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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

#341

Post by enraged_camel »

rayiner wrote: post #285
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.

The false premise in your post is that "being well-informed" would lead you to a particular conclusion. Governing isn't like building a dam. You'd be insane to build a dam by getting random people on the street to design it. But the principles underlying governance aren't predictable like the principles underlying engineering. You're not going to find prominent engineers at leading universities disagree about whether…

>>At the end of the day, on most issues (obviously there are exceptions), the "informed" class is just guessing

Decisions based on educated guesses are always preferable to those based on emotion and sentiment.

edit: stop downvoting me based on emotion and sentiment!

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

#342

Post by dv_dt »

jdminhbg wrote: post #294
bertil wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 8, officially titled Proposition 8 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry, was a statewide ballot proposition in California. On November 4, 2008, voters approved the measure and made same-sex marriage illegal in California. On June 6th, 1978, nearly two-thirds of California's voters passed Proposition 13, reducing property tax rates on homes, businesses and farms by about 57%. The Environment Prior to P…

The most salient and controversial facet to Prop 13 wasn't the immediate rate change, but the cap on increases when a property was continuously owned.

To me worst part wasn't the cap itself - I think it's fair for residential properties, but that it was also applied to commercial properties.

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

#343

Post by cookiecaper »

znpy wrote: post #269
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is so wrong on so many levels. 1. IQ test has been shown not to represent actual "intelligence" 2. Intelligence does not mean justice, fairness or anything else. 3. Conflict of interest. What if the so called "most intelligent" people have some interest in the voting? 4. Trainning. I'm pretty sure anyone could end up in resulting a genius by trainning on problem sets for IQ tests. 5. Being smart doesn't automati…

Although I believe there is value to the IQ metric, I agree with you that raw intelligence should not be the way we choose our governors/reps/etc.

As if democracy didn't have enough struggles, telecommunications (and especially television) have forever changed the way that the people choose their representatives. Superficialities are much more important now than they were pre-1960, and everything we get is filtered through the media outlets that control the television broadcasts; if they dislike someone, all they have to do is repeatedly re-broadcast a single unflattering yelp and that person's prospects are done. [0]

We need to learn to deal with that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q

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

#344

Post by tosseraccount »

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…

This is the smug style in the new politics.

The notion that the people don't know what's best for them.

Bottom line is the working man hasn't cashed in like the global elite and their sympathizers.

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

#345

Post by mikeash »

unprepare wrote: post #293
mikeash wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big chunk of Americans almost want it to be a police state, so they have something to fight against. It makes me think of Sam Altman's recent article about Trump. He said he was taking some risk by writing that, and some commenters here praised his bravery in taking a public stand on this. It's ridiculous. Bravery would be a prominent techie taking a stand for Trump. He's not going to suffer any consequence…

Are you suggesting if he had come out as pro-trump he would have someone knocking on his door at 3am to haul him off?

No, I'm suggesting that's what a "police state" looks like.

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

#346

Post by dougmany »

keithpeter wrote: post #290
dougmany wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember listening to a Ted talk where the speaker basically said, Get income inequality in check by whatever means and most of your problems go away.

Get hold of a copy of Tony Judt's Ill fares the land . It has references to the correlation between inequality and many measures of 'problems' and tries to make the case for a causal link. Also explains philosophical background.

Thank you for the recommendation. I will check it out.

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

#347

Post by delboy88 »

banach2 wrote: post #278
mc32 wrote: post #9

Isn't that expected? People who voted for the establishment status quo want to know what might happen in the years to come now that the vote has gone against them. Voting to stay meant no change, therefore they knew more or less the outcome, but now that the outcome is opposite their votes, they want to look into the repercussions --this informs that it's likely they stay vote didn't investigate the alternative befor…

With the amount of easily consumable and manipulative propaganda going around it's quite easy to make a misguided vote without realising the implications. It's not like voting to leave takes much effort.

Apparently smearing people who voted to leave takes little effort too.

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

#348

Post by zghst »

k__ wrote: post #336
zghst wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media is a big business owned by special interest and wealthy elites. Obviously all the scare tactics used in the media did not work on the voters.

I think it was exactly the opposite.

I'm curious, I'd like to hear more =)

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

#349

Post by mikeash »

saynsedit wrote: post #282
mikeash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of certain American voters saying they support Trump just because they want to tear the system down. I don't think they realize what tearing the system down would actually mean.

Do you know anyone personally who has said this?

I don't even know anyone personally who has expressed any favorable view of Trump. Yet clearly they exist in fairly large numbers, so I don't think that should prevent me from acknowledging them.

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

#350

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

znpy wrote: post #269
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is so wrong on so many levels. 1. IQ test has been shown not to represent actual "intelligence" 2. Intelligence does not mean justice, fairness or anything else. 3. Conflict of interest. What if the so called "most intelligent" people have some interest in the voting? 4. Trainning. I'm pretty sure anyone could end up in resulting a genius by trainning on problem sets for IQ tests. 5. Being smart doesn't automati…

1. IQ tests are very good proxies for intelligence. Despite decades of ideology-based objections, the relevant fields have reached consensus that IQ does measure a general factor of intelligence, and it is a good predictor of future scholastic and career ability.

2. My system isn't an alternative to perfection, it's an alternative to democracy which is decidedly imperfect. Intelligence is likely a better proxy for pro-social attitudes than the ability to navigate political institutions and then trick a bunch of people into voting for you.

3. Again, compare this not to perfection but to what we currently have.

4. Training for IQ tests has very limited returns. But as I specified, the test will be used outside of politics, too. In fact its most common use would be by academic institutions and employers. Because of this, most people will have incentives to train to whatever extent possible. Thus the test becomes slightly less G-loaded and slightly more a test of conscientiousness, but any plan to train up a bunch of corrupt lackeys would have very poor expected value.

5. Again, compare not to perfection but to what we actually have now.

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