jodawi | (no subject)

I'm all at sea. How does one participate in democratic politics when the majority of voters are incapable of logical thought? Where even basic, objective, verifiable facts do not enter the minds of many or most people? Where logical conclusions get inverted?

All of my political thiking revolves around the idea that you can show people a red cube and they'll agree that there's a red cube there and not a blue sphere. But that's not the case. The blue sphere which doesn't exist becomes the fact, and the red cube becomes some sort of partisan trick to be dismissed out of hand.

I had thoughts of coding a web site that would allow people to examine facts, apply their basic values, and follow them to logical political conclusions, with the computer helping them with the logic part, but it seems kind of pointless. Even if it were logically sound, people would reject the entire system if the results were contrary to what they thought the results should be, or if an objective verifiable fact was contrary to what they thought it should be.

I suppose it might be useful to a certain elite of any political group, and in guiding them might guide those they had influence over, but if you look at the apparent groupthink that guides the Bush administration today, objective information contrary to the desired reality is not found to be welcome.

Progress does seem to get made over the decades and centuries, in at least some ways. Explicit slavery of ethnicities is no longer viewed as ok in most of the world. Slavery of women is still ok in parts of the world tho, with no large-scale world-wide campaign to put an end to it, and it's frequently claimed that "feminism is dead". Genocide against Jews is no longer ok, tho genocide in Africa can take place without much concern. It's no longer ok for young children to work long hours with dangerous machines in factories in at least some countries. Blah blah random comment. Eventually historians agree that it was probably a red cube, and not a blue sphere, but decades of shit has to happen before that point is reached.

So basically i need to release a virus that 1) makes everyone more intelligent, so facts can penetrate consciousness, and 2) makes everyone have some degree of non-self-serving ethics. Did i mention blah blah random comment?

Blah blah blah.

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The blue sphere which doesn't exist becomes the fact, and the red cube becomes some sort of partisan trick to be dismissed out of hand.

Yah.

So basically i need to release a virus that 1) makes everyone more intelligent, so facts can penetrate consciousness, and 2) makes everyone have some degree of non-self-serving ethics.

Double yah.

I'm starting to believe that maybe we really do have to think in terms of centuries.

At any rate, I'm incapable of participating in the political process in any way other than showing people a red cube.

There was a story bout that.. can't remember who.. someone like david brin maybe? Where there was a generosity virus.. generally carried in the blood.. and spread through things like.. being willing to donate blood! Was a good little short story read about the building of utopia and the evolution of man sparked by small proteins of a virus that become wholly integrated in the function of a human organism and became the catalyst for the next step of evolutionary change. Can't remember the title of it or anything.. Heh.

Hell I can barely think right now.. Gotta love Fluids Midterms.

Oh.. and they commented about how it was under published because after written AIDS epidemic happened and he did not see reason to further incite fears about blood supply... So I have no fucking clue how you should find this.. but.. perhaps maybe you should read it anyway.

Non-self-serving? HA HA HA HA HA HA.. no.. no .. wait. BWAHAHAHAH!!!

What good is life if you don't take your own interest at heart? What if your interest is other people? Different people? Then your service to others becomes self-serving. Is that logical?

Self-serving indicates putting personal concerns before those of others: if it benefits person X, then person X thinks it's ethical, because X is more important than anyone else. Non-self-serving indicates that that's bogus: if it's ethical, it's ethical, whether or not it benefits person X, because X is just as important as other people.

Ethics are too subjective to be considered logical. Take, for instance, alternative life-styles that some consider unethical, some don't, and some don't give a rats ass if it is or not because it doesn't hurt anyone.

You seem to be arguing against the idea that there can be objective ethics. I never stated that ethics are objective (although you can have objective approaches to defining ethics - game theory etc). Virus part 2 above was not about making people more objective and rational - that was virus part 1. Part 2 is more about what they do with their objectivity.

Oh, I completely understand and am not arguing a point really, other than a program is only a slave to it's devloper's ideas, which may not be logically ethical but subjectively ethical instead.

the idea was that any subjective parts are in the human realm, and the pure logic parts are in the computer realm. Human supplies: If A, then B. If B, then C. Computer supplies: Therefore if A, then C.

Trying to program something that would understand any of the issues and make reliable attempts at logical conclusions would be far beyond the abilities of any current software.

I had thoughts of coding a web site that would allow people to examine facts, apply their basic values, and follow them to logical political conclusions, with the computer helping them with the logic part, but it seems kind of pointless. Even if it were logically sound, people would reject the entire system if the results were contrary to what they thought the results should be, or if an objective verifiable fact was contrary to what they thought it should be.

I run into this all the time in teaching my sociology classes. There are a lot of things that contradict people's idea of "common sense:" teen pregnancy was higher in the 1950s than it is today, the myth of the "crack baby," the near impossibility of upward mobility into the upper class via the American Dream, the fact that race as a "physical" concept is not real-- it is socially constructed...

You can present people with evidence, but people REALLY need to believe some of these things... if it contradicts their view of the world too strongly, they rebel. They reject evidence over ideology.

I learned that the hard way.

I still want to write one of those books someday like those history books that debunk what people learn in their school history classes (Lies My Teacher Told Me, A People's History of the United States, etc.), I want to write one about the social world.

It's called Marketing.

Most of us techies rebel at marketing.. someone trying to change our opinions to get us to buy a product.

But what we need is some marketing that presents the logical arguments in an emotional way that the majority can connect with.

Karl Rove does social engineering in service of getting his employer elected. We need someone capable of manipulation like Karl Rove employed by someone interested in presenting objectively verifiable facts.