Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy

#131

Post by Retra » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

antidesitter wrote: post #128

Retra wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used the term "specifically" but nobody is nitpicking the meaning of that word to elevate a non-generous interpretation of what you mean. Sometimes people are just not that careful with the words they choose and don't expect others to jump on their word choice as indicative of some highly nuanced intent.

> You used the term "specifically" but nobody is nitpicking the meaning of that word to elevate a non-generous interpretation of what you mean. What do you think the word “shill” means to most people? I’m baffled at your attempt to characterize this as “nitpicking”. > Sometimes people are just not that careful with the words they choose and don't expect others to jump on their word choice as indicative of some highly…

A more generous interpretation would simply be that "shill" was used as a proxy for "selfish." But that doesn't even matter, you can ask that poster what they meant. Context should tell you they were doing nothing more than vaguely commenting on their feelings. You really don't have to dig into it.

Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy

#132

Post by stanleydrew » Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

GatorD42 wrote: post #107

stanleydrew wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the barriers to getting a lawyer when you have no money which I think you dismiss too readily, I am more interested in how you would propose to determine whether consumers are willingly sacrificing safety for cost?

People make cost-safety trade offs all the time, the probabilities are so low that they may not explicitly think of them as such. Have you ever driven a long distance instead of flying? If so you sacrificed safety for price / convenience - over the same distance flying is much safer. Are you driven by a professional chauffeur in an armored S-Class? If not you are sacrificing safety for cost. You could imagine pushing…

Yes but I am really interested in my actual question, which is how we can tell whether any given behavior that exhibits desire for lower price is done willingly, knowing that there is a safety tradeoff.

I am absolutely not saying it doesn't happen. I am asking how can we tell?

Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy

#133

Post by phdinfunk » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #93

beginningguava wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just legacy media trying to regain power. Fake news has been around forever, look up Yellow Journalism. The difference now is that the 5 multi-national corporations that controlled nearly everything we saw and heard are losing their monopoly on what information reaches the population. Everybody loved big data and social media when Obama used it to win and when Arab Spring happened. But now it's a threat to de…

Telling likely voters to vote for your candidacy is drastically different than telling people Climate Change is a Chinese hoax or that thousands of men, woman, and children seeking asylum are terrorists.

However, the united states government has got at least a 70 year history of being just as bad as the effects of fake news.

https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/17/haitis_history_noam_c...

Or see the 70s and 80s and South America, or our reasoning for invading Iraq in the 2000s, or the 1960s and Vietnam. Or the 1953 coup d'etat against Iran because BP was going to lose their investments. And, and, and....

The answer isn't trying to create another hegemon of "real" news, like it was in the good old days of monoculture. The answer really is in what the person above said, people have to be more discerning. Also, the problem really isn't "new" because it really wasn't 'better' in the past -- just invisible to most of the people who are wringing their hands about this in 2018.

Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy

#134

Post by sparkie » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #93

beginningguava wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just legacy media trying to regain power. Fake news has been around forever, look up Yellow Journalism. The difference now is that the 5 multi-national corporations that controlled nearly everything we saw and heard are losing their monopoly on what information reaches the population. Everybody loved big data and social media when Obama used it to win and when Arab Spring happened. But now it's a threat to de…

Telling likely voters to vote for your candidacy is drastically different than telling people Climate Change is a Chinese hoax or that thousands of men, woman, and children seeking asylum are terrorists.

Can you cite somewhere where somebody has said that thousands of men, women and children are terrorists?

I've heard claims that there are terrorists among the thousands of men, women and children seeking asylum (or work).

Fake news is not just made up stories. It is also misrepresenting the words of other people to support your political motives.

Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy

#135

Post by njrc9 » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #119

deogeo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't nationalism orthogonal to democracy? How are they opposed?

It's sort of like gimbal lock: when a particular social movement becomes so pervasive and powerful the mechanisms of government become dangerously aligned and you lose the ability of the political system to perform an important function, namely defend itself and minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Remember, part of the design of separation of powers is that institutions must retain the ability and motivation…

Your comment reminds me of Machiavelli’s work “Discourses on Livy” in which he writes, among other things, that discord (between the nobility and the common people) produced the liberty enjoyed by the Roman Republic. Machiavelli’s views on republicanism are very insightful, in my opinion, and offer an understanding of democratic government that may be more prospective of being actualized than what appears to be proposed in much of today’s discourse on democracy.

By the way, I came across one of your HN comments in the past (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18127353) and immediately was impressed by your thinking. Ever since, I look forward to seeing your comments on HN. If you are interested, I would be greatly interested in hearing more of your thoughts expressed in the aforementioned comment of yours. My email is njrc900[at]gmail[dot]com

Re: Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy

#136

Post by baby » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #19

baby wrote: post #5

It'd be interesting to see a formal threat model of a Democracy like we write such documents for our applications and protocols.

If you have a lot of know-how about these threat models, I'd highly encourage you to write one for democracy as an idea. I'd love to read it!

https://github.com/mimoo/democracy_threat_model