4 ms·

> On the other hand, asking a large number of people to make a YES/NO decision on something they scarcely comprehend is like having a hundred school children wh

> On the other hand, asking a large number of people to make a YES/NO decision on something they scarcely comprehend is like having a hundred school children who have just finished dissecting a frog collectively decide the best way to handle a triple bypass operation. That is to say, when the question requires expertise to answer, widening the circle reduces the collective wisdom of the group. This is one element of what I call the Stupidity of Crowds. If you want to change people's opinions, a good start would be to stop calling people who disagree with you stupid. If you go and look at which areas of the United Kingdom voted "leave" the most strongly, it's the coastal fishing ports. I'd assume that the fishermen know very much more than the average remainer does about what effect the European Union has had on their industry, and yet in page after page of post-referendum discussions by remainers I have yet to see a single remainer even acknowledge these people's existence, let alone suggest why remaining in the EU would be better for the fishermen than leaving it. Edit: removed the word "remoaner".

foldr 9y ago
He didn't say that there were no well-informed leave voters.
BjoernKW 9y ago
> a good start would be to stop calling people who disagree with you stupid. Or for that matter calling people 'remoaners' who don't think that because at one instant people voted for Brexit by a thin margin this means an irrevocable mandate for politicians to do as they please. The absolutist, partisan nature of current British politics not only is very unproductive but also divisive. Then let's not forget, had the result turned out the other way round Brexit supporters would have been moaning, too. Even more so, the most fervent of them wouldn't have stopped clamouring for another referendum (and another ...) until they would have had it their way.
- Safety1stClyde 9y ago
  OK, I probably shouldn't have used the word "remoaners", I'll edit my comment to "remainers".
monk_e_boy 9y ago
[edit] deleted
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  Exchanging one remote, self-serving political elite for another doesn't automatically make things better though. For what it's worth, Westminster is just as far away from most of the UK as Brussels.
  - Safety1stClyde 9y ago
    > Westminster is just as far away from most of the UK as Brussels. A mathematical impossibility. Wherever you define the centre of the UK to be, it's nearer to Westminster than Brussels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_points_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_points_of_the_United_Ki... The average distance of any point in the UK from Westminster or Brussels is then just going to be the root of the square of the average distance to that centre point plus the square of the distance to Westminster or Brussels.
    - BjoernKW 9y ago
      I didn't mean that geographically but as a figure of speech for 'the political establishment of the UK'.
  - monk_e_boy 9y ago
    My local MEP is one of 751, my local MP is one of 650 So mathematically local representation is better if we leave.
    - notahacker 9y ago
      The probability of at least one of your region's MEPs being from a party you voted for is a fair bit higher though...
      - 9y ago
aleksei 9y ago
Isn't that the problem? If the fishermen only look at Brexit through the lens of the fishing industry they cannot be expected to understand the effects of Brexit on all of society. This can be expanded to any group, even your classy ad hominem "remoaners". Brexit has such wide consequences that it shouldn't have been a decision based on opinions.
- Safety1stClyde 9y ago
  > If the fishermen only look at Brexit through the lens of the fishing industry they cannot be expected to understand the effects of Brexit on all of society. This can be expanded to any group, even your classy ad hominem "remoaners". Not to be sarcastic or rude, but the comment you're responding to actually does say exactly what you said there. The remainers did not seem to care very much about the fishing industry, and they've shown no ability to understand the effects of the EU or leaving the EU on other groups of people, such as the fishermen.
  - louithethrid 9y ago
    All of society is always all of me, maybe some friends, ocassionally family, but definatly me - im all of society. But i dont want to soundt egocentric. The massesmolasses are definatly with me, i can feel the avalanch of opinion, everytime i go online, like a huge fluid-physics simulation, going towards the drain, that is my viewpoint. The strange thing is, this even occurs, if i had a radical change of opinion. The people dont just have the same opinion as me, they follow me- im the chosen one, as prophezized by the facebook.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Alternate hypothesis: the remainers noted that whilst the effects of the EU on the fishing industry may have been bad there are only around 10,000 fishermen in the whole of the UK[1] whose livelihoods aren't guaranteed to be improved by leaving, and there was no reason not to prioritise the far greater number of jobs and revenues in other industries that are threatened by leaving. Or more likely, most of them didn't because few people understand the intricacies of the Common Fisheries Policy or financial passporting and their respective impacts on the job market and most people actually tended to make their decision out of a vague sense of whether right-wing politicians shouting about taking back control of their borders resonated with or appalled them. [1]and fishing jobs were lost at a much faster rate last century before the UK joined the EU than afterwards. Needless to say, the proportion of the 17 million people who voted Leave who were affected by the Common Fisheries Policy is vanishingly small.
braveo 9y ago
reminds me of the trump election reaction. Apparently the stupid middle "flyover country" voted him in because they're stupid.
kristianc 9y ago
> If you want to change people's opinions, a good start would be to stop calling people who disagree with you stupid. > I have yet to see a single remoaner even acknowledge these people's existence Then clearly it's just a matter of which particular epithet you choose. Just as people had well-founded reasons for wanting to leave the EU, others (48% of the country in fact), had well founded reasons for wanting to stay in. There are many different kinds of Brexit we can have even once you accept - as almost everyone does - that we are leaving. I don't see how childish name calling like this possibly moves debate or understanding forward. And as pertains your point on fishermen - there's good evidence that leaving the EU will leave the fishermen no better off than they were before as we will still be bound by commitments we've made to the UN. Perhaps yet another example where a group have been told that leaving the EU would be a land of milk and honey only for the promises to be quietly withdrawn at a later date. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/15/uk-fishermen-may-not-win-waters-back-after-brexit-eu-memo-reveals https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environme...
tigershark 9y ago
I think that whoever believes in things like: "brexit will give 350M£ more per week to NHS" and "brexit will make uk great again (while Scotland and north Ireland probably will leave)" doesn't fit completely my definition of intelligent... If you add that a lot of people that voted for leave are living in depressed areas that are getting BILLIONS from EU, even if I don't agree with the exact choice of words I don't think that is too far from reality. I would have had the same harsh judgement for anyone that would cut his penis to spite her wife, but in that case I believe that a lot more people would have agreed with me.
- mike-cardwell 9y ago
  So you've described a person who believed that the NHS would get £350M extra a week, and also wanted to "make UK great again", and you've called them stupid. I will now describe a person who was scared to leave the EU because of how it might affect their spending power, and didn't care less about the implications to democracy of staying in the EU, and will call them stupid, selfish and short sighted. So where does that leave us? Have we gained something from this?
  - tigershark 9y ago
    I lost about 7-8k£ until now thanks to the brexit and the pound value that collapsed (just counting pure expenses, not considering any asset that I own). So you had all the rights to call me stupid, idiot and whatever you wanted if I had voted for leave. But it's not the case because I don't believe at whatever false propaganda is on air at a certain moment. I believe only to facts and I look at my interests. And the slumping pound is an incontrovertible fact that even guys like you that try to negate reality cannot possibly contest. At the end for me doesn't really change much, I still have a good job and in the worst case I have EU citizenship if everything collapses. I'm not sure that the fishermen, the factory workers and all the others that gets billions from EU subsidies and that voted to leave are still fine in case everything collapses.
    - mike-cardwell 9y ago
      I didn't call you stupid. I created a straw man, and called him stupid. Just like you created a straw man, and called that one stupid. 1. There are people who voted based on how they thought it would affect themselves personally. 2. There are people who voted based on the long term interests of what they thought was best for the people of the UK and Europe. I made a conscious effort to be in camp 2. It sounds like you're squarely placing yourself in camp 1. The value of the pound has recently dropped and you find that to be relevant. I don't and I'm poorer for it too. I can see that you based your vote on the short term personal economic impact, rather the long term effect it would have on human beings living in European countries. That's ok. You can call people stupid. As long as you're comfortable being called selfish. I still don't see the value in any of this.
pcrh 9y ago
Perhaps you should investigate how good the EU has been for UK fishermen. Fishing quotas are based on historical catches, which the UK had a very large share of due to its geographical position. UK fishermen then sold their quotas to the Spanish, French, etc. Despite this: >The UK’s share of the overall EU fishing catch grew between 2004 and 2014. In 2004 the UK had the fourth largest catch of any EU country at 652,000 tonnes, by 2014 this had grown to 752,000 tonnes and the second largest catch of any country in the EU. https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-pinching-our-fish/ https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-pinching-our-fish/ Indeed, collectively, UK fishermen appear not to be very wise.
- Safety1stClyde 9y ago
  > Indeed, collectively, UK fishermen appear not to be very wise. My post at the head of this discussion made the point that continually repeating "Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" turned out not to be a good way to win an election. Still doing the same thing and expecting different results? I strongly expect that the fishing communities (is fishermen actually an OK word to use these days?) actually know their own situation much better than either you or I do, and they're very clear on how the EU affects them.
  - sgift 9y ago
    > I strongly expect that the fishing communities (is fishermen actually an OK word to use these days?) actually know their own situation much better than either you or I do, and they're very clear on how the EU affects them. Why? The things the GP wrote are not matters of opinion, they are facts. If people ignore them and vote against their own interests they are not "better informed". The idea that most people are intelligent, well informed and vote in their own interest is nice. It's also incredibly naive and not supported by reality.
  - pcrh 9y ago
    The decline of fishing as a profession over the past 40 yrs is due to changes in technology and catchable stocks, not the UK's membership of the EU or the Common Fisheries Policy. Plenty of people who benefit from large EU subsidies voted for Brexit (rural areas of England, Welsh Valleys, etc). Sometimes people do vote against their own interests.

foldr 9y ago

He didn't say that there were no well-informed leave voters.

BjoernKW 9y ago

> a good start would be to stop calling people who disagree with you stupid. Or for that matter calling people 'remoaners' who don't think that because at one instant people voted for Brexit by a thin margin this means an irrevocable mandate for politicians to do as they please. The absolutist, partisan nature of current British politics not only is very unproductive but also divisive. Then let's not forget, had the result turned out the other way round Brexit supporters would have been moaning, too. Even more so, the most fervent of them wouldn't have stopped clamouring for another referendum (and another ...) until they would have had it their way.

Safety1stClyde 9y ago
OK, I probably shouldn't have used the word "remoaners", I'll edit my comment to "remainers".

monk_e_boy 9y ago

[edit] deleted

BjoernKW 9y ago
Exchanging one remote, self-serving political elite for another doesn't automatically make things better though. For what it's worth, Westminster is just as far away from most of the UK as Brussels.
- Safety1stClyde 9y ago
  > Westminster is just as far away from most of the UK as Brussels. A mathematical impossibility. Wherever you define the centre of the UK to be, it's nearer to Westminster than Brussels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_points_of_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_points_of_the_United_Ki... The average distance of any point in the UK from Westminster or Brussels is then just going to be the root of the square of the average distance to that centre point plus the square of the distance to Westminster or Brussels.
  - BjoernKW 9y ago
    I didn't mean that geographically but as a figure of speech for 'the political establishment of the UK'.
- monk_e_boy 9y ago
  My local MEP is one of 751, my local MP is one of 650 So mathematically local representation is better if we leave.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    The probability of at least one of your region's MEPs being from a party you voted for is a fair bit higher though...
    - 9y ago

aleksei 9y ago

Isn't that the problem? If the fishermen only look at Brexit through the lens of the fishing industry they cannot be expected to understand the effects of Brexit on all of society. This can be expanded to any group, even your classy ad hominem "remoaners". Brexit has such wide consequences that it shouldn't have been a decision based on opinions.

Safety1stClyde 9y ago
> If the fishermen only look at Brexit through the lens of the fishing industry they cannot be expected to understand the effects of Brexit on all of society. This can be expanded to any group, even your classy ad hominem "remoaners". Not to be sarcastic or rude, but the comment you're responding to actually does say exactly what you said there. The remainers did not seem to care very much about the fishing industry, and they've shown no ability to understand the effects of the EU or leaving the EU on other groups of people, such as the fishermen.
- louithethrid 9y ago
  All of society is always all of me, maybe some friends, ocassionally family, but definatly me - im all of society. But i dont want to soundt egocentric. The massesmolasses are definatly with me, i can feel the avalanch of opinion, everytime i go online, like a huge fluid-physics simulation, going towards the drain, that is my viewpoint. The strange thing is, this even occurs, if i had a radical change of opinion. The people dont just have the same opinion as me, they follow me- im the chosen one, as prophezized by the facebook.
- notahacker 9y ago
  Alternate hypothesis: the remainers noted that whilst the effects of the EU on the fishing industry may have been bad there are only around 10,000 fishermen in the whole of the UK[1] whose livelihoods aren't guaranteed to be improved by leaving, and there was no reason not to prioritise the far greater number of jobs and revenues in other industries that are threatened by leaving. Or more likely, most of them didn't because few people understand the intricacies of the Common Fisheries Policy or financial passporting and their respective impacts on the job market and most people actually tended to make their decision out of a vague sense of whether right-wing politicians shouting about taking back control of their borders resonated with or appalled them. [1]and fishing jobs were lost at a much faster rate last century before the UK joined the EU than afterwards. Needless to say, the proportion of the 17 million people who voted Leave who were affected by the Common Fisheries Policy is vanishingly small.

braveo 9y ago

reminds me of the trump election reaction. Apparently the stupid middle "flyover country" voted him in because they're stupid.

kristianc 9y ago

> If you want to change people's opinions, a good start would be to stop calling people who disagree with you stupid. > I have yet to see a single remoaner even acknowledge these people's existence Then clearly it's just a matter of which particular epithet you choose. Just as people had well-founded reasons for wanting to leave the EU, others (48% of the country in fact), had well founded reasons for wanting to stay in. There are many different kinds of Brexit we can have even once you accept - as almost everyone does - that we are leaving. I don't see how childish name calling like this possibly moves debate or understanding forward. And as pertains your point on fishermen - there's good evidence that leaving the EU will leave the fishermen no better off than they were before as we will still be bound by commitments we've made to the UN. Perhaps yet another example where a group have been told that leaving the EU would be a land of milk and honey only for the promises to be quietly withdrawn at a later date. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/15/uk-fishermen-may-not-win-waters-back-after-brexit-eu-memo-reveals https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environme...

tigershark 9y ago

I think that whoever believes in things like: "brexit will give 350M£ more per week to NHS" and "brexit will make uk great again (while Scotland and north Ireland probably will leave)" doesn't fit completely my definition of intelligent... If you add that a lot of people that voted for leave are living in depressed areas that are getting BILLIONS from EU, even if I don't agree with the exact choice of words I don't think that is too far from reality. I would have had the same harsh judgement for anyone that would cut his penis to spite her wife, but in that case I believe that a lot more people would have agreed with me.

mike-cardwell 9y ago
So you've described a person who believed that the NHS would get £350M extra a week, and also wanted to "make UK great again", and you've called them stupid. I will now describe a person who was scared to leave the EU because of how it might affect their spending power, and didn't care less about the implications to democracy of staying in the EU, and will call them stupid, selfish and short sighted. So where does that leave us? Have we gained something from this?
- tigershark 9y ago
  I lost about 7-8k£ until now thanks to the brexit and the pound value that collapsed (just counting pure expenses, not considering any asset that I own). So you had all the rights to call me stupid, idiot and whatever you wanted if I had voted for leave. But it's not the case because I don't believe at whatever false propaganda is on air at a certain moment. I believe only to facts and I look at my interests. And the slumping pound is an incontrovertible fact that even guys like you that try to negate reality cannot possibly contest. At the end for me doesn't really change much, I still have a good job and in the worst case I have EU citizenship if everything collapses. I'm not sure that the fishermen, the factory workers and all the others that gets billions from EU subsidies and that voted to leave are still fine in case everything collapses.
  - mike-cardwell 9y ago
    I didn't call you stupid. I created a straw man, and called him stupid. Just like you created a straw man, and called that one stupid. 1. There are people who voted based on how they thought it would affect themselves personally. 2. There are people who voted based on the long term interests of what they thought was best for the people of the UK and Europe. I made a conscious effort to be in camp 2. It sounds like you're squarely placing yourself in camp 1. The value of the pound has recently dropped and you find that to be relevant. I don't and I'm poorer for it too. I can see that you based your vote on the short term personal economic impact, rather the long term effect it would have on human beings living in European countries. That's ok. You can call people stupid. As long as you're comfortable being called selfish. I still don't see the value in any of this.

pcrh 9y ago

Perhaps you should investigate how good the EU has been for UK fishermen. Fishing quotas are based on historical catches, which the UK had a very large share of due to its geographical position. UK fishermen then sold their quotas to the Spanish, French, etc. Despite this: >The UK’s share of the overall EU fishing catch grew between 2004 and 2014. In 2004 the UK had the fourth largest catch of any EU country at 652,000 tonnes, by 2014 this had grown to 752,000 tonnes and the second largest catch of any country in the EU. https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-pinching-our-fish/ https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-pinching-our-fish/ Indeed, collectively, UK fishermen appear not to be very wise.

Safety1stClyde 9y ago
> Indeed, collectively, UK fishermen appear not to be very wise. My post at the head of this discussion made the point that continually repeating "Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" turned out not to be a good way to win an election. Still doing the same thing and expecting different results? I strongly expect that the fishing communities (is fishermen actually an OK word to use these days?) actually know their own situation much better than either you or I do, and they're very clear on how the EU affects them.
- sgift 9y ago
  > I strongly expect that the fishing communities (is fishermen actually an OK word to use these days?) actually know their own situation much better than either you or I do, and they're very clear on how the EU affects them. Why? The things the GP wrote are not matters of opinion, they are facts. If people ignore them and vote against their own interests they are not "better informed". The idea that most people are intelligent, well informed and vote in their own interest is nice. It's also incredibly naive and not supported by reality.
- pcrh 9y ago
  The decline of fishing as a profession over the past 40 yrs is due to changes in technology and catchable stocks, not the UK's membership of the EU or the Common Fisheries Policy. Plenty of people who benefit from large EU subsidies voted for Brexit (rural areas of England, Welsh Valleys, etc). Sometimes people do vote against their own interests.