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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

#61

Post by notahacker »

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

"Government of the people" or not, I've yet to see anything resembling a convincing argument that the average citizen thrust into government is actually better at government than someone who spends their life prior to and in office trying to demonstrate their aptitude at government to the average citizen.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#62

Post by takno »

pidg wrote: post #43
seanp2k2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd probably put down that I'd been working on an Antarctic research vessel. If I put down whatever generic name they actually do use most employers would probably assume I'd been a deckhand on a cross channel ferry or something

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#63

Post by tfm »

noir_lord wrote: post #51
metafunctor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy can take many forms indeed. But let's think opportunistically, for a moment. In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice. The case of Boaty McBoatface, th…

If spun right the PR benefits of calling the thing Boaty McBoatface are huge. You could do merchandise, books, characters, You could have Boaty McBoatface sale up to the ice caps to look at why they are melting. It's not like this is unusual we had a Childrens TV series here that was massively popular about talking trains and talking helicopters. I think they squandered a massive opportunity because they don't unders…

It is a difficult line to toe. Obviously if their primary objective is to raise awareness of the (continuing) existence of the boat, BMcBF is a winner, and there are numerous cash-in opportunities such as those you suggest. If done right it might not even look cynical!

If on the other hand giving it a silly name "dilutes their brand" (to use an HN favourite) then they're going to do the stuffy thing. Not entirely sure why folks would be surprised at a Conservative minister taking a conservative approach...

Really seems that SCIENCE does a lot better in the public eye at the moment when it goes populist rather than cloistered, but here we are...

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#64

Post by Nutmog »

newjersey wrote: post #13

> “The key point is that representatives’ voting behavior was not strongly constrained by their constituents’ views,” Achen and Bartels write. “Elections do not force successful candidates to reflect the policy preferences of the median voter.” The authors claim there’s no hard evidence to suggest that these dynamics would vary in countries with political systems of proportional representation and more parties than i…

I'd say it's fair for candidates to break promises. If voters keep voting for them and their party despite seeing that happen, then it means voters don't mind broken promises. This is what's nice about democracy - you don't have to argue about too many rules, the rules evolve naturally. For some reason it turned out that keeping promises wasn't a natural rule that voters wanted. The same goes for resigning. If they don't resign and are still re-elected or their party is still re-elected then that reflects what their constituents want, not some artificial rules that some unelected rule-maker (who would that be?) decided on.

The US system seems to be doing quite well. The majority of the population doesn't care at all, and their votes don't count. Those are people who either always vote for the same party or don't vote at all. The important decision then comes down to the minority of people who are most interested in the policies - the swing voters. Isn't that quite an efficient division of labor?

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#65

Post by dalke »

chrischen wrote: post #42
Manishearth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For that matter, most countries are smaller than the US, both in size and population. There are only two countries with a larger population. China has one ruling political party, and India has had prime ministers from many different parties.

For a full accounting, look back to the rise of the two party system during the Jacksonian era, or the current system of Democrats and Republicans (replacing the Whig party) started in the 1850s.

An explanation based on population size would have to be able to explain why it is that the current two party system in the US started when it was a much smaller country.

The US population in 1860 was 31,443,321. There are now 42 countries with a population larger than that.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#66

Post by return0 »

takno wrote: post #55
return0 wrote: post #34

Crowdsourcing of a name is not about democracy. It doesn't appear to me that the public was widely informed that they had to make a democratic decision, instead sounds like a bunch of kids trolling. I think the article is conflating two unrelated entities here. As a sideline, what is democracy even? Democracy via elections would be oligarchy to ancient Athenians, who prefered democracy by lot anyway.

The vote was well covered in the British press, and the people I know who voted were neither kids not anything other than completely serious about the name.

Did their mothers and grandmothers vote too? I doubt the voting base was representative of public opinion...

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#67

Post by notahacker »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #45
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.

I rather like the concept, but I can see it having some interested and unanticipated side effects if you allow people to select their delegate by category rather than individual bill by individual bill. The person that decides whether people's delegates for voting on (e.g.) an act related to surveillance default to being the delegate they selected for "civil liberties" or the delegate they selected for "national security" actually ends up with rather a large degree of executive power, despite probably having a lower profile than the leader of an executive regular parliamentary or presidential system. Of course, there's a reasonable argument that this is still much more transparent and fair (and reversible) than, for example, coalition bargaining, but it is a system I'd like to see used in practice more in bodies like trade unions before we decide it's the solution to national governance.

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#68

Post by takno »

return0 wrote: post #66
takno wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vote was well covered in the British press, and the people I know who voted were neither kids not anything other than completely serious about the name.

Did their mothers and grandmothers vote too? I doubt the voting base was representative of public opinion...

One of them was my grandmother

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#69

Post by hartpuff »

noir_lord wrote: post #51
metafunctor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy can take many forms indeed. But let's think opportunistically, for a moment. In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice. The case of Boaty McBoatface, th…

If spun right the PR benefits of calling the thing Boaty McBoatface are huge. You could do merchandise, books, characters, You could have Boaty McBoatface sale up to the ice caps to look at why they are melting. It's not like this is unusual we had a Childrens TV series here that was massively popular about talking trains and talking helicopters. I think they squandered a massive opportunity because they don't unders…

The point of the boat isn't to be a Budgie the Helicopter style cash machine, is it? It has a serious purpose.

Why does it have to appeal to 4 year olds, who have zero understanding of or interest in what it does? Why does it require an infantile name to appeal to kids who are old enough to be interested in what it does?

The only reason this is even any kind of issue is because of the way internet works, where all kinds of pointless immature stupidity is given far more time of day than it deserves, because newspaper sites have to fill themselves with something.

Edit: Oh dear. Looks like I hit a nerve with some people. :( ∗sad mcsadface∗

Re: Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy

#70

Post by johnsonjo »

mtgx wrote: post #26

First off, this is nothing like how elections work. People are still run by representatives in democratic countries. Second, everyone, including the government is making it sound as if this is a "terrible name", just because it's out of the framework they imagined it to be. But I think this is a great name and has brought nothing but popularity to the project being done on that boat.

>First off, this is nothing like how elections work. People are still run by representatives in democratic countries.

It's partially true this isn't how elections work, but I think what the article was trying to get by or at least what I got out of it is that the process was democratic and in similar ways democracy fails. Now this is somewhat subjective and entirely dependent on what you call democracy. It's funny I read this now as I had just started reading a new book I got titled Our Republican Constitution by Randy E. Barnett (great read by the way.) The writer is talking about the American constitution.

Once when Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the framers had devised he answered famously "a republic, if you can keep it." This was in contrast to a democracy which the writer says they didn't wholly disagree with, but having an excess of democracy had created problems.

The author states two conflicting paradigms a Democratic Constitution and a Republican Constitution. He states these are not reflections of what we see as the democratic and republican parties that the USA has today as both parties have believers of both viewpoints. His main distinction that I perceived from reading was that the Democratic Constitution perceived what was constitutional or law by the "majority". Well the alternative to that doesn't seem like it would be anything good it's quite the contrary. The alternative as he states is The Republican Constitution (what he states was the founders paradigm) which has the basis of constitutionality on whether each "individual" had there basic rights. In some cases throughout american history majority rule hasn't favored the individual e.g. racial segregation. In cases where majority rule opposes the inalienable rights of the individual I feel democracy fails and as I stated before that's the one part that I could agree with the journalist that democracy isn't always the best solution to a problem.

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