Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity?

I use to ask people what the right software was for a task. (I still do at times) The answers explained what people liked about the software they used but an objective A vs B was rare and it didn't do justice to the rest of the set.

Out of curiosity I decided to install every IRC client I could find. Connect to a few servers, open a good number of channels and learn to use them one by one while looking at memory and cpu usage.

Like many I have deep thoughts. Mine are as hard to find for their potential audience as the many are for me. We do however pay a lot of attention to people who make a lot of noise.

I had this hypothesis that people would copy other peoples political ideology that are copies from that of others in long chains that, rather than start with a persons deep objective thoughts, are just connected in loops long enough for us not to notice - with a number of thinking nodes insignificant to the result. [lets call them dictator nodes for laughs]

In order to test this rather absurd hypothesis I took the entire list of US presidential candidates and looked at their social media.

This quickly confirmed the loops to exist, fuck, my hypothesis was optimistic compared to reality. I found that close to 100% had facebook pages and youtube channels that didn't enjoy enough traffic to account for friends and close relatives of the person.

Eventually I worked my way up to the green party, they had 250 views on their youtube channel. I wondered about the meaning of it.... what does it mean?

I think it means even journalists didn't bother to look at it. The huge apparatus of international journalism did not bother to look at the top 5 candidates most screamed about while I took a look at a really large number of them.

For democracy to work we ALL need to look at the menu then make up our own mind. In stead what we got is NO ONE looking at the ideas. If 99% of the population had exactly the same opinion about everything and one of us would write it into a political program no one would vote for it.

The point I'm trying to get to is this: We've already build the machine that contains us. Small groups of people who cared about something gathered and implemented their ideas. These things are now bolted down so firmly that unmaking their actions takes such an absurd unrealistic amount of effort that we can at best imagine doing it. We have millions of implementations like that and they are here to stay. It doesn't even need to be stupid. The idea could have been brilliant 200 years ago.

The stupidity in Artificial-stupidity will not be in the AI, the system will continue to "liberate" humans from having to think deeply which will move us further from a position of influence. If it does a bad job it will actually be beneficial to the end result.

Lets see some examples

Everybody is allowed to vote, as long as they are white: Felt like a real democracy but is a fake

Everybody is allowed to vote, except women. Felt like "the best democracy" once upon a time, but is also fake. Not even a half democracy.

Many of the things that today are normal could (and will) be deeply embarrasing in the future and so similar to a real democracy as a plastic imitation of a turd coated in glitter.

A real democracy is difficult to find, but really easy to spot. Must fulfill this three rules: 1) One adult citizen, one vote 2) All citizens are equal and therefore all of their (legally issued) votes score the same. No votes can count double or x100. The only vote scoring less than other is the x0 blank vote. AND 3) everybody can apply for candidate if they desire so, and participate on an equal footing.

If one of this three rules can't apply you have spotted a fake: Everybody can vote freely and is encouraged to vote, but there is only a party allowed to show... rule 3, you have found a dictatorship.

If there is a group of people legally allowed to vote, that put a valid vote, but their votes are then zeroed and removed in postproduction then is the rule 2.

10,000 Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, Andy Ngo peddling conspiracy or ideology under the guise of journalism is not better.

You’re right as well of course about anonymous sources being an issue, but your “politicians in power” comment is an unnecessary straw man to the conversation.

It is a limitation of democracy. It is a limitation of every possible system of decision making. That, by definition, is it not working fine.

But it is not the limitation of democracy. Whatever people end up vote for is not the concern of democracy. By definition democracy is merely a system where people exercise power by voting, it doesn't concern about the outcome.

As long as people have the right to vote, it is a democracy.

Its not the concern of democracy if the people vote for the "wrong" politician.