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

washingtonpost.com

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

#361

Post by kamaal »

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…

>>The "will of the people" won over the will of the ruling structure. Most politicians and the main parties (especially before the opportunists jumped in) were against leaving. So was the financial sector and most big businesses.

If you want to do X, just because people you hate don't like to do X is really a very wrong way to be making decisions about anything.

In general this sort of behaviour doesn't lead to a good ending.

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

#362

Post by rdiddly »

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…

It's worth noting that the entire context of this discussion about democracy is an article that could be an effort by the Post (an arm of the neocon establishment) and Google (ditto) to spin a perfectly legitimate albeit narrowly-decided exercise of self-determination as a catastrophic blunder by idiots. Of course they would say that.

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

#363

Post by sbmassey »

capote wrote: post #116
sergiotapia wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree that the title is purposefully bait-y and has an implication.

The title is a pretty clear and accurate summary of what's happening.

I wonder how they measure the franticness of the Googling: Are they sure they aren't just casually Googling about it?

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

#364

Post by smhenderson »

zghst wrote: post #174
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…

You're against democracy because people had the right to decide what was in their interest and not the government or big business??

IMO it was close enough that "the people" did not decide. Roughly half of the people decided.

I'm in the US so I am a little too uninformed and probably not heavily affected by this to take one side or the other. But knowing what I know I am surprised that this didn't need a 2/3 majority to pass or something similar. Given the result you have roughly half of the country upset by this and in some areas like Scotland, London, etc. you have a majority of people upset by the outcome.

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

#365

Post by cookiecaper »

mentalpiracy wrote: post #308
lichform wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a simple matter of disagreement. Your elders aren't "making extremely poor choices" in an objective sense. They're making the choice they believe is for the long-term interest of the country, just as you did. You should not assume idiocy or malice on the opposing side's part just because you lost. Informed, well-educated people can and do disagree. This must be valued and believed in a democratic society if it's not to tear itself apart.

If it were up to me, minimum voting age would be bumped to 30 and votes would become more valuable as people aged. Personal experience and history is nothing to sneeze at. The open disrespect to just dismiss this by-definition-wiser voting block as making "extremely poor choices" is very distasteful and short-sighted.

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

#366

Post by DasIch »

emsy wrote: post #167

What I're read so far about pro-leavers: -They are stupid. -They are xenophobic racists (over 50% of the population!). -Trump welcomes the Brexit, so being pro-leave is stupid. -Old people vote "leave" since they don't have to face the consequences as long as the young people, and old people have no clue. -"Leave" votes come mainly from E.U. subsidized areas, thus they bite the hand that feeds them. -Pro-leave doesn'…

What else do you expect to read they day afterwards? The arguments have been made before the referendum repeatedly and in detail. There is no point in going over them now.

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

#367

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

fnovd wrote: post #306
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…

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…

As I specified above, it's vital that the test be used outside of politics, too. If employers and academics institutions rely on the test for admissions, this would provide pressure to keep the test bound to IQ. If we further specify the test must be symbolic like Raven's Matrices, I think there is a good chance we could keep the test g-loaded.

As for your second point, random selection is a vital to mitigate that possibility. A publicly verifiable source of randomness would be ideal.

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

#368

Post by zghst »

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'm guessing a lot of minorities and immigrants would be left out of representation. Who decides what's on the test, how do we decide that it's fair and not used just to justify that people conform to marketed opinions? How does this test help against those that are disenfranchised and without privilege? How do we challenge those with privilege and power and their positions and goals?

This test sounds incredibly dystopian.

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

#369

Post by teh »

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…

My rational brain agrees with you but I feel this decision was based on who shouted the most.

I participated in some political online discussions (something I rarely do) in good faith and the responses I got were often uninformed (no idea what subsidiarity means, what the EU institutions are, the objectives of the Maastricht treaty, ..) and more often hostile ("fuck off you want us to give Germany another pounding?", "why aren't you grateful", "we have the most powerful army and sit on the UN Security Council", ...)

After reading that for hours I came to the conclusion that these people are 1) stupid, and 2) arguing in bad faith. It was totally unlike a well paced engineering discussion.

What's your plan for engaging in this kind of discourse?

(I can link you to plenty of comments on HN right now that argue with words like "these people", "sickening", or say "The EU has no relevance to peace or war.")

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

#370

Post by nickik »

tacon wrote: post #141
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how should they be decided then?

Remember the European Constitution that failed a few years ago? (At least the three hundred page document that they were calling a constitution.) I was shocked when my German friends mentioned that the German people would certainly have voted no, but they never got the chance. The German legislature voted for it, and that was it. Apparently most Europeans had no direct vote up or down for that constitution. And when…

Even worse, many nations did not go into the EU by popular vote. Generally if people are asked about the EU, they don't follow the line of the politcal classes. This is just the latest example.
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