Interesting Links for 05-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish
  (tags: politics society intelligence democracy )
• Sex and the modern girl: living in a world where women aren't ashamed of their desires
  (tags: uk sexuality sex women )
• Archie gay marriage comic sells out in face of boycott call
  (tags: lgbt comics )
• Bechdel Testing Comics
  (tags: bechdel women

Comments

[spacelem]

I've been thinking about the democracy problem recently - that there's just too many people who don't understand the problem to be able to choose what to do about it (take the economy for example, I'd say I'm pretty well educated, and I can't make head nor tail of it, how's someone who doesn't have a maths degree supposed to know what's best?). Alternatively, just the problem of huge numbers of people voting because that's the way they've always voted, like my dad, and his dad before him. Does that really help anyone?

Unfortunately, last time I mentioned it to someone I got a reponse along the lines of "that's how dictators think". I like to think I'm not a crazed despot, bent on controlling everyone, but can this really be reconciled, or should I just give up and accept that the opinions of informed people are worth no more than general ignorance?

[cartesiandaemon]

It seems like the most viable models are (a) let the most ruthless person rule (b) have a democractic process that at least some of the time rules out things that are obviously awful to everyone. Obviously neither of those is great, but I think it's understandable to pick (b), although I don't know for sure it's better, but (a) is certainly scary.

The question is, is there any better way? A representative democracy appears to do some good: of policies that parliament implements that people disagree with, some are awful (eg. lots of surveillance), but I think more are worthwhile (eg. no death penalty). I don't if we can guarantee that, or if we're just lucky, and I don't know if we can improve of that without falling into (a) or (b).

[drdoug]

My personal view is that the big positive thing about democracy is that it draws a line under just how awful a government can be before they get chucked out. People aren't very good at judging how good a prospective government will be, but they are much better at judging a spectacularly poor one as being spectacularly poor in retrospect.

So even if elections are essentially random noise, because you've put a lower bound under how shockingly bad a government can get, and a new government essentially starts from there the previous one left off (all those democratic institutions), you have a stochastic process. It's a bounded random walk, in essence, and that'll give you much better outcomes (on average) than a random scatter of governments with no dependence.

[iainjcoleman]

True, and this is essentially Machiavelli's argument for the superiority of republics over principalities.

But the other big advantage of democracy is that provides a mechanism by which bad governments can be removed without bloodshed.

[gonzo21]

The counter-argument to that farming is evil, hunter gathering yay argument is that Europe could support a population of maybe 30-50,000 hunter-gatherers. They would move into a region, eat everything in sight, then move on to another valley, and eat everything there. Repeating the pattern. If we hadn't started agriculture, the human population would be tiny.

Plus, hunter gathering was an all day sort of lifestyle. Wouldn't have been much time for things like art, science, music, medicine, etc.

[andrewducker]

Is (1) that bad?

And the article specifically contradicts (2).

[cartesiandaemon]

I don't think it's inherently bad, if a smaller number of people can be supported in equal or better comfort. It may be good. But I would guess it's impossible to get there from here whether it's desirable or not: can you drop the population by a factor of a thousand without having all the existing population starve when they get old, and without having millions of people migrate in?

[steer]

Is (1) that bad?Heh... I find it weird when people ask this question... unless we allow "magic" (humans suddenly find a way to responsibly reduce the population by an extreme amount through family planning in a way that doesn't leave an aging population to starve) there seems no way to get to that population without an extreme amount of human misery and premature death. If the deaths and suffering of billions is not bad then what is

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh, "sold out" in a good way! :)

[coughingbear]

I read it the other way too, and was relieved when I clicked on the article!

[steer]

The first five search suggestions for "how" included "how to get married in skyrim". The first five suggestions for "why" included "why is my poop green". I really hope these are not personalised suggestions.

[steer]

"The Reference is Lost" misses my very favourite -- the alleged (but uncertain) Bugs Bunny popularisation of the word "nimrod" to mean idiot. Don't know if you're familiar with the story but in one cartoon Bugs refers to Elmer Fudd as "poor little Nimrod" -- a reference to the god of Hunting... however, sufficient numbers of the audience just took it to be a general "insult" word which it has now mutated into.

(Alas for this theory there are previous sarcastic uses of "Nimrod" which predate Bugs... so nobody is really certain.)