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The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

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Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#301

Post by delboy88 »

aidos wrote: post #222
netcan wrote: post #82

I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…

So I was thinking today, we could weight the votes by life expectancy. The fewer years left in your life, the less your vote counts. In this case I wouldn't have to go home and explain to my children why it is that they probably won't be allowed to go and live in Europe for a bit when they hit their 20s anymore.

Can you explain to me why your children won't be allowed to live in Europe for a bit, if the UK is not in the EU?

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#302

Post by ovulator »

lawpoop wrote: post #213
jneal wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with democracy is the people are easily influenced by false truths. I'm all for democracy, but I also realize that a well informed vote and an uninformed vote are equal and therein lies the problem. It's not really something that can be fixed within a true democracy.

Isn't that a problem with all forms of government? That the people in charge can be influenced by false truths?

Not with God Kings & Theocracy, their truth is the truth by definition and will override any preexisting truths.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#303

Post by chki »

arethuza wrote: post #24
alexcason wrote: post #13

"Even though I voted to leave, this morning I woke up and I just — the reality did actually hit me," one woman told the news channel ITV News. "If I'd had the opportunity to vote again, it would be to stay."

#WhatHaveWeDone seems popular on Twitter, as is #notmyvote

Which might be posted by those who voted "remain" as well, because people feel that they belong together although they voted differently.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#304

Post by jlos »

netcan wrote: post #82

I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…

>> We haven't figured this shit out yet.

It depends on whether you view democracy as a process to perfect society or mitigate against social harm. If you think democracy should perfect (or even just improve) society, it will often seem ridiculous. Knowledgable voters don't determine the outcome of elections and referrendums, and instead the mass of voters who understand the least about the issues at hand determine their outcome. From this perspective, Aristotle's was probably onto something when he thought democracy was better named ochlocracy (i.e. 'mob rule').

However, if you understand that the purpose of democracy is to mitigate against social harm, then the drawbacks make sense. This would be the perspective of Alexander Hamilton and co. in the Federalist Papers. The tendency of political parties and factions, this view claims, is to benefit themselves at the expense of the greater society, and in fact often harming the greater society (e.g. North Korea). Assuming parties will seek their self interest at the expense of the common good, democracy is an institution which means the best interest of the parties is to get people to vote for them, which means they have to do things people actually want. From this perspective, democracy is certainly a problematic process but brings peace and prosperity because it tends, on the whole, to align the parties self interest with the perceived good of the society.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#305

Post by saynsedit »

twoquestions wrote: post #12

"People of $MY_IDENTITY believe a thing, so I'll vote for it no matter what $OTHERS say!" I thought before reading that story that the above was a bad caricature, but holy shit. How can you not know what the EU is if you're in a member country and can read? It's like an American not knowing what Congress is!

It makes a good story. People love reading about how other people are stupid.

You can see the projected bias: people who voted for brexit must be idiots whose knowledge depends on Google.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#306

Post by fnovd »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #205
netcan wrote: post #82

I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…

My favored election procedure works like this: Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government. A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an…

Who writes the test questions? Who administers the test? Who grades it? How random is the random choice? Who determines what cutoffs to use as the population size changes?

You'll start to see gaming of the test, where those with resources either get involved in the administration or devote their time to perfecting their offspring's change of getting in that top 0.1 percent. Eventually, those without resources will be wholly unable from achieving scores necessary to be in the top 0.1 percent. You'll have an entire class of people who will either be part of government or feasibly able to join as members die, retire, or finish their terms. They will self-seclude as they have little to gain from interacting with the 99.9%.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#307

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

nzp wrote: post #215
thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #166

the general public is too dumb to vote on matters like this. This is when democracy fails. Remember, Hitler was elected as well.

No, we don't remember. It might have to do with the fact Hitler wasn't ever elected for anything. Neither has NSDAP ever had a majority before they took power.

majority had nothing to do with this. You're just trying to deflect the issue. They had the plurality and hitler was their man

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#308

Post by mentalpiracy »

lichform wrote: post #224
Dr_tldr wrote: post #162

As someone with no dog in this fight, I have to say that many of the pro-stay comments here are dismissive, arrogant, and the epitome of hand-waving "we know best and everyone who disagrees with us is stupid or evil." It's an ugly and insular attitude that is itself usually a sign of ignorance of the other side's arguments and motivations. As a dev, I find it hard to believe that someone who can be so easily blinkere…

The disdain and disgust impressed on the elderly in this issue in particular is distressing. Seeing people advocate for selective voting or implying that the younger persons' views are worth more because of their older countrymen's vicinity to expiration is personally upsetting as a self-loathing Millenial.

As another self-loathing millennial, it's also distressing to empirically see the detrimental effect of my elders making extremely poor choices that will fundamentally affect my life much more than theirs.

Nobody really wants to disenfranchise certain voters. But it doesn't mean that we aren't frustrated with their poor choices either.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#309

Post by mpnordland »

whistlecrackers wrote: post #103
dmoy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure like 30%+ of Americans don't know what our three branches of government are.

Master, release, and develop?

If only. That actually sounds like a plausible, perhaps even advantageous structure. Imagine that, a testing environment for government. Dang, I actually like that.

Re: The British are Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it

#310

Post by Matumio »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #205
netcan wrote: post #82

I'm strangely moved by this whole thing. It's a pretty decent status check on where we are with democracy ATM. I'm not against democracy, but I do think we need to pay attention to what it can & can't do. On one hand, this has been a model of democracy. A primary election agenda and referendum. The phrasing of the question was simple, clear and unbiased. The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling struct…

My favored election procedure works like this: Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government. A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an…

I like the random selection part as anti-corruption measure. But the top 0.1 percent IQ filter is not very democratic. You can train for those (if you have the time and money) and there will always be some cultural bias built into the test. It's uncomfortably close to excluding a whole race or sex.
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