors in her offspring. Such a parent bribes the child by offering free lodging or financial support or helping with daily tasks. Another strategy is to emotionally blackmail the child by constantly demanding help and imposing chores claiming to be ill, disabled, needy. Another way is to threaten the child. As I mentioned, to disinherit the child if she doesn't comply with the parent's wishes and strictures and behavioral rules, the narcissistic mother also does her best to scare away anyone who may upset this symbiotic relationship or otherwise threaten the delicate unspoken contract between her and her daughters. She sabotages any budding relationship her child develops with lies, deceit and scorn.  And so the extent of this problem is not small. According to the diagnostic and statistical manual, narcissistic personality disorder is diagnosed in between 2 and 16 percent of the population in clinical settings and between 0.5 and 1 percent of the general population. And today, about half of all narcissists are women. And so it's not a small problem. And children are affected not only by narcissistic fathers, but increasingly so and increasingly more by narcissistic mothers. The narcissistic parent takes the child's life away and makes this life his or her own. The child is rendered a zombie. The walking dead, the narcissistic parent exalts in the child's life, experiences it, enhances it, introduces into it stimuli and adventures and challenges and goals. All the time, all this time, the child is a mere witness as his or her own life unfolds in the hands of the narcissistic parent. It's a takeover, a hostile takeover, a vampiric infestation. The child is hijacked, mind and body snatched, and no longer has any separate or external existence. Gradually, the child wills and withers and shrivels and at some point fades into oblivion or is transformed into a variant of the parent known as the false self, and a narcissist is born.


Around Dodge City and in the territory on west there's just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers And that's where the u.s. Marshall and the smell of gun smoke Starring William Conrad the story of the violence that moved west with young America story of a man who moved with it Matt Dillon United States Marshall Yeah, what she come in here for to tell me you don't drink.  I've had a straight now which one of these men is the Marshall Marshall a Marshall I was told I'd find him here. He's here. He's sitting right behind you. So don't start nothing. Oh Is that him sitting right there? That's him. Well first of all Dillon Yeah, I want to talk to you Marshall I'll go ahead But he might have I sit out No Now my name is Ben quarter Marshall Then quarter. This is my first time in Dodge. I know and I want to be friends Marshall Why not now I figure we can do each other a lot of good a lot of good. Oh That's so that sure is why I came to talk to you See Whenever I come to a new town, I always get to know the man's running the place That way I figured there won't be no misunderstanding later on misunderstanding about what? I'm a gambler Marshall Dodge is an open town. Mr. Carter. Oh sure You see I make money gambling sometimes a lot of money. Now you must be pretty lucky Oh I'm lucky. All right But now you know sometimes a player will go broke and start a fuss over maybe even run to the law about it Yeah, yeah, I know And when he does he's usually been cheated or some losers always got to complain about something. Is that what you came to tell me, Mr. Coder oh Marshall you know what I'm talking about Now you take care of the troublemakers and I'll take care of you Say a quarter of the profits and let me explain something to you, Mr. Coder If a man loses his money gambling I figure that's his look out But I still don't allow any crooked games and dodge because sooner or later they lead the killin So you run your game straight now, Roger go That's not friendly. Now you've made one mistake. Mr. Coder trying to bribe me You'll make another in your through here For good. Oh, you're one of the hard-nosed law man. You'll find out soon enough, Mr. Well, I Know I've got an idea that I can persuade you yet, Marshall Mr. Dylan did you ever hear of a place called Deming Deming that's in New Mexico. Well, it's a nice place. Oh sure. Why oh this girl I know it's gonna move there. Oh is uh Is she a nice girl Chester she was What do you mean she was well? I haven't seen her since she was about 10 and that was over 20 years ago Well, what are you writing to the girl for Chester? Oh, I don't write to her I write to her brother. Well be he tells me about everything Yeah, well, I better get out before you explain it to me. He wants me to marry up with her mr. He doesn't yes sir, but once a year regular I write and tell him I won't do it. Yeah, you're getting too dang old That's what's the matter with her. Well, don't forget to put the lamp off before you leave the office tonight You see anybody he wants the rifle no Crawl over and put the lamp out Chester, but keep low. Yes, sir He'll get away Now he had a rifle Chester and he was in the alley right across the street And to his mighty poor shooting That's all he wanted to do was scare me. Oh, then it was that gambler.  Yeah, maybe But I can't prove it. Are you sure ought to do something about it? I am Gonna get something to eat what? Well, you go out and drop the word here in there about me getting shot at but why just do it Chester Yes, sir, I'll be around later. Hello kitty. Are you busy? No Sit down. Thank you. I heard about you getting shot at tonight I've been shot before kitty. Oh And I suppose I shouldn't worry about a kitty. Don't start. It's just luck.  Well, that's the way I look at it. I'm sorry Hello quarter ah Right pretty girl How long you've been wearing shoes? Mr. Oh look say what you have to say quarter You sure do make it hard to be friends Marshall. I only wanted to say that I heard you got shot at tonight So well, I'm sorry it happened. That's all. I don't envy a man has to be a marshal. It's mighty dangerous Besides that it usually don't pay very good And what do you think I ought to do about it quarter? quit That ain't necessary Marshall But if you were smart you would stay right here and make good money and be real safe to boot I didn't know for sure. It was you quarter But now I know What are you talking about? There's a stage leaving dodge about sunup. You're gonna be on it No, I'm opening a new game across the street tomorrow. I'll take your gun quarter. Oh, wait a minute Bosher You can't do that. I think I can Quarter went to bed early that night in jail But I got him up next morning and plenty of time to make this stage He climbed into it meek as a bird and then it left And I soon forgot about him Like so many others. I've run out of dodge. I figured he'd keep going and make his trouble somewhere else But a couple of weeks later. I found out I'd figured wrong. I Was walking up front street one afternoon with Doc I tell you man, I'm gonna take down my shingle one of these days and let all these people find themselves a good vet Who's been souring your milk doc? Miss Humboldt, that's her. She's been coming in every day for a week. Now. You're usually complaining about a shortage of patients That woman's not a patient. She's a suicide. Oh, not doc.   Dillon I just saw him who did you see just that gambler quarter what and he's got somebody else with him some stranger Well, we'll see you later, doc Man with me to sort of look after my interests Won't buffalo him so easy. Hello toke You really the marshal here Didn't quarter tell you He didn't mention no name or what are you talking about took more than an IRO friends quarter. We worked and rode a long time together In fact, we went through quite a lot didn't we took too much man Remember Yeah, I remember your marshal now, huh? And you've sold your gun to quarter here Is that right?  Yeah I'm here to kill you We will return for the second act of gun smoke in just a moment, but first Tomorrow night Herbert Marshall stars as the honorable Edmund Burke British statesman and member of parliament Hear his story on CBS radio tomorrow night on the radio Hall of Fame with Lionel Barrymore as your host Now the second act of gun smoke was a bad feeling to meet toke Marlon again after some 15 years And I have him standing at the bar of the Ella Fraganza hired by a crooked gambler to kill me Token, I'd run horses together over in Colorado Until the night we rode into La Hanta and got taken by a drunken mob and beaten half to death And the next day when they found out we weren't the men they wanted it was too late By then something had gone wrong inside toke And as soon as he could climb on a horse he'd ridden off without a word I never saw him again Until now how long you've been a marshal quite a while took I Never figured a lawman for much a lot of people don't Like quarter here.   I want to talk to you took Come on over to the table.  Well talk is this your profession now shooting people. I gambled a little Why do you do it took I don't like people much Not after what happened La Hanta. Oh, you got over that beaten. We both did Anyway, that was a long time ago. Maybe my memory is better than yours. No, no it isn't We both changed after that took we sure did but in different ways Now you hate everybody. I just hate mobs. I Guess that's one reason I became a lawman There was a lawman helping them that night La Hanta Sheriff himself are there are good sheriffs and bad like marshal like Anybody took kind of too bad.  I never back off from the fight Well, suppose I won't fight I Get paid all the same But you'll have to get out of dodge You think I'll do that? No, but I'll give you 24 hours to worry it around All right talk That gives you 24 hours to I don't change Talks nothing to me But money is It adds to the pleasure. Tell me something talk. You're done Enjoy shooting me.   There'd be fights men would die 24 hours marshal Dylan Okay 24 hours You're cut just if you sure you don't want to stop Just because I've been losing they could be a bad omen, especially today. It's like it's all kitty Chester I don't depend on luck.  Oh doc doc. I'm an Hester Machu been hiding out in here all day long while everybody's talking about how you let that gambler come back to town yesterday after running him out I'm taking three just him It'll all be subtle tonight back Mother they're saying you're afraid of that gunman. He's got with him that that that took something sure about Chester Doc don't get drunk too early today. We might need you. No, I quit. I Can't even think of that mr. Dillon. Okay, just there's anything.  How are you gonna stop a man that kills just for money for money? Hey, wait a minute Doc, do you know where he is now? Well, yeah, but he wasn't the Texas Trail a little while ago matty good. I'll be back later Marshal Dylan Sit down marshal. You know miss kitty here. I don't matter kitty They've been talking about you me kitty And talking about me too good. That's what I want to talk about talk me Go right ahead. Don't stay too long. She's real pretty girl man. Maybe I better leave If you leave I leave with you Matt, it's all right. Can they stay? talk How much is quarter paying you to get rid of me? $300 what if I give you 300 to shoot him?  It don't matter much No, all right I'll give you 300 to clear out of here and forget this whole business why but we were good friends once took You got mad and started hating everybody you've changed too Matt You sure never were a coward in the old days. Is that what you think I am? So this kitty don't you kitty?  He said he likes I'd him meeting you in the street So do I there's less chance of anybody else getting hurt out here? Yes Oh there he comes Yeah Mr. Dylan I I wish you get out of the street Chester.  Does anything Just killing people Especially the law man, okay, so lying here flooding inside Mad no more.   I'm going for a ride Gun smoke under the direction of Norman McDonald stars William Conrad as Matt Dylan US Marshall Tonight's story was specially written for gun smoke by John Meston with music composed and conducted by Rex Corey Featured in the cast were John Daner Lawrence Dobkin and Vic Perron Harley Bear is Chester Howard McNeer is Doc and Georgia Ellis is Kitty Join us again next week as Matt Dylan US Marshall fights to bring law and order out of the wild violence of the West in gun smoke Laughs ahead on CBS radio tomorrow night with our miss Brooks on most of these stations George Walsh speaking Stay tuned now for gangbusters, which follows in a few minutes over most of these same stations There's comedy with my little Margie Sunday nights on the CBS radio network


Hey, this is Brett, and this 2016 Dodge Challenger Hellcat is stock number 13842Z. I am here at Summit Automotive in Vondellac, Wisconsin, your new and used sports car and Dodge Challenger headquarters. This 2016 Dodge Challenger has the 6.2 liter supercharged V8 engine, puts out 707 horsepower with the red key. It has the six-speed manual transmission. This car has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off, and it is 100% ready to go. I'm going to go all the way around in this video inside, start it up, take a look under the hood, give you the most accurate representation of the car that I can. Bright white is the color and I shoot all my videos in 4K, so if you have HD capabilities turn them on now because it is your best way to check out the quality, condition, options and cleanliness of the car before seeing the person. If you like the video, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash Summit Auto. Click the bell notifications, you'll get updates on the videos I do, each and every day as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle walk-arounds on YouTube. This one comes with the brass monkey wheels. These are 20-inch SRT-8 painted alloys and it has Brembo brakes with these slotted rotors. It has Pirelli P0 tires, these are 27540 ZR20s, and I would say they have a decent amount of tread left, probably 50-60%, it's hard to see back there, but decent tread left on those tires. Front fender is absolutely perfect, no dents or dings on there, coming around the front of the vehicle, lower valence and front bumper are in pretty nice condition, didn't see any major dents or cracks on there. My favorite hood on the Challenger vehicles, the coal induction with the heat extractors on the side, really a good look on this vehicle. Passenger side front fender is in nice condition as well, and the passenger side front wheel, no major scuffs or scrapes on there. As you go down this side of this 2016 Dodge Challenger, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. I take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you can't, are close by and you just can't make the trip down, you can still see the vehicle, hear the vehicle, and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here, so when you do get here there's absolutely no surprises, and you can make a smart and informed buying decision from wherever you're at. If this video helps you do that, let your salesmen know that you saw the video that was helpful and that Brett sent you very clean down this side, I didn't see any dents, I didn't see any dings, you get the Hellcat decal on the side there that is just a sticker, so you could take that off if you didn't like it. Back wheel is in excellent shape, but I think it adds, that's, decal adds a little bit to the car, so back tires have just as much tread as the front tires, maybe even a little bit more from what you can see, frame and underbody, looks really good as well. Coming around to the back of the vehicle, rear bumper is in nice shape, I didn't see any major dents or cracks on there, you get the black chrome-ish look on the dual tailpipes there, backup parking sensors, the LED tail lamps, back storage area is very clean, you do get the dual subwoofer, Harman Kardon, the tire inflator kit, and this is where your battery is located, you can see the shocks are doing a really nice job pulling that trunk lid up, and I didn't see any major dents on the trunk lid, passenger side, or the driver side I should say, looks really good, rear quarter didn't see any dents or dings in there, and for full disclosure this back wheel is in very nice condition as well. Down the rest of this side of the car, doors look really good, has the blind spot monitoring, heated mirrors, entering-go system inside, you get the, I think they call it SEPIA, brown Laguna leather seats, you get the SRT embossed in the backrest, the back seats are in excellent condition as well, you get the latch child safety system for any child car seats, factory floor mats back there, power driver seat, no rips or tears on the seat, and the wearer is pretty good as well, on the bolster, you get the floor mats up front, auto headlamps, power tilt, and telescopic steering wheel, Harman Kardon sound, power windows locks and mirrors. We'll hop inside, check out the miles, the radio, and then start it up and take a look under the hood, 13,616 miles on here, get the digital speedometer, instrument cluster is nice and clean, seven inch LCD display, comes with the heated leather wrap steering wheel, you get cruise controls on the right, Bluetooth and information center controls on the left, and audio controls on the back, thumb pads, and it's the kind of semi-flat bottom to that steering wheel. This one has the 8.4 3C radio, you get the factory navigation system, there's highway 41, so that is working nicely, one thing you always got to check on these radios is that the navigation system's working, because they haven't been known to go bad in these particular cars, AM FM and Sirius XM radio, so that's why I always show the navigation system and there's highway 41, so the satellites reading correctly, you get heated and cooled seat buttons as well as heated steering wheel controls and then you get all your different apps here, you get performance pages and all that good stuff, says I need an active subscription, anyways you get drive modes, all that good stuff as well, down here are your more tactile volume, tune and climate controls, and you get launch control stability control, and then you get the SRT pages which are up here, and you get to edit these, you get default, you get sport, you get track, and then you can do custom on there, anyways down here like I said the more tactile climate volume and tune controls, notice you get the bright pedals down there, six-speed manual transmission, keyless entry, this is the black key, um, passenger side format and seat are in excellent conditional rips or tears on there, and the headliner is in pretty nice shape, you get map lights up there, home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems, and assistant 9-1-1 buttons in here, we'll start it up and take a look under the hood, starts right up, no check engine lights or anything like that, let's go listen to that exhaust real quick, love the taillights on these cars, I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today, and hopefully from this hd video you've been able to verify the quality condition options, and of course cleanliness of this car all the way around inside and out, under the hood we have the 6.2 liter supercharged v8 hemi engine, engine base very clean, runs very smooth, once again this car has been fully safe and inspected by a service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off, and it is 100% ready to go, there is the emissions sticker, and I would highly recommend this car from a quality and condition standpoint there, those LED running lights, HID headlamps, and to see more pictures of this car or one of our other 500 to end 50 new news cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, wranglers, challengers, chargers, mustangs, corvettes, camaros, you name it we got to go to that website right there summitauto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle, all at summitauto.com, and if you'd like to check out more hd videos you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto, click the bell notifications to get updates on the videos I do each and every day, as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle walk rounds on youtube, fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to my youtube channel the upper left, a link to more dodge challenger videos I've done in the upper right, a link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left and a link to one of our latest youtube videos in the lower right, click those, check us out, we're super excited to help you with this ultra clean 2016 dodge challenger hellcat in bright white clear coat, thanks again for checking out the video remember to like subscribe and share on the youtube channel I really appreciate it thanks again


Libertarianism is the theory that advocates very strict limits on government power. In past eras, many of the opponents of limited government advocated monarchy or dictatorship. Certainly that's what Nazis argued for, fascists, communists, many others, obviously in an earlier era, the defenders of the divine right of kings. Today, however, very few people promote either dictatorship or monarchy, or even a small, tight oligarchy. Everybody last year loved the royal wedding, but part of the reason why people love the British royal family so much is because they actually don't have much in the way of real political power. If they were actual absolute monarchs, maybe they wouldn't be as popular as they actually are. Today, most of the opponents of limited government instead argue for democracy. That is, they claim that we can afford to concentrate enormous powers in the hands of government, so long as it's democratic. Why? Because democratic government ultimately answers to the people. If the bastards in power do a bad job, or they harm the public in some way, then we can vote them out, elect a different set of bastards who hopefully will do a better job. However, this argument for democracy, while it certainly has a lot of validity, does omit a very serious problem, and that is the problem of political ignorance. In order for the public to hold the government accountable in an effective way through a democratic process, they need to have at least some reasonable knowledge of what the government is doing, and what the likely effects of the government's actions are going to be. If, in fact, much of the population, most of the voters, have only very limited political knowledge and don't have enough to impose effective democratic accountability, then we have a serious problem, and the case for limiting government power is strengthened. As I'm going to suggest in this presentation, that is in fact the case. I'm going to start off talking briefly about why political ignorance matters and why we should care about it. Next, I'll talk about the astounding extent of ignorance, how it turns out that a very high proportion of public often has little or no knowledge of politics, often even of very basic political issues.  But unfortunately, what is individually rational often leads to bad collective outcomes for the population as a whole. Now, some scholars argue we don't need to worry very much about political ignorance that in reality people, even if they don't know very much, can use information and shortcuts to offset their ignorance. I'm going to suggest that while these shortcuts do have some utility, it's often overstated that in many cases it's actually counterproductive to try to use them. Finally, I'll talk about the implications for limited government. I'll explain how what we know about political ignorance strengthens the case for imposing tight constraints on the power of government and also for decentralizing the government that we do have that for whatever reason it's unavoidable that we need to have at least some significant government power. All of these issues I cover in more detail in a book I'm about to finish called Democracy and Political Ignorance, so I hope that if you're interested in knowing more about these matters that you will read my book and perhaps even buy it when it comes out. So first, why does political ignorance matter? One obvious reason is that democracy is ruled by the people. It's supposed to be a government that's accountable to the public and if that accountability is to work, the public needs to have some understanding of what the government is doing, what the effects are and perhaps also what the alternatives are and that way they can at least have some rationality in deciding which set of bastards they actually want to have in power, the Democrats or the Republicans or whatever other party that they might prefer. Moreover, even if you don't care about accountability for its own sake, there is still the reality that in democracies public opinion does have a real influence on public policy. It's not the only thing that has an influence, obviously there's interest groups, there's other factors, however many studies show that it does have a substantial effect and therefore if that public opinion is poorly informed or is based on ignorance or irrationality that might lead to the adoption of bad policies and that's the second reason why political ignorance might matter. Now many people feel well, voters have the right to decide on the basis of whatever they want, they decide on the basis of ignorance, well that's just their individual right to do what they want. As Robert Bork, the famous judge and legal theorist puts it, in some areas the majority has the right to rule just because it is a majority. I think there's a major problem with this perspective that argues, well this is just an exercise of the individual rights of voters and that is that when the voters make bad decisions it's not just those who make the decision or those who are ignorant who suffer the consequences, it's all the rest of us. So if for instance you're ignorant about diet and therefore you eat eight cheese burgers every day under the mistaken impression that it's actually good for you, for the most part it's just you that suffers, right? On the other hand if you vote for bad policies that require everybody to do the equivalent of eating eight cheese burgers every day then that imposes harms on everybody. So the fact that voting is a decision not just for yourself but for the rest of society means that there are moral considerations reflected in your ignorance that might not occur with purely private decisions that affect only you or those who voluntarily interact with you. As John Stuart Mill put it 150 years ago voting can't really be considered purely as an individual right or an exercise of individual freedom because it is also the exercise of power over others is the equivalent of making other people eat eight cheese burgers a day not just merely choosing to eat those cheese burgers yourself. So therefore I think there are good reasons to be concerned about political ignorance both for those who value democratic accountability for its own sake and for those who care only just about the actual consequential effects of political decisions. Unfortunately it turns out that a high proportion of public actually has very low political knowledge in many cases to an astounding degree. I'll just go through a few of the many examples that could be said of this I go through many more in my book. So for example right after the 2010 election which was obviously a very important election taking place at a crucial time in our history polls showed that only 46% of the public knew that the result of the election was that the Republican Party had taken over the House of Representatives but not taken over the Senate. According to most surveys the most important issue in that election was the state of the economy. We were coming out of a very deep recession yet 67% of the public right before the election did not even know that the economy had actually grown rather than shrank during the previous year. Obviously if you're concerned about the economy and you want to vote about it in an intelligent way it helps to at least know the basics of what's going on with the economy at the time that you're casting your vote. One of the most controversial policies enacted in response to the recession and financial crisis that began in 2008 with the so-called TARP bailout of the banks. Yet only 34% of voters surveyed in 2010 knew that the TARP had been enacted under President George W. Bush, 47% believed that it had been enacted under President Obama. Especially if you're going to hold politicians and political parties responsible for the policies that they enact it's useful to know which politicians actually enacted which policies especially major ones like TARP which had an over $800 billion price tag which is certainly not trivial by any measure. Another major policy initiative discussed in 2009 and 2010 was the so-called cap and trade plan to try to address global warming which passed the House of Representatives in 2009 that would eventually failed. At the time that this was being debated surveys showed that only 24% of the public knew that cap and trade is an environmental policy. Many more people than that thought it was some sort of financial regulation and obviously if you don't even know that this is a policy that seeks to address an environmental issue it's very hard for you to make any kind of intelligent judgment on whether you think is a good policy or not. In over the last couple years obviously a very important policy that has been debated extensively in the press and among the public is the Obama health care plan. Various polls showed that only 30 to 40% of the public believe that they understand this plan and those numbers probably greatly overstate the true level of understanding because we know that many people are reluctant to admit to pollsters that they don't understand something they don't want to look stupid in front of pollsters that's why pollsters have actually found that if you ask people their opinions on non-existent legislations such as the Metallic Metals Act an actual example from past surveys people many people will express opinions about this rather than admit that they've never heard of the Metallic Metals Act so the same thing is true of the Obama health care plan not that as many people have never heard of it but a great many people who don't know much about it probably would not for understandable reasons want to tell a pollster about it. Now this kind of ignorance is not unique by any means the last couple of years it extends back for as long as we've had survey evidence on policy issues for example about 10 years ago the Bush administration pushed through Congress Bush's prescription drug bill which was the biggest new government program in American history in nearly 40 years at the time that it was enacted 70% of public did not even know that this massive bill had actually gone through Congress much less had an understanding of how it worked or whether it was a good idea and there are many other similar examples that can be given. Now ignorance extends not just to specific policies but also to the basic structure of government and how it operates for instance a survey shows that only 42% of Americans can even name the three branches of the federal government the executive the legislative and a judicial similarly voters often don't know which branch of government is responsible for what issues and therefore find it hard to determine who to blame or credit for particular results they also are often confused about what kinds of issues are actually the result of government policy or not so they often for instance end up blaming incumbent politicians for things that they can't control such as cyclical recessions or in many cases conditions in the world economy that national governments cannot affect it's also the case for instance that governments and incumbents are often punished at the ballot box especially in farm states for things like bad weather which reduce agricultural output or in some other studies for shark attacks and coastal waters and other things which politicians either can't control at all or at least have only very limited impact on on the other hand there are many other instances where public policy does have an effect on something but the public misses it because the effect is subtle or indirect now it's worth noting that this phenomenon of political ignorance is not just the product of the current generation or people today older people like me often say oh you know the kids today they know nothing they're completing their amuses compared to us that may or may not be true however if you look at the last six or seven decades of public opinion polling levels of political knowledge were roughly the same throughout most of that period as they are today this is not a case of a steep decline that has occurred recently this is rather a fairly stable result that is held true for many years and therefore cannot be attributed to some peculiarity of the current situation or to kids today playing too many video games or something back in the days before video games people were roughly as ignorant as they are today indeed today relative to our levels of education were actually perhaps slightly more ignorant than people were before but the differences are small now this ignorance is exacerbated by the size scope and complexity of modern government even if voters knew significantly more facts than they most of them currently know they still would be able to know and understand only a small fraction of the activity is the modern state in the United States government spending is nearly 40 percent of gross domestic product in most European countries and other democracies it is even higher than that and that doesn't take account of all the extensive regulation and other activities of government so even the best informed voters actually can only keep track of a relatively modest proportion of what government does and that makes the problem of political ignorance even more severe and more dangerous than it would be otherwise so I think it's important to recognize though that this ignorance is not just a result of stupidity or playing too many video games or problems in the education system or lack of availability of information rather it turns out that for most voters ignorance is actually rational behavior at least most at a time think about voting in an American presidential election what's the chance that your vote will actually determine the outcome well studies suggest that while it varies by state on average the chance that your vote will have an impact will determine the outcome is only about one in 60 million now in smaller elections such as for Congress or for a local office your chances are better but it's still usually at least many thousands to one so if your only reason to acquire political knowledge is to be a better voter to know for as certain as you can that say Obama is better than Romney or vice versa that turns out not to be much of an incentive to acquire political knowledge at all your better off putting your time and effort into things that are more likely to make a difference and that is in fact what the vast majority of people seem to do they devote only a small amount of time or sometimes no time at all to seeking out political knowledge and trying to understand it they instead devote their time to other things where they have more of a chance of making a difference in their own lives or perhaps the lives of other people that they care about so it turns out therefore that political ignorance for most part at least is actually rational behavior and this helps explain why ignorance has remained stable despite rising education levels despite the Internet and other modern media making information more available to people never before and so forth it turns out that the real constraint in political knowledge for most people is not the availability of information or their ability to find it or learn it it's rather the unwillingness to take the time and effort to actually acquire more than a minimal amount of political information yes there's huge amounts of information out there but most people just don't want to use their time and effort to acquire more than a small amount of it they have better things to do with their time now a further implication of rational ignorance is that when people do acquire political information in most cases it won't be for the purposes of being a better voter but rather for other kinds of reasons and indeed there certainly are people who acquire political information for those reasons just as there are sports fans like me who acquire sports information because we find it enjoyable we like cheering on our favorite sports teams and alike so similarly there are political fans who enjoy acquiring information about politics for example I'm a big Boston Red Sox fan I love pouring through baseball statistics learning about the Red Sox and their opponents it's not because I feel that I can influence the outcome of Red Sox games though many times I wish that I could it just because it's fun to cheer on my team and learn more about it and so forth similarly if you have a strong commitment to conservatism or liberalism or to Democrats or Republicans you may well be a political fan who enjoys cheering on their political team who enjoys hating its opponents just as I as a Red Sox fan enjoy hating the rival New York Yankees now it actually is very rational to hate the Yankees but in general it's the fact that it's part of the fan experience rather than a desire or hope that you will have a significant influence on outcomes and I think there's nothing wrong with people getting entertainment from being a political fan just think there's also nothing wrong with being a sports fan I am actually both a sports fan and a political fan myself however from the standpoint of political information this does pose a challenge if you're acting as a fan rather than somebody trying to be a better voter then that probably means that when you evaluate the political information that you get you're probably not going to evaluate it in a very fair or very logical and unbiased way just as Red Sox fans tend not to be completely unbiased when they get information about the Yankees in the Red Sox so similarly political fans tend to overvalue any information that supports their pre-existing views while ignoring or discounting information that cuts the other way so it turns out for example that when a few years ago an experiment was done where people who were strong supporters of President George W. Bush they were presented with information that contrary to Bush's predictions weapons of mass destruction for the most part were not found when the United States invaded Iraq not only did most of these people discount that information but a large percentage of actually came to believe even more firmly than they did before that weapons of mass destruction actually had been found in Iraq and there are similar experiments which show comparable results for left-wing voters similarly when you look at people and who they talk politics with it turns out that the vast majority of people talk politics exclusively or primarily with people that already agree with their own pre-existing views similarly people tend to read political media or watch media that conforms to your previous views so if you're a liberal you will tend to read the New York Times or listen to NPR if you're a conservative you're very likely to watch Fox News or read conservative media this is exactly the opposite of the behavior that would be rational to engage in if you were seeking the truth as John Stuart Mill famously pointed out if you're a truth seeker you should be seeking out opposing views to your own why because people who disagree with you are more likely to give you arguments and facts information that you haven't heard before from your own side however all of this is perfectly rational behavior if what people are doing is not acting as truth seekers but rather acting as political fans it's often unpleasant to have your beliefs challenged to be exposed to opposing arguments especially if they're at all strong or compelling and therefore people prefer to have their pre-existing views validated to act as political fans and that's fine in terms of the entertainment and personal satisfaction that they get it's not so good in terms of truth seeking and interestingly the people who know the most about politics and those who care about it the most are more likely to act in this highly biased way than people don't care about politics very much and simply are relatively ignorant so in effect on average the more political knowledge you have the more sort of irrationality you actually display indeed economist Brian Kaplan actually calls this rational irrationality that is that if your goal is not actually to seek the truth but to get some kind of entertainment or to act as a political fan it's actually rational to evaluate the information that you get in an illogical way that is at being rational and unbiased is hard work so often unpleasant so often more fun to be biased than to reinforce your pre-existing views now I do not mean by this to suggest that people deliberately start believing things that they know not to be true obviously it's actually impossible to believe something and yet know it's not true rather what I'm saying is that people when they look at political information often make little or no effort to be rational unbiased or logical in the way that they evaluate the information they get so they genuinely believe the things that they say they believe in most cases but that belief is the result of not really making much of an effort to evaluate information logically which I think is a common human failing but it's more common situations where the incentives to act rationally are much smaller now many scholars argue that despite the kind of evidence that I've just cited we don't need to worry about political ignorance too much because people can use information shortcuts sometimes there are situations where a small amount of information can serve as a stand-in for a much larger body of knowledge and there's a variety of shortcuts that are proposed in the literature in this presentation we're going to go through one or two of the most important ones but if you want to read about the other ones you should read my book which I encourage you to for other reasons anyway so I think information shortcuts sometimes do have some value in certain way I'm not going to suggest that they're completely useless however they have several systematic problems one is that you often need some kind of prior information or background knowledge to use them effectively secondly even if you have a shortcut that could potentially be used effectively they often don't cure the problem of rational irrationality that is shortcut theories implicitly assume that people choose information shortcuts for the purpose of seeking the truth but if in fact many people are acting as political fans rather than as truth seekers they often might select shortcuts which are conducive to their entertainment value rather than conducive to actual truth-seeking for instance one shortcut that is often proposed is the idea of opinion leaders instead of acquiring knowledge in your own you defer to knowledge of an opinion leader somebody who knows more than you do but perhaps shares the same values but as it turns out many of the people who serve as opinion leaders actually get that way not because of their superior knowledge and insight but because they're entertaining funny and they're good at validating people's pre-existing views people like John Stuart on the left or Rashwimba or Ann Koltron to right if you look at the kinds of things these people say they often make numerous factual and analytical errors but people don't watch them because they're the best possible or most experts on their subjects or because they're especially insightful they watch them because they're entertaining and they do a good job of validating their audience's pre-existing views but obviously at the same time they often also misweed the audience with poor analysis or factually inaccurate information now i'm going to now go into discussion of what i think is the most powerful shortcut argument the one that's perhaps most often cited in discussed in the literature and this is the idea of retrospective voting what retrospective voting says essentially is that you don't need to have much in a way of actual information or knowledge about policy when you vote all you really need to know is are things going reasonably well uh under the current incumbent administration or congress if things are going well then you vote for the incumbents and you reelect them you reward them for the good outcome if on the other hand things are going badly then you vote the bastards out you vote in a new set of bastards and a new set of bastards is on notice that they have to produce better results otherwise you can vote them out too city ideas that even if the voters don't know much about the details of policy this gives politicians incentives to produce good results in office and it economizes on information i think there are actually situations where retrospective voting works well in particular it works well when there's a large and obvious disaster that has occurred of some sort one that can be pinned on the incumbent administration can be held responsible for it and then you can punish them at the ballot box and indeed create these sorts of good incentives that i just mentioned so for example research shows that no democracy has ever had a mass famine on its own territory why will retrospective voting is surely part of the story here uh if a mass famine does occur even relatively ignorant voters will tend to notice that it's going on they're likely to blame the incumbent political leadership and vote them out of office and that gives incumbents pretty good example pretty good incentives to avoid mass famines and other similar disasters that are easy to understand and trace the incumbents i think this is a good thing and it's a valuable attribute of democracy but unfortunately most political issues don't work this way and in most of them you have to have more knowledge in order to engage in retrospective voting effectively so one problem as i previously mentioned is that often voters don't even know about the existence of important policies such as the bush prescription drug bill and that makes it hard for them to assess their results if you don't even know that the policy has been enacted there are also many policies out there which are relatively hidden and hard to detect and therefore voters are just unaware of them and therefore can't trace their results back to the incumbents for example there are often many hidden taxes and subsidies that exist in the political system both in europe and in the united states furthermore in deciding whether to credit or blame incumbents for results that occur in the world it's important to know which results are actually affected by government policies and which ones are not and as i mentioned previously very often voters blame incumbents for things that they didn't cause such as short-term economic trends conditions in a world economy bad weather shark attacks the list can go on and on it sometimes is the case that local politicians actually gain votes when the local sports team wins an important championship or victory because there's sort of a good feeling people all things are going well and you know i'll vote for the incumbent obviously except in very rare cases such as the you know such as a few that can have to be cited politicians actually do not cause local sports team victories in addition often people are not evaluating the current record in any kind of rational or unbiased wave so people don't often look at just an objective set of facts and say well the incumbents can be credited or blamed for this rather often what people think the facts are are significantly affected by how they feel about the incumbents rather and vice versa so for instance studies show that when a democrat is in office committed republicans tend to think that inflation and unemployment are significantly higher than they actually are similarly when a republican is in office it's the democratic voters who think that inflation unemployment are unusually high and republicans who tend to underestimate it there's many other examples of similar bias of this type so rational irrationality also affects retrospective voting it's not just ignorance alone much more can be said on this and i say it in the book for now i think the key point is this that while these shortcuts do you have some value they their value is under is overestimated and often the shortcuts can actually make things worse if you evaluate the information that you have in an irrational way or if you simply don't have the pre-existing knowledge that you need to evaluate the information correctly now another argument that is made for the irrelevance of political ignorance one that is perhaps less familiar or less intuitive is the so-called miracle of aggregation and this argument says let's say even that shortcuts don't work very well and that the vast majority of public is ignorant it still perhaps doesn't matter under the following conditions so let's say in the current presidential election most people are ignorant about the policies and positions of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney perhaps it doesn't matter yes there will be millions of people perhaps who choose to vote for Romney based on a mistaken understanding of his positions but there will be a similar number of people who choose to vote for Obama based on other misunderstandings and it all will tend to balance out for every person who mistakenly votes for Romney there will be others who mistakenly vote for Obama and over a large number of people with millions of voters this will tend to balance out and so the ignorant people who vote for Romney will be offset by the ignorant people who vote for Obama because of their lack of knowledge and really the election will be determined by the small knowledgeable minority because these ignorant people will offset each other and all be awash I think it's a little bit ironic that this argument is cited as a defense of democracy and voter knowledge because of course what the theory suggests is that the votes of 80 or 90 percent of the public or even more are actually irrelevant we could deny the franchise to them and instead limit it to the small knowledgeable minority would get the exact same result except that we will save some time and money on tens of millions of ignorant people going to the polls in any case however the aggregation argument rests on assumptions that turn out to be false one key false assumption is the idea that the mistakes for one side will be offset by mistakes for the other in reality there's no reason to believe that this will occur because there are many many issues out there where a mistake in one direction is more intuitive easier to grasp than a mistake in the other direction for instance it turns out that it is much easier to and more intuitive for people to blame incumbents for economic conditions that they didn't cause than for people to make the opposite mistake of giving people too little blame for current economic conditions the former state is just more intuitive more plausible to many more people in addition the aggregation argument predicts that if you increase political knowledge it actually won't matter because the people because the effects of the ignorance that it cures were random to begin with it turns out however that numerous studies show that when you control for other variables such as a person's background their ideology their age gender and many other things when you increase their knowledge people do change their minds on average on many issues and that suggests that previous mistakes or previous effects of ignorance were not just random in their impact libertarians would be happy to know that on a wide range of issues if you control for other variables increase political knowledge leads people to be more socially liberal and more fiscally conservative now i hasten out that does not mean that people would hide political knowledge become libertarian most of them don't rather they become more libertarian than they would have been otherwise this isn't true on all issues for instance taxes are a big exception people who know more about politics tend to be more supportive of the argument for taxes probably because it's more counterintuitive than the argument against them in any case whether they become more libertarian or not knowledge does not have just a random impact and that suggests that the impact of ignorance is also not random and systematic finally there is this important point even if aggregation works perfectly would regard to the choices actually before the electorate say the choice between Obama and Romney the advocates of the miracle of aggregation ignore the fact that the ignorance its effect is not just in the decisions people make between the alternatives before them it also affects what those alternatives are going to be in the first place so if you had a much more knowledgeable electorate it's very likely we would have different candidates perhaps Obama and Romney wouldn't be the options or even if they were the policy platforms they run on would likely be very different they would be catering to a much more knowledgeable electorate when it's more difficult to fool when it has a better understanding of the effects of policies so i think it's important to recognize that political ignorance not only determines to some extent the decisions we make as to choices before us but they also in in many cases have an impact on what those choices are in the first place so what are some of the implications of this problem of political knowledge for the sort of government that we should have well if the core problem here is that it's rational for people to be ignorant and also rational for people to give illogical evaluations of the information they do have then it would be desirable to make more of our decisions in settings where people's incentives are less perverse where they have incentives to acquire more information and to do a better job of evaluating information they have and it turns out that when people vote with their feet as opposed to at the ballot box they do in fact have better incentives whether that voting with your feet be voting in the market or civil society or voting with your feet in a federal system where you try to determine which jurisdiction you want to live on whether in virginia for instance or maryland or new york or the like think about your decision to buy the last car or the last tv that you purchased did you spend more time on that and more effort on that or did you spend more time and effort acquiring information about the last time you voted in a presidential election if you're like me in the vast majority of other people you probably spent more time and effort on the car is that because you think that your car is more important than who becomes president at its dates probably not it's rather because when you choose to purchase a car you know that your decision will be decisive that is uh you don't have to take a vote with a million other people where a majority decides which car you purchase rather yourself or a decisive voter or you and your spouse perhaps and therefore you take the decision more seriously and you try to get more information and evaluate it in a logical way because you know it will actually be decisive moreover it's not just you acquire more information but you're more logical in the way that you evaluate it consider this it is considered bad manners in most social circles to criticize someone else's political opinions right people don't like it they get mad at you on the other hand if you point out that a person's evaluation of a car that they might buy is flawed or it's tv the social norms against this are much weaker and often people are actually happy when you point this out to them why I think a big part of the difference is that people know that when they're buying a car or a tv the decision is decisive so they're willing to put up with more criticism of their views because they know that that criticism might actually improve the outcome for them on the other hand people don't like to put up with criticism of their political views in part because they intuitively sense that even though it does give them some additional information perhaps the chance that information will be useful to them or make a better decision or a better impact on the world is very low so in effect when people criticize your political views you get the annoyance of being criticized but you get very little payoff and that's part of the reason why it tends to violate social norms or rather why social norms tend to frown upon this kind of criticism but not on criticism of other kinds of non-political decisions where your decision is more likely to be decisive so this strengthens the case for making more decisions in the market and in civil society where although certainly we're not completely rational and we do make mistakes and certainly we never have perfect information the incentive to acquire information and the incentive to use it and evaluate it in a rational way is much stronger than it is when we vote at the ballot box with respect to the government that we do have this strengthens the case for decentralizing political authority so that we can vote with our feet if we don't like the policies of virginia the state where i currently live we have the option of moving to many other jurisdictions or if we don't like our local government we have other choices whereas if we don't like the policies of the federal government the only way to get out from under it is to leave the united states entirely which is much more costly and difficult and there's a lot of historic evidence that when people vote with their feet in a federal system or in through immigration they often make quite rational and effective decisions even in situations where information acquisition is difficult and where the costs of getting it are higher than they were today so for instance a hundred years ago millions of african americans in the south where they were highly oppressed at the time learned that they could move to the north where the policies were relatively less favorable and made good and correct decisions about that even though their levels of education were very low and even though the cost of acquiring information in that era was significantly higher than it would be today when we have the internet when people are on average more educated or think of the millions of europeans and asians and others who moved to united states in 19th century correctly deducing the conditions were better there than in their homelands even though many of them were illiterate had low levels of education obviously there certainly wasn't any internet where you could just google united states and economic conditions and find out that incomes and other opportunities were higher in america than in your home country so i think the key implications here is that because in markets and civil society and voting with your feet you have much better information incentives and you have incentives to act more rationally when you get the information that strengthens the case for limited and decentralized government now i hasten to add that this doesn't definitively prove by itself what amount of government we should have or how centralized it should be there are obviously considerations other than political ignorance which also matter what i am suggesting however is the political ignorance should be a much bigger part of the debate on the size scope complexity and centralization of government than it currently is so the next time you think about whether a particular issue should be decided by government or should be left to markets and civil society one of the factors that you want to consider is do you believe that this is the kind of issue that will be handled well by a largely ignorant electorate perhaps in some instances your answer will be yes but i think in a wide range of cases the answer will be no or at the very least you have very serious doubts about whether this is really the kind of thing that we want to throw into the arena of political ignorance so on that note i conclude but i hope that i have succeeded in at least somewhat increasing your knowledge about ignorance thank you


A function is an operation or a series of operations that transforms a set of numbers into a different set of numbers. An input is put into the function, the operations are performed and a different number is outputted. So if we input 3 into our function, multiply by 5, subtract 2, then 13 is outputted. 3 has transformed into 13. Mathematically, we'd write this function as f of x equals 5x minus 2, where x is our input and what f of x equals is our function. f of x is the mathematical notation. Think of it in a similar way to how you'd think of y. We say a function of x equals 5x minus 2. If we wanted to calculate the value of f of 3, we just need to replace the x in the function with 3, which we already knew from our input output machine earlier. So what's the value of f of 4 for this function? Did you get f of 4 equals 8? What about this question? It's slightly different. This time we're not being asked to substitute in a value of x, but instead are being told the function equals 35, so the output is 35. It wants us to find x to find the input. Pause the video, solve for x and click play when you're ready. Did you get x equals negative 5? So an input of negative 5 will give an output of 35. We usually use the letter f, but you can actually use any letter. You'll see g of x, h of x, they all just mean a function of x equals. There are two special rules which determine whether something is a function or not. A function must work for every input value and every input value can only give one output value. This is not a function because when we input negative 4 and negative 9, we don't get an output. This would be a function because every input of x has an output. This is also a function because inputs can share outputs, but this would not be a function because an input of 1 can't have multiple outputs. So the final piece of the functions puzzle that we need to address in this introduction video are domains and ranges. We will come across them a lot in functions. The domain just means the inputs. The domain can be a range of values, so here it's 1, 4, 6 and 7. The range are the output values from the function. So what comes out when we put our domain values in? Let's send our introduction to functions with these two questions. Pause the video, work out the answers and click play when you're ready to check. How did you get on? Did you get the function of h equals negative 6 when the input is negative 4? And x equals 3 when function f and function g are equal? So that's our introduction to functions. We've learnt what they are, we've looked at the notation and we've answered a few function questions. We've discovered that the domain means the inputs and the range means the outputs. With a little side note, functions can also be written like this. It just means the same thing, so don't stress if you see that notation. In future videos we'll look at composite functions, inverse functions and the graphs of functions.


I think mathematics is a great subject. It pushes us to use our brains and pushes us to our limits, to our greatest capacity. And I think to me it's a bit difficult and it's hard to understand our times. But once I get the gist and once I start to really understand maths, I develop a love for it. So it's really a love-hate relationship. I love mathematics. It's like a love-hate relationship. I can understand some things, but like there's, I can't understand nothing else, like literally nothing else. I don't like maths because there are a lot of challenges in maths, especially the negative numbers. I have all those challenges and most of the time when my teachers have to explain to me I still don't understand. So I just feel like the subject is not for me. I don't understand most of the topics. Math is a very good subject. It's my favourite subject I would say. I feel like math is mainly just about practice, but also the teachers as well. Because if the teacher has a good way of teaching math, then that really helps. I realise that not having a good teacher in that type of subject can cause you to really, your opinion of the subject really deteriorates. It's a subject that is not only, it's a very visual subject, it's a very active subject as well, like science is. To me math is challenging sometimes, but it depends on the topic and what exactly are we doing in math for it to be challenging to us. I love math very much. I think it will help improve your critical thinking skills and my love for mathematics has led me to pick up math as a subject for CXC. Math is my favourite class. I enjoy going to math, but sometimes it's a little boring depending on the topic, but at times it can be thought provoking. I find math in my past class was very easy, but now as I'm in grade from one, I think it's very difficult because I'm learning new things and I have to try and understand them. At first for me math was a little challenging, but since I got help from my teachers and my parents right now, it's a very nice subject and I feel very comfortable with it now. It's a very important subject to me since I'm writing it early. I always loved mathematics and I realised that I used it a lot. I did it a lot even when I didn't have any homework on it. It's my favourite subject. Mathematics is an interesting topic. It's also fun. It helps me challenge myself to do better and it helps me in my other subjects. I don't really like math, but because some of the topics and stuff, there's be hard, but the teachers just go out of their way to make sure we understand. I don't want to say it's easy. Sometimes you know it's hard depending on the topic, but I have great people around me to help me get through it and I think math is very important for what I want to go into. Not that it's business, but that math is everywhere and that math is in a part of all sciences, in a part of all businesses that you do. I want to do architecture, so I need mathematics, so it's good for me. Yeah, it's very important because I want to get into business and with business you have to do a lot of calculations and you have to manage your money well, so you need to know your math. I really love the subject. It's not that easy. It's not that easy and if you really like it and you want to do math-based jobs in the future, you have to push yourself to work towards what you want to do in the future.