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We aren't rational beings, we are rationalizing beings.

• anigbrowl 9y ago
  Agreed. I just wish I knew a viable alternative strategy.
  • KGIII 9y ago
    I'm not sure there is one, unless one wants something that resembles authoritarianism in the name of preserving liberties. That there creates a mental knot I've not yet unraveled. It's hardly democratic to prevent people from responding like people and fear is a powerful motivator. So, buggered if I have the answers...
    • anigbrowl 9y ago
      What if the answer is something other than a Republican system of government? That was great for the days when news traveled more slowly and human lives changed relatively little from one generation to the next. But the accelerating aspects of technology in general and communications in particular - both physical and informational - have revealed its limitations. Nowadays the population of Facebook is nominally larger than that of any individual country. We could, if we were so minded, build systems of governance that were completely participatory and leveraged the near-instantaneous communication we have come to think of as normal. Do we really benefit any more from delegating our most important tasks to small, opaque, and corruptible groups of politicians who are forced to spend ever more absurd sums on election campaigns in order to be taken seriously?
      • KGIII 9y ago
        Do you want your average Facebook visitor voting directly on legislation? More so the complex legislation? I'm open to the idea but it's going to need some refinement.