Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 268 posts

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#31

Post by kuschku »

chrischen wrote: post #30
jernfrost wrote: post #22

I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There are plenty of objections to be made against that. E.g. 1) the US being a two party state means that getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions is exceedingly difficult. 2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expen…

> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. The point is that if it does represent the will of the people and the people in power don't like it, the will of t…

> There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties.

Wrong.

It turns out that with First-Past-The-Post, we arrive with two parties.

In many other countries, over centuries, even more parties develop, and fail again.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#32

Post by DanBC »

jernfrost wrote: post #22

I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There are plenty of objections to be made against that. E.g. 1) the US being a two party state means that getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions is exceedingly difficult. 2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expen…

> If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won.

If you force British people to vote then Boaty McBoatface would probably win, because british people can be surprisingly bloody minded.

And boaty mcboatface is the polite version, you'd have a number of people writing Cunty McCuntyCunt on the form.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#33

Post by metafunctor »

jernfrost wrote: post #22

I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There are plenty of objections to be made against that. E.g. 1) the US being a two party state means that getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions is exceedingly difficult. 2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expen…

Democracy can take many forms indeed. But let's think opportunistically, for a moment.

In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice.

The case of Boaty McBoatface, though, is unusual in that it doesn't actually much matter what the name of a research vessel is. It's just a name. Names are almost always boring. Unless… if the name becomes so popular and widely known that the very name opens up completely new opportunities for raising funds and awareness. Which, I would have thought, was kind of the point of the competition to begin with.

So, why not reap the PR benefits of this name? Why would they start a contest but back out when they hit the jackpot? I do not understand.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#34

Post by return0 »

Crowdsourcing of a name is not about democracy. It doesn't appear to me that the public was widely informed that they had to make a democratic decision, instead sounds like a bunch of kids trolling. I think the article is conflating two unrelated entities here.

As a sideline, what is democracy even? Democracy via elections would be oligarchy to ancient Athenians, who prefered democracy by lot anyway.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#35

Post by thaumasiotes »

vlehto wrote: post #25
duncan_bayne wrote: post #12

The author has conflated democracy with voting. Sortition - the selection of Government at random from the citizenry - is a far superior mechanism, and results in a Government that is genuinely of the people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

The reason why nobody has sortition, is because deep down democracy is about being as agreeable as possible to the median citizen. If you have vague feeling that you decided who is prime minister, you are more motivated to pay taxes and fight wars. The country that gets least tax evasion and most volunteers to army is likely to perform better than anybody else. And so survival of the fittest governments has favored d…

> The reason why nobody has sortition, is because deep down democracy is about being as agreeable as possible to the median citizen. If you have vague feeling that you decided who is prime minister, you are more motivated to pay taxes and fight wars.

I doubt this has any explanatory power as to why sortition isn't used much today.

Among other things, the median citizen doesn't care even a little bit about who is prime minister or otherwise in charge.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#36

Post by joeyspn »

geromek wrote: post #11

The story is more complex than the article says. A Spanish forum (one of the top-40 more visited sites in Spain) voted massively the name "Blas de Lezo" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blas_de_Lezo ) a Spanish admiral who in 1741 defeated a British Army far bigger than his own one. After gaining the #1 position the organization decided to withdraw the name from the polling, causing more controversy about this digital p…

Certainly one of the funniest stories to pop-up in the interwebs during the last year..

> A band of Spanish net buccaneers has mounted a determined incursion into Her Maj's territorial cyberwaters by demanding that Blighty's forthcoming Royal Research Ship be named the RRS Blas de Lezo, in honour of the man who administered the British a serious military shoeing during the War of Jenkins' Ear.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/29/boaty_mcboatface_spa...

It was going to win, so they had to shut down the candidacy. Not even the brits can handle the power of roto2...

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#37

Post by delroth »

rootlocus wrote: post #19
snitko wrote: post #4

This small example shows the true nature of any democratic government: if you vote the way they don't like, they will not submit to it. Voting is useless.

This is a gross simplification. Internet trolling and mockery doesn't really represent the will of the people.

You are projecting your own opinions and representing them as "the will of the people". I personally vastly prefer things in life being amusing and unexpected rather than boring and pompous, and as such I think "Boaty McBoatface" is likely a way better name than whatever will be chosen as its replacement. Wanting life to not be bland is not "internet trolling" nor "mockery".

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#39

Post by Manishearth »

chrischen wrote: post #30
jernfrost wrote: post #22

I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There are plenty of objections to be made against that. E.g. 1) the US being a two party state means that getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions is exceedingly difficult. 2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expen…

> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. The point is that if it does represent the will of the people and the people in power don't like it, the will of t…

> but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties

It's a natural consequence of the specifics of how the US does elections. The US isn't the only country with democracy and plenty of others have more than 2 significant parties.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#40

Post by lb1lf »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #15
wildmusings wrote: post #5

This seems like bad move on the British government's part. Name the thing Boaty McBoatface and reap great PR for years. Edit: Or maybe it's all part of the plan. Let us all down by hinting that they're not using the name, then announce a change of heart. The internet would explode.

I'm sure that the crew and people who do research on it, if they have any sense of humor, would get an enormous kick out of it too. How'd it be to tell your mates that you'll be out for 6 weeks at sea on RRS Boaty McBoatface ? I'd personally bust out laughing every time I talked about it. It's not to say that the work isn't serious or important, just that sometimes it's OK to have a laugh, even in an omgsrsbzns envir…

The look is just an added bonus; the bow design ensures a much smoother ride in poor weather conditions - rather than riding the wave (and, potentially earning the vessel the nickname 'The Vomit Comet'), it cuts through the wave (reducing vessel heave) and even (drumroll) effectively disperses the waves as they traverse along the hull, reducing drag.

So - better ride, less fuel consumption, cartoonish look. Win-win-win.

Post reply on HN