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I have a controversial view, correct me if I am wrong. I think democracy has a major flaw, because, most people are selfish/unfair and most likely vote for popu

I have a controversial view, correct me if I am wrong. I think democracy has a major flaw, because, most people are selfish/unfair and most likely vote for populist leaders. But, it has been so far saved by media because of the elitist journalists who want the world to be a fair place and were able to convince people to reject populist leaders. With social media, these journalists are bypassed and the populist leaders are able to appeal to the people's selfish tendencies directly. This is an irreversible change and I expect the world to go backwards by several decades.

jedberg 8y ago
It all has to do with education. Educated people are naturally more skeptical of their media and what the sources are. Before social media, it was admitted a lot harder for unreliable sources to get an audience, so that skepticism was less critical. But I think it will come back. Education is the antidote to social media news. Deity willing, the next government will see that and push for better education.
- bproven 8y ago
  Exactly - also increasing focus on critical thinking skills.
  - mantas 8y ago
    Which may only make them question mainstream media. Hopefully it'd make social media more reliable.
- bachbach 8y ago
  > Educated people are naturally more skeptical of their media and what the sources are. I have not found that to be the case and I think you should scrutinize that assumption very carefully. Perhaps a majority of intellectuals in the West thought the Soviet Union was a step forward - again and again it's the 'smart' people who get the big things wrong.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > Perhaps a majority of intellectuals in the West thought the Soviet Union was a step forward I wasn't there at the time, so I have no way of knowing, but this smells like hindsight bias.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      No. It was obvious at the time that the USSR was bad news. George Orwell was writing about the dystopian nature of Soviet society in 1948. It had become obvious decades earlier that the Russian revolution had gone horribly wrong, after western powers realised that Soviet lumber exports were coming from forced labour camps. And the fact that a Russian revolution would go wrong in this way was obvious even at the turn of the century. Lenin was put on a train in Switzerland and sent back to Russia specifically to cause chaos. Going even further back, it was a constant frustration of Marx that the working classes in the UK (where he lived) stubbornly refused to rise in violent revolution. His ideology was well discussed in his own time but somehow actual working people were too smart to believe in it. Only intellectuals far removed from the real lower classes thought his theories were good. tl;dr it's widely known that academics and other intellectuals couldn't accept the disastrous nature of communism long after supposedly more "stupid" people had fully understood the nature of Marxist ideology. Even shorter tl;dr - education often seems to make people dumber in important ways, not smarter.
- mantas 8y ago
  At the same time education is encouraging people to not trust the mainstream. There's a lot of reasons for that, thanks to tabloids and seemingly credible papers going bananas once in a while. So educated people do their own research. Which sometimes goes wrong. For example, a lot of conspiracy theorists are educated people. Their research just took an interesting turn at one point or another. @bachbach's example of pro-Soviet intellectuals is a good one as well. There was a similar downtown on the other side of the wall too. Quite a few anti-soviet dissidents turned into conspiracy theorists later on. In both cases, people were happy to rebel and look for alternatives and their education did help them. But eventually their curiosity took them too far.
  - jesseendahl 8y ago
    Truly effective education involves teaching people how to do their research in a way that stresses objectivity and apply a high degree of scrutiny to any argument. It gives people a toolkit for critical thinking, and how to assess the quality of one argument against another. We don't just need education, we education that places a renewed emphasis on critical thinking skills. This is an interesting article on this topic: http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2017/05/fake-news.aspx http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2017/05/fake-news.aspx
    - mantas 8y ago
      Yup. But some people think that education would make people flock back to mainstream media and listening to talking heads. Which is not going to happen. And that's good. Once you start evaluating arguments and doing your own research, a lot of difference opinions emerge. Which sometimes are labeled as fake news, even though they're not truly fake. If everyone did assess all news, most crazy fake news would be gone. Which is awesome. But many of non-mainstream opinions that technically are not fake would survive. Which is good too in my books, but some people wouldn't agree.
- jonbarker 8y ago
  The tech platform companies are all competing for mindshare in the education market as well. In fact, a FB apologist once went so far as to suggest that the best antidote to FB is readily available FB in classrooms; this way students will learn to be less distracted by it. The problem with this is that even the mere availability of the resource is a source of distraction.
mseebach 8y ago
The mechanism you're describing also made the non-populist politicians complacent, they forgot (if they ever learned) how to articulate why their way is actually better. See for an example the completely anemic campaigns fought by Hillary Clinton and the remain side in the brexit referendum. Those should not have been hard battles to fight.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "Those should not have been hard battles to fight." Unless you're in the world where facts and truth don't actually matter.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Oh those battles were won hands down. It's just that if the other side will switch to outright dishonesty that it gets a lot harder to get the voters to know what's going on.
GreeniFi 8y ago
I would say that your assumption about the nature of humans is a construct of the society you have grown up in and the institutions which have shaped the behavior of your fellow-citizens.
pell 8y ago
Democracy's flaws have been studied for thousands of years. You can find a very detailed critique from Plato for example. All of his arguments are still true today. The problem is that there really isn't a better alternative when it comes to letting people self-govern on a big scale. Plato's solution was a government of the ones who had the complete truth, but he himself was doubtful whether such an administration would be realistic and flawless.
- jonbarker 8y ago
  And now the best proxy for 'the complete truth' seems to be the entrepreneur who built the largest AI enabled platform with the most engaged users. As long as that person is benevolent, we are all OK?
- sls 8y ago
  The Greek historian Polybius (ca. 200 BCE) observed characteristic weaknesses of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. He theorized that the Roman mixed constitution in which powers were separated was a key factor in the success and stability of Rome. His thought influenced the American founders both directly and indirectly. It's interesting to observe how the institutional and technological changes since the American founding, and the systemic problems we easily note, align with his discussion. He theorized that each of the unmixed systems had weaknesses that led them to eventually be supplanted by another form, initially well-administered, which too would in time succumb to its inherent weaknesses. The mixed form resisted this cycle. So to the extent that the polity "un-mixes" the arrangement of powers, e.g. making the Senate directly elected instead of chosen by state legislatures without making a corresponding anti-democratic change, the system becomes more exposed to the cyclic risks associated with the unmixed state that was favored.
- drexlspivey 8y ago
  Here is a video explaining why Socrates didn't like democracy. tldr: demagoguery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk
  - zerostar07 8y ago
rhizome 8y ago
I think democracy has a major flaw, because, most people are selfish/unfair and most likely vote for populist leaders. This is quite the hypothetical syllogism.
hodgesrm 8y ago
The framers of the US Constitution were well aware of this problem, which is one reason why they introduced features like separation of powers. (I.e., to create power centers that would compete with each other.)
make3 8y ago
people don't vote for populists because they are selfish, they do so because they are uneducated or feel abandoned by the other options
zerostar07 8y ago
What about the Obama elections? Both of them were hailed for their pioneering use of SM to motivate and influence the electorate. I get i that the Trump win has shaken everyone but it's possible that social media could do little to stop it.

jedberg 8y ago

It all has to do with education. Educated people are naturally more skeptical of their media and what the sources are. Before social media, it was admitted a lot harder for unreliable sources to get an audience, so that skepticism was less critical. But I think it will come back. Education is the antidote to social media news. Deity willing, the next government will see that and push for better education.

bproven 8y ago
Exactly - also increasing focus on critical thinking skills.
- mantas 8y ago
  Which may only make them question mainstream media. Hopefully it'd make social media more reliable.
bachbach 8y ago
> Educated people are naturally more skeptical of their media and what the sources are. I have not found that to be the case and I think you should scrutinize that assumption very carefully. Perhaps a majority of intellectuals in the West thought the Soviet Union was a step forward - again and again it's the 'smart' people who get the big things wrong.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > Perhaps a majority of intellectuals in the West thought the Soviet Union was a step forward I wasn't there at the time, so I have no way of knowing, but this smells like hindsight bias.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    No. It was obvious at the time that the USSR was bad news. George Orwell was writing about the dystopian nature of Soviet society in 1948. It had become obvious decades earlier that the Russian revolution had gone horribly wrong, after western powers realised that Soviet lumber exports were coming from forced labour camps. And the fact that a Russian revolution would go wrong in this way was obvious even at the turn of the century. Lenin was put on a train in Switzerland and sent back to Russia specifically to cause chaos. Going even further back, it was a constant frustration of Marx that the working classes in the UK (where he lived) stubbornly refused to rise in violent revolution. His ideology was well discussed in his own time but somehow actual working people were too smart to believe in it. Only intellectuals far removed from the real lower classes thought his theories were good. tl;dr it's widely known that academics and other intellectuals couldn't accept the disastrous nature of communism long after supposedly more "stupid" people had fully understood the nature of Marxist ideology. Even shorter tl;dr - education often seems to make people dumber in important ways, not smarter.
mantas 8y ago
At the same time education is encouraging people to not trust the mainstream. There's a lot of reasons for that, thanks to tabloids and seemingly credible papers going bananas once in a while. So educated people do their own research. Which sometimes goes wrong. For example, a lot of conspiracy theorists are educated people. Their research just took an interesting turn at one point or another. @bachbach's example of pro-Soviet intellectuals is a good one as well. There was a similar downtown on the other side of the wall too. Quite a few anti-soviet dissidents turned into conspiracy theorists later on. In both cases, people were happy to rebel and look for alternatives and their education did help them. But eventually their curiosity took them too far.
- jesseendahl 8y ago
  Truly effective education involves teaching people how to do their research in a way that stresses objectivity and apply a high degree of scrutiny to any argument. It gives people a toolkit for critical thinking, and how to assess the quality of one argument against another. We don't just need education, we education that places a renewed emphasis on critical thinking skills. This is an interesting article on this topic: http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2017/05/fake-news.aspx http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2017/05/fake-news.aspx
  - mantas 8y ago
    Yup. But some people think that education would make people flock back to mainstream media and listening to talking heads. Which is not going to happen. And that's good. Once you start evaluating arguments and doing your own research, a lot of difference opinions emerge. Which sometimes are labeled as fake news, even though they're not truly fake. If everyone did assess all news, most crazy fake news would be gone. Which is awesome. But many of non-mainstream opinions that technically are not fake would survive. Which is good too in my books, but some people wouldn't agree.
jonbarker 8y ago
The tech platform companies are all competing for mindshare in the education market as well. In fact, a FB apologist once went so far as to suggest that the best antidote to FB is readily available FB in classrooms; this way students will learn to be less distracted by it. The problem with this is that even the mere availability of the resource is a source of distraction.

mseebach 8y ago

The mechanism you're describing also made the non-populist politicians complacent, they forgot (if they ever learned) how to articulate why their way is actually better. See for an example the completely anemic campaigns fought by Hillary Clinton and the remain side in the brexit referendum. Those should not have been hard battles to fight.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
"Those should not have been hard battles to fight." Unless you're in the world where facts and truth don't actually matter.
jacquesm 8y ago
Oh those battles were won hands down. It's just that if the other side will switch to outright dishonesty that it gets a lot harder to get the voters to know what's going on.

GreeniFi 8y ago

I would say that your assumption about the nature of humans is a construct of the society you have grown up in and the institutions which have shaped the behavior of your fellow-citizens.

pell 8y ago

Democracy's flaws have been studied for thousands of years. You can find a very detailed critique from Plato for example. All of his arguments are still true today. The problem is that there really isn't a better alternative when it comes to letting people self-govern on a big scale. Plato's solution was a government of the ones who had the complete truth, but he himself was doubtful whether such an administration would be realistic and flawless.

jonbarker 8y ago
And now the best proxy for 'the complete truth' seems to be the entrepreneur who built the largest AI enabled platform with the most engaged users. As long as that person is benevolent, we are all OK?
sls 8y ago
The Greek historian Polybius (ca. 200 BCE) observed characteristic weaknesses of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. He theorized that the Roman mixed constitution in which powers were separated was a key factor in the success and stability of Rome. His thought influenced the American founders both directly and indirectly. It's interesting to observe how the institutional and technological changes since the American founding, and the systemic problems we easily note, align with his discussion. He theorized that each of the unmixed systems had weaknesses that led them to eventually be supplanted by another form, initially well-administered, which too would in time succumb to its inherent weaknesses. The mixed form resisted this cycle. So to the extent that the polity "un-mixes" the arrangement of powers, e.g. making the Senate directly elected instead of chosen by state legislatures without making a corresponding anti-democratic change, the system becomes more exposed to the cyclic risks associated with the unmixed state that was favored.
drexlspivey 8y ago
Here is a video explaining why Socrates didn't like democracy. tldr: demagoguery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk
- zerostar07 8y ago

rhizome 8y ago

I think democracy has a major flaw, because, most people are selfish/unfair and most likely vote for populist leaders. This is quite the hypothetical syllogism.

hodgesrm 8y ago

The framers of the US Constitution were well aware of this problem, which is one reason why they introduced features like separation of powers. (I.e., to create power centers that would compete with each other.)

make3 8y ago

people don't vote for populists because they are selfish, they do so because they are uneducated or feel abandoned by the other options

zerostar07 8y ago

What about the Obama elections? Both of them were hailed for their pioneering use of SM to motivate and influence the electorate. I get i that the Trump win has shaken everyone but it's possible that social media could do little to stop it.