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Who needs democracy when you have data?

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Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#91

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #56

There is nothing in the world right now that I fear more than the creep of Chinese surveillance/authoritarian practices into the rest of the world's society. They are a rapidly growing superpower, and while I hold no fantasies of U.S. supremacy, this specific trend in the use of digital technology terrifies me. There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke…

What if climate change cause a massive movement of people? Can this scenario bring old school war for resources?

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#92

Post by jewelthief91 »

nixarian wrote: post #85
dsr_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, democracy is good if and only if it allows for peaceful transitions of government.

Democracy is good only if the population is sufficiently educated and informed. Americans are, by and large, poorly educated and ill informed.

Americans are vastly more educated than even a few generations ago.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#93

Post by throwawayjava »

_bxg1 wrote: post #63
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it out in such a literal fashion. It's just bad for business. It's bad for business until it's not. Isolationist economic policies will over time make war more likely. > Between the spread of the companies it effectively owns, and the deals being made with the rest of the world's most powerful tech companies, China will soon wield more influe…

"I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information." I think at the end of the day it just comes down to the numbers. With four times the population, they have four times the market of consumers and four times the workforce to create value. The U.…

> but China has recently taken up a very potent type of hybrid economic development, where free-market startup-culture is encouraged, but guided and pruned by the government.

I don't think the USA gets enough credit for inventing this hybrid economic development system. Good examples include:

* Military computing -> Intel, IBM, etc. -> Moore's law

* DARPA cash -> early networking/PC projects at universities -> hacker/hobbyist culture -> Microsoft and Apple

* Gov't really emphasized "finding information" in CS the 1990's -> NSF grants at Stanford -> Google.

* The Human Genome Project -> Illumina, Solexa, etc. -> Moore's law-shaped cost curve for sequencing

And less R&D heavy examples like the national railways and the interstate highway system.

This pattern continues today. Self-driving cars started as several decades of NSF-funded research projects that turned into a DARPA-funded competition a decade-ish ago that turned into an industry-funded goal rush today.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#94

Post by jhayward »

mortenjorck wrote: post #24

> Uighurs are required to install government-­designed tracking apps on their smartphones, which monitor their online contacts and the web pages they’ve visited. Appalling as this is, I'm surprised the government needs to do this at all, given the assumption that WeChat or Tencent would already have all this information and be required to make it readily available. Then again, maybe the visible intrusiveness is the p…

It may be simple expediency: there are many stories of Uighur people being stopped by police and having to show them their phones.

The app may be a pragmatic way to facilitate that interaction without need for central monitoring (which is probably also used).

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#95

Post by jhayward »

nixarian wrote: post #85
dsr_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, democracy is good if and only if it allows for peaceful transitions of government.

Democracy is good only if the population is sufficiently educated and informed. Americans are, by and large, poorly educated and ill informed.

> Democracy is good only if the population is sufficiently educated and informed. Americans are, by and large, poorly educated and ill informed.

Compared to what? America of the 1900's? The 1950's? India, at any point in time?

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#96

Post by chongli »

beat wrote: post #26
efields wrote: post #2

The people inside the democracy. They need democracy.

Do they? Can you really establish a rational need for democracy, or are you just running on cultural reflex? If you take this question as me saying we shouldn't have democracy, maybe it's reflex. It's an interesting question. Democracy isn't an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. What is that end (or those ends)? How else can those ends be achieved?

There isn't some fixed end, there is only a debate between entrenched interests. Democracy's purpose is to balance those interests rather than letting one dominate the other.

Barring the birth of some Platonic philosopher king, authoritarian societies will never achieve this. The authoritarian power will inevitably come to represent some particular interest to the exclusion of all others.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#97

Post by chongli »

gknoy wrote: post #53
bopbop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rational need for democracy for you would be so that I don't govern you according to my wishes. A rational need for democracy for me would be that you don't govern me according to your wishes. A rational need for democracy for the uyghurs would be that Xi Jumping doesn't govern them according to his wishes. I've always understood this to be what is meant by democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all…

But ... we currently (in the US) have a direct example of the rulers in power governing the populace in a way which is "not according to the wishes" of roughly half the population. (I think this is a direct result of our 2 party system, as compared to Britain's multiple parties, but I've no idea how to fix it.) Any time you vote on the losing side of an election (whether it's for who to elect, or approve a tax, or le…

I think the US is a good example of democracy being undermined, not an inherent failure of democracy.

We can have a law against murder but that's not enough: there will still be murder. It takes a whole society working with the shared value that murder is wrong in order to uphold the institution of the law.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#98

Post by etrevino »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #27
lainga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Columbus kept two logbooks, one with his ships' real positions, and another with falsified positions to show his men so they wouldn't become discouraged.

Columbus was one man, here you have an enormous organization: Are you sure that all decision-makers know the correct statistics and not the falsified one? Are there more than two levels of truth here - does the academy of sciences have the same figures as the central committee? What about the ministries and regional authorities? This madness must be creating its own challenges, so to speak. You never know if the numb…

The Soviet Union kept two sets of historical archives, allowing only the most reliable and/or senior people inside the "real" one (for example, accurate data on Stalin's purges). They also kept two sets of economic statistics. As you suggest, it caused a lot of confusion. And, yeah, no one knew who had the correct information.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#99

Post by bopbop »

beat wrote: post #65
bopbop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rational need for democracy for you would be so that I don't govern you according to my wishes. A rational need for democracy for me would be that you don't govern me according to your wishes. A rational need for democracy for the uyghurs would be that Xi Jumping doesn't govern them according to his wishes. I've always understood this to be what is meant by democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all…

Government, democracy or not, generally means I am being governed according to some, but not all of my wishes. It's not an on-off switch, it's a continuum of compromise. Treating it like an on-off switch, my way or the highway on everything, led to much of the weirdness of the 2016 elections in the US.

> Government, democracy or not, generally means I am being governed according to some, but not all of my wishes.

The fact that Government is being governed according to some of your wishes is coincidental. It's only in a democracy (or an autocracy where you are the ruling party) where the fact that some of your wishes are the laws is built in to the fabric of the system.

The word compromise is an interesting choice - a comprimise is an agreement between several parties in which all sides agree on a less then optimal solution for themselves in favour of a resolution the group can agree to. It's essentially a democracy - it's certainly the basis for participatory democracy.

I'm not sure where the on-off switch analogy is coming from - it's definitely not my opinion - hence the Churchhill comparison. Also, on-off seems very binary.

On a similar note, I would say that the comparison to the 2016 US Elections feels a little simplified - being given a choice of two parites doesn't mean you are being given a choice representing your wishes. At best, it can mean you are being given two options from a range on a spectrum, but even then the spectrum and gap between political parties is normally more then a single issue.

The American Left, for instance, would in Europe be on a fairly right wing part of the spectrum.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#100

Post by r00fus »

dqpb wrote: post #67
_bxg1 wrote: post #56

There is nothing in the world right now that I fear more than the creep of Chinese surveillance/authoritarian practices into the rest of the world's society. They are a rapidly growing superpower, and while I hold no fantasies of U.S. supremacy, this specific trend in the use of digital technology terrifies me. There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke…

It will be an interesting case study to see what they do with the Uyghurs. What can a government do to an enemy population when they've sequenced the DNA of every individual in that population?

s/interesting/distressing/

I have no high hopes that good comes of what China does there.

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