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Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

theatlantic.com

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Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#41

Post by chrischen »

kuschku wrote: post #31
chrischen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

At best a handful of parties, and it only works in small elections. You get to bigger and bigger elections the system always reduces the choice, which means that the bigger the system is, the less effective democracy becomes.

Of course democracy was never meant to be the most efficient or effective system of government. It's simply the most compromising one.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#42

Post by chrischen »

Manishearth wrote: post #39
chrischen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

See reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11547983

Most countries where there are more than two parties are smaller. Just like in the US at lower level elections independents and other party members might win.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#43

Post by pidg »

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…

I dunno, how would you feel about putting it on your CV? Like calling a business Smelly Bottom Industries would be funny and populist, but people who actually worked there would struggle to take pride in the fact.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#44

Post by ohthehugemanate »

This article is good food for thought in a year dominated by two strong "outsider vs the Establishment" candidates in the US, populist rise in all the European elections, and the entire Brexit issue. We are confronting a lot of areas where the "will of the people" differs from "the will of the people who know what the fuck they're talking about." this raises a lot of questions about "democratic-ness."

executive powers originally designed for extenuating circumstances are being used on one side and the other: to select delegates in an election, to get around a stonewall Congress in Washington, to name a boat in England. Where they aren't used, there is pressure to use them: to avoid a Brexit disaster, to stand up for a comedian's right to free speech in Germany, to respond to terrorist threats in France and Belgium.

I have to wonder if this is the Internet doing to Democracy what it is doing to Capitalism : breaking fundamental assumptions of how the world works. Information and opinions work very differently, now. We are part of much larger social herds, governed by different forces, with much faster (and more selective) information transfer. Populism is a different beast today than when Berlusconi ran in the 90s. Maybe it's time you disrupt democracy.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#45

Post by ZenoArrow »

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

There's a system that, in my opinion, is even better (fairer, less prone to corruption) than sortition, and that's liquid democracy (a.k.a. delegative democracy):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8

The idea being, you can let people vote on your behalf, or you can vote directly, and you have the freedom to choose between these on an issue by issue basis.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#46

Post by buserror »

And what's wrong exactly if the name appeals to every 5 years old in the country? I think /that/ is inspirational -- how better to get kids interested in the science than having them following that boat adventures over the oceans?

I think refusing that name would be not just be 'anti democratic' -- it's just be very un-british, because as a foreigner, that's /exactly/ what I'd expect the british to come up with as a name, just for a smirk, and that's something I like about them!

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#47

Post by s_kilk »

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.

Realistically it's the will of 4chan and Reddit, which is nowhere near as noble-sounding as "the will of the people".

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#48

Post by gpvos »

narag wrote: post #23
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…

If you believe it would have been outrageous that this man had his name in a british ship, you'll be surprised by the shitstorm that would happen if his name would be given to a spanish ship.

According to Wikipedia, several Spanish ships have been named after him.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#49

Post by makomk »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #35
vlehto wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prim…

I think it has a lot of explanatory power. From what I've seen the main reason people don't care about who's in charge is because they think all the candidates are basically the same and none actually represent them.
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