Abusing democracy

[This post did not get captured by the exporter tool for some reason so I did it manually. Unfortunately that means copy and pasting the comments by hand, so they appear in the main text rather than separately. I cut off the discussion here at the point where it ceased to add anything useful and became a bit uncivil.]


So many, many people are screaming, "PROTECT DEMOCRACY !!!!" as though it were a sacrosanct, inviolable, perfect system that must be preserved even if it means we all decided to throw ourselves into a volcano. Well, guess what, people sometimes make collectively stupid decisions. Happens in suicide cults all the time, and you don't see people clamouring to protect their "democratic rights". You don't let lunatics run the asylum. You don't vote on the value of pi. No sane person votes for self harm. No-one with any sense fails to change their mind when the lies and misinformation on which their choice was based are exposed for all to see. Screaming "we MUST jump into the volcano because votes !" makes no sense whatsoever. None.


Dan Weese
Democracy was once a synonym for anarchy.  Kinda still is..


Tim Stoev
with the exponential growth of the amount of subsystems and their connection between each other each modern state goes closer to anarchy than any form of government..there is simply too much information to process and not enough tool to do it in a meaningful way


Brian Fitzgerald
In the realm of software development, there can be several "release candidates" which are each tested in turn to discover potentially disastrous inconsistencies.  Eventually, one is deemed sufficiently stable to make it into distribution and deployment.  Democracy might benefit from a similar scheme.


Dan Weese
+Brian Fitzgerald As in software, governments are seldom constituted for the benefit of the many but rather by and for the few.  The many must bear the consequences of the decisions of those Elite Few.  Nobody seems to learn from any of these Release Candidates:  subsequent iterations seldom fix the fundamental issues but are mere reactions to the disastrous inconsistencies as they graduate from Potential to Actual.

This lack of foresight has kept me in business as a consultant for three decades and more.  Occasionally, I feel like a fraud, for wading into the flaming, steaming wreckage and coming out again, to tell the Elite Few exactly what their own subordinates have been telling them for years - often weeping as they tell me.  But that uncomfortable sensation subsides, as the Outside Consultant becomes the guy who shepherds the Cassandras through the rewrite.


Tim Stoev
+Dan Weese that was strong mate...cheers :DD

Mark Ruhland
+Rhys Taylor Pi has the value of 3.2... Supposedly in Indiana (US) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill. I about fell off my wheelchair as I read the article, laughing hysterically.


Winchell Chung
About this point in the discussion somebody has the bright idea that the solution is to restrict who can vote.
Things tend to explode into a flamewar then, as they argue over how to define who is excluded from the franchise.
Robert Heinlein had an essay a long time ago where he explores this, giving various solutions and uncovering their drawbacks. None of them really worked.
Thing like
[1] the voting machine gives you a random differential equation. Solve the equation and you can vote
[2] only women can vote
[3] since intelligent savy people are successful, a vote cost one troy ounce of gold. And you can buy as many votes as you can afford.
etc.


Dan Weese
+Winchell Chung Let's cut to the chase on this, avoiding just such flamewars by admitting the obvious:

We shall never be able to keep Stupid Persons from voting.

Populism isn't a particularly good scheme for governance.  Populism has an unfortunate and entirely predictable tendency to devolve into mob rule.  We do want representative government, but we also want our elected officials, especially judges, to have enough mandate to make necessary and painful - and yes, unpopular decisions.

There's another interesting set of essays on this subject.  Most of them were written by James Madison, quite a few by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.  They are called The Federalist Papers.  You may have heard of them.


Elie Thorne
+Winchell Chung Yes, that's one insidious reaction.
Obviously, many (if not most) people are clearly irresponsible in their way of voting, putting the entire democratic system in peril.
The obvious solution would be to forbid them to vote (but it is indeed impossible to come up with a better subset of voters than the current universal one). As this is an unworkable solution, it can be put forth again and again, to fix thing "this time for good", until only a small elite or one individual can vote.

But there is a more difficult, but potentially better solution: turn people into responsible voters.
This requires an efficient general education system and balanced investigation/analysis media, two very hard but not impossible endeavours.
This is, by the way, what Enlightenment philosophers considered mandatory for the democracy they envisioned.

Of course, the flamewar can now begin about how to implement those.


Rhys Taylor
My biggest fear in all of this is that large numbers of people are simply physiologically too stupid to make sensible decisions. We can do an awful lot about poor education, strong ideological beliefs, etc., but if it's because people's brains are just too small then we haven't got a hope in hell.

Now, I hope and believe that that is not the case. In this case we must improve the education system and take some fairly drastic action with regards to the media.

The education system needs a lot more investment. We still need to teach people basic facts, but with the omnipresence of the internet rote learning is becoming less important. We need to teach people how to think, to consider the larger context, the deeper underlying meanings and implications. And we've got to make learning more fun. This may mean using unconventional techniques seen as "dumbing down", so be it - I rather enjoy long, detailed books, but most people don't. A system that only works for people like me is not a good system ! Science is inherently an anarchic system of play and it should be seen as such, not the dry series of equations that it all too often becomes in the classroom.

Science classes should, wherever possible, encourage students to come to their own conclusions, ahead of teaching them what's already been established. This can be done using canned data where it isn't possible for them to get direct access to high-end facilities. Although some things will always need to be simplified, and not everything can be done by experiment, the priority should be getting people to think for themselves as much as possible. And they have to enjoy doing it, and the relevancy of it emphasised (if that means "because you can get rich doing this", then fine). That, I hope, will encourage them to be rational in all aspects of life, not just in science.

My thoughts on the humanities are well-known, so I will just state they need as much emphasis as the sciences. They are an area which require just as much in the way of reasoning and logic.

As to the media, something has gone badly wrong and I'm not sure how to fix it. I know the end state we need to achieve, but I have less idea about the route. Most British tabloids read like campaign leaflets - they are not in the least impartial, which should be a journalist's first duty. Their second duty should be in choosing what to publish, i.e. freedom of speech guarantees than you can say a great many things without being locked up, but that does not necessarily mean you get to come into people's homes and lecture them. Similarly saying something Bloody Stupid should not be a guarantee that it gets published in a major newspaper just because it's provocative or exciting; they ought to at least try to establish if it's true. They need to use far, far less prejudicial language when reporting, unless a very large OPINION PIECE label appears in great big letters.

Perhaps some sort of basic qualification should be necessary to be a journalist. But this will count for little unless we reform who can own media outlets and how many.


Mark Ruhland
+Rhys Taylor Hey, my asylum runs fairly well... But, then again, I run it. I don't do things outside my realm, though. I know my limitations;-D


Tim Stoev
+Rhys Taylor the more you think on the issues the more complicated it gets. At some point you will realize that one needs to start somewhere and hope to get it right, but this is pretty much what is happening right now. Nevertheless you look in the right direction.


Winchell Chung
+Rhys Taylor unfortunately here in the States there is such a strong "cult of ignorance" and anti-intellectualism that a person of suspicious mind suspects it is all part of a master plan.
The US conservatives got a rude shock with the advent of television, suddenly discovering that other places in the world were not like the sleepy little towns they lived and died in.
But it really didn't hit the fan until the 1960s with all those young people going to colleged and being corrupted with all that book larning and stuff.
Since then it would seem like education has been under a stealthy attack. And every despot knows that an uneducated population is easier to control. All you have to do is make them tired of listening to experts.


Dan Weese
+Winchell Chung  The 'cult of ignorance' is very old.  It's not even American.  It's German.  Populism lies at the heart of the Reformation. As America became a largely Protestant nation, the same ethos of the pious burgher rising by dint of hard labour, clean living and just enough education to read the Bible, use a sextant, a pair of calipers, and raise a barn roof - came to be the American rags-to-riches myth.

These people are not entirely ignorant.  They are both literate and numerate.  They just don't like anyone to question their assertions, any more than Cardinal Bellarmine was prepared to give Galileo a fair hearing on the basis of the evidence.  As with Bellarmine in his day, today's conservatives want to present such notions as Evolution and modern cosmology as mere hypotheses.

Higher education was always the province of the elites until the post-WW2 GI Bill gave ordinary joes the opportunity to go to college.  Today's Fox News crowd was once a gaggle of earnest young things who considered themselves quite progressive, doffing their uniforms and going to the state university, for free, too.  Also pushing out little Baby Boomers in those ticky-tacky little two bedroom jobs paid for by generous GI Bill housing loans.

Now here's what happened:  where college was a deserved reward for national service,  university became a bolthole for those who did not wish to serve in the Vietnam War, including many in the Cult of Ignorance's own ranks.  Donald Trump was one such draft dodger.  Most modern Republicans have never worn a uniform, where a great many modern Democrats have.

Don't underestimate these conservatives -  they're not conservatives as any political scientist might interpret that word.  They are mere reactionaries, as were their forebears.  Furthermore, they are reasonably cosmopolitan.  If Fox News caters to them, it's just what the ur-Protestant peasant has always wanted, a strenuous Hell Fire Sermon about someone else's evils.