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You can fool some of the people, all of the time

economist.com

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Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#31

Post by jraph »

rebuilder wrote: post #11
jraph wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let the world not understand your comment ;-) It is a reference to La cité de la peur , a French parodic movie by "Les Nuls". Yes, the title of this post also made me think about it too. I wonder if good translations in other languages exist, but it seems pretty hard to do.

I'm probably missing the point since I don't know the movie, but isn't "You can fool some people some times, but you can't fool all the people all the time", which the article title is riffing on, more or less it?

What people like (or strongly dislike, for that matter) about this movie is that it is filled with bad puns (and plain base humor at times), absurd situations and absurd characters. The scenario would not even matter.

This quote, "You can fool 1000 times 1000 persons, hum, no, you can fool 1 time 1000 persons, but you cannot fool 1000 times 1000 persons. No, you can fool 1 time 1000 persons but you cannot fool 1000 times 1 person. No…", is a cult citation of this movie, said by a seemingly clueless character who can't manage to speak his sentence for the whole time of the movie, and who is, by the way, fooled all the time.

La Cité de la Peur, released in 1994, still gets referenced regularly, pretty much like Asterix : Mission Cléopatre, released in 2001, by people who like this kind of humor. Kind of impressive 25 (resp. 18) years later.

How am I even writing a comment on La Cité de la Peur today on HN? Have I woken up in a parallel universe or something?

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#32

Post by stared »

There is an excellent SMBC comic on politics: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-21. Transcribing the headings (not the complete dialogs):

"

1. If you have a self-consistent view, you're going to have problems.

2. In a self-consistent framework, you have infinite regression problems.

3. If you want your group to hold together, you need an ideology that doesn't make any sense.

4. Once you have a nonsensical platform, the group members can define the group however they want. Goals may change. The organization persists.

"

And well, it is the best description of any mainstream, organized religion. It is not about beliefs, as many may think: it is about group identity and loyalty. (Think about crusades, or violence against LGBT people, vs "turn the other cheek" and "love your neighbor".)

Of course, one needs to pay the lip service to a professed ideology - but then it is about loyalty not necessarily - beliefs.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#33

Post by huffmsa »

roenxi wrote: post #30
jplayer01 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a real world implementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation I'm not sure that's a great thing, but you're never going to find a consensus that's both palatable to a majority and the right thing to do (of course, "right thing" being what I'm arbitrarily deciding is "right" based on my own values). What's the compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery? Thank god argument to moder…

Moderate political solutions are (1) very frustrating and (2) much more effective in practice than they have any right to be. Often both sides of a political argument are wrong about the nature of reality and a solution where the major concerns of both sides are addressed is pretty good. And the important thing is often that decisions don't happen in isolation. A moderate middle ground solution that fails often lends…

The moderate solution failing probably isn't going to be as catastrophic as a unilateral solution from either of the opposite ideological camps.

The system survives long enough to make it to the next round of negotiations

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#34

Post by huffmsa »

jplayer01 wrote: post #24
huffmsa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the exact reason the system is setup like it is. The federal government is only supposed to take action when it can get two ideological parties to agree on something. The theory being that if the two sides can find common ground, it's actually a good idea.

Seems like a real world implementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation I'm not sure that's a great thing, but you're never going to find a consensus that's both palatable to a majority and the right thing to do (of course, "right thing" being what I'm arbitrarily deciding is "right" based on my own values). What's the compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery? Thank god argument to moder…

It's not great, but it sucks the least.

Which, given that the US Constitution of "minimize the damage one person / group can do" is the longest standing constitution currently, I think it's one of the better solutions.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#35

Post by lordnacho »

smoll wrote: post #12

If most people are hard-wired to be duped, why does it feel like only recently people are getting even more conspicuously duped by their political leaders (a la Trump and Johnson)? Presumably this effect should have had a more uniformly distributed effect throughout history. Is it solely due to the weaponization of technology for this means? Or are there other reasons for “why now”?

> Or are there other reasons for “why now”?

Now because it's only been a short time since people could decide anything. Or at least were told that they could. How long since real parliamentary democracy, where say half of people who can currently vote were allowed to do so?

And in that time, the major outlets were few and gated by a journalistic system where you had to at least say something sensible and be judged by what some might call an elite, but others would call educated common sense.

Recently that status quo has fallen apart, and it's become clear that you don't need to have a message that is in any way cognizant of history, science, or any other established facts. The crazies at Speaker's Corner are now able to broadcast with a similar reach as people who've actually considered what to say.

Technology does indeed have a lot to do with this state of affairs, and is also alluded to in the article. That one nutter who says the world is flat online now causes others with the same inclinations to gain in confidence. Likewise with any number of ideas that would have quietly died.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#36

Post by aww_dang »

Is it too much to ask the author to define his terms? The nature of truth is subject to an ongoing epistemological debate. The author's unspoken presumption is that fallible humans can even approach truth.

Is it not more honest in a way if a politician or a criminal accepts that he can not do truth justice, and proceeds with the sausage making? Like an actor winking into the camera, self-irony becomes an important part of political theatre.

Audiences decrying the paradoxical nature of time travel or other impossible sci-fi plot elements is declasse. This is how the bitter partisans of the chattering classes appear while harping on the inconsistencies of their opponent's presentation.

What else can we expect from Hollywood? An honest politician is a contradiction of terms. It is insulting to expect one's audience to suspend their disbelief for puritan phantasms like honesty in politics. Acknowledge us. Give the readers some credit, we're not all outrage junkies.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#37

Post by igorkraw »

sputr wrote: post #26
buboard wrote: post #10

My pet theory is that democracy is more tolerable because it alternates between incompetent people fast enough to keep people's hopes alive.

Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with votes. That's it. The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is fought on. Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open) when the landscape of power changes. The only two benefits of democracy to "the people" are: (1) the fact that they hav…

> Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with votes. That's it. > (...) >Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open) when the landscape of power changes.

Leaving rebuttal of your other points aside, can you see how that is not the same thing at all? It's like claiming "a plane is nothing more than a system which can move through the air the same way a boat can move through water. That's it". The two lead to very different consequences!

>The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is fought on.

It also opened up the field for consent on all sides. There is not way to wage a war in such a way that all sides win, a way to fight in a way where noone gets hurt. Democracies with minority protections (aka one of the ways we differentiate democracy from mob rule) make true win-wins possible.

> The only problem is that the warring factions know this and will do everything they can to conceal the reality of the situation so that the people do not exercise the power that they have. > The amount of people who believe that democracy is somehow inherently good for the people is beyond my belief.

The first sentence describes the removal of democracy. The second claims that this is evidence for democracy not always being good for the people. Compared to ruling by force, yes, democracy is inherently good for the people

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