I think the point in the OP is well-taken: informed voters need to have some general knowledge of the universe in order to understand politics. I don’t think the “electron bigger than atom?” question is really relevant, but the “is radiation man-made” question is. I remember a couple of wide-eyed college freshpeople discussing with great trepidation how horrible it is that TVs admit radiation. I triet to enlighten them with a list of other things that emit radiation, but I don’t think they got my point. “What, people emit radiation too? That’s terrible! Must be from all the irradiated food! What, the sun emits radiation too? Must be from all those atmospheric nuclear tests?” etc. etc. So why do we have so many strip-mines and coal-fired plants? Because newkyuhlur plants emit radiation.
By the way, I hate question O. Neither body revolves around the other; they both revolve around their collective center of mass. There is nothing shameful about having a frame of reference; if an earthling like Tycho Brahe want to admit that his point of view is earth-bound, that is no reason to discount him.
The antibiotics/bacteria/virus question is pretty relevant too. A lot of people seem to think there must be some political reason why we haven’t found a cure for AIDS. After all, we’ve cured polio, right? And we could real easy cure the common cold but who cares about a cold, right? No, sorry. Viruses are different from bacteria, and retroviruses are different from the other kind of viruses. AIDS is simply a tough nut to crack, and hollering about how the politicians don’t care isn’t going to help. (This is separate from criticism of apathy about AIDS infection-control, which did allow the disease to run rampant until people woke up. Civic action can educate people but doesn’t tend to affect molecular biochemistry much.)
In conclusion, I do think majority rule is a good thing, since the alternative would be rule by a minority. Who is most likely to be able to worm their way into the ruling minority? Folks who educate themselves, go to science conventions, and know the difference between an ion and an isotope? Or people who are overwhelming concerned with fundamentally less-intellectual things like power, prestige, fast cars, fast women, and that little football the President has in case he has to nuke somebody? What I’m trying to say is that dictators and oligarchs are not, generally, the smartest people in the country. They can come to power in a number of ways: murder, deceit, making a ton of money on pork-belly futures, being from Ohio, being from the same fraternity as the Minister for Information and Propaganda, etc. Brainpower is pretty diluted in that mix.
I used to admire the idea of a philosopher-king, but now I’ve adopted the fallback position: policies created and critiqued by specialists, with the public sort of lending power to various factions of specialists. I’ll call this the technocratic republic, and say proudly that it is the worst form of government ever conceived, with the exception of all the others.
Any similarity in the above text to an English word or phrase is purely coincidental.