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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

#441

Post by stcredzero »

Inthenameofmine wrote: post #145
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. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas? As a Swiss citizen, I think the swiss system is very close to perfect in this regard. Sure, emotional and stupid arguments sometimes prevail, but most of the time the people make the perfect decision. Public discourse is most often also very rational, more so than most world parliaments. Irrational arguments…

I am amazed at the low level of discussion in the UK even by their representatives.

Here in the US, I find myself wishing political discourse would rise to the level of the UK.

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

#442

Post by scourge »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #288
super_id wrote: post #272

Didn't realize Stalin was doing TED talks now.

It is ridiculously reductive to claim that improving income inequality is a Stalinist policy.

what did your parent comment say and why was it flagged?

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

#443

Post by raverbashing »

runako wrote: post #198
yincrash wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects.

This is a curious claim, so I did a little checking. It turns out that Switzerland is smaller than the Los Angeles metro area both in GDP and population.

Are you sure?

It seems it's comparable in size, but not smaller

Take a look http://mapfrappe.com/?show=40241 (it's a rough sketch of Switzerland but the size should be right)

Edit: yes, I think parent meant population, not actual size

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

#444

Post by zghst »

barnacs wrote: post #427
zghst wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cannot trust academia, they are a special interest in their own right. Their power depends on bureaucracy and big government, not to mention that their field is incredibly undemocratic itself, lots of research is funded or excluded depending on the political flavor of leaders.

Indeed, academia as we know it is somewhat broken. We can either fix it or replace it completely (eg. by some crowdfunded model) and give it a new name. Either way, democracy would greatly benefit from an independent information source. While there are some purely subjective decisions to make in a society, a lot of them have some objective underlying facts (eg. is smoking harmful? is there a global warming?). Without…

+1 a million times. Maybe we should have an AI consult the voter before voting

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

#446

Post by spacehome »

saynsedit wrote: post #331
sergiotapia wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN users in general lean heavily left (at least publicly).

Actually I think HN leans center. HN has no particularly inspiring agenda, it's mostly conformity to the status quo. There are extreme left and right on HN but they are usually down voted.

I see a lot of people leaning left and a lot of people leaning Libertarian. What's conspicuously absent is the religious right.

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

#447

Post by _9MOTHER9HORSE »

arrrg wrote: post #91
_9MOTHER9HORSE wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, the fact the EU had enormous power over British people, yet barely anyone knew what it was, what it did, or why it was important, was a compelling reason for the UK to leave.

The EU is not other people. The UK has always held large power in controlling the EU. Obviously in concert with others, but such is the nature of cooperation. This othering of the EU is really lazy. The EU was never some ominous foreign entity. Plus, get better education if that's the problem. My civics teacher was quite adept at explaining the EU. For historic reasons there is some ugly cruft, but it's nevertheless…

Barely anyone knew who represented them in Europe. Fewer still knew what powers those representatives had.

I suspect 99% could not name more than five people in the EU machine, including Nigel Farage as a free point.

The EU is absolutely other people to the UK.

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

#448

Post by WorldMaker »

thomasahle wrote: post #403
zghst wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should just put machines in charge. I don't trust any humans to rule over me anymore. Power corrupts, absolutely

Could work (because better decisions were made), or could be terrible (because people stopped feeling responsible). We should try it :-)

Time to assemble all the evidence in both directions from sci-fi (such as most of Star Trek: TOS, some of Futurama, etc), feed it into a deep learning algorithm and see if it models a better machine society or a worse one. I trust this is a useful first case to test this hypothesis. :)

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

#449

Post by ritchiea »

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…

Well when I originally thought this was satire I was ready to upvote.

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

#450

Post by mungoid »

I have no real reason why I think it would work well, but I have always felt that voting on anything should only be allowed to the people that can show a half decent knowledge of that topic and not for people that just go with the first thing they hear. You might as well flip a coin at that point. If you want to vote, do your part as a citizen and learn about what it is you are voting on, how it will impact you and your country as a whole and if you don't want to do that, don't vote.

Democratic countries gave power to the people, but we basically give it right back because "its too hard", or "i dont have time", etc. so we only vote from our gut feeling and follow the loudest voice. Gut feeling is fine in a fight or flight sense, but not for policies that impact the whole country.

IMO I would think decisions like this and many others would benefit from something similar to the scientific method. Construct your proposal, share it with everyone, let them critique it, revise, share, etc. and then vote. Biggest thing is taking ego out of the equation.

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