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The thing about voting is, the purpose is not to increase the quality of the decision. The practical purpose of voting is simply to avoid civil war. Without vot

The thing about voting is, the purpose is not to increase the quality of the decision. The practical purpose of voting is simply to avoid civil war. Without voting, a large group of people who are being acted against have no choice but to use force to get what they want. Democracy is a pressure release valve (same with free speech). If I can't use the soapbox I use the ballot box. If I can't use the ballot box, I use the ammo box. So it doesn't matter how dumb the voters are. What matters if is if they can generate violence.

CamperBob2 7y ago
Seems like the same infrastructure that supports omnipresent chatbots will serve adequately for interdicting and dispensing with the protesters^Wrevolutionaries^Wterrorists.
IIAOPSW 7y ago
>The thing about voting is, the purpose is not to increase the quality of the decision. The practical purpose of voting is simply to avoid civil war. Actually its both. Voting is a legitimacy mechanism (aka avoiding civil war) and a competence mechanism (aka making quality decisions). It is much better at the former, and typically better than historical systems (re: monarchy) at the latter. It is perfectly reasonable to consider a trade-off that buys us higher competence at a loss of 10%-15% legitimacy. That's a small enough fraction of the population that I wouldn't worry too much about them starting a civil war. Especially if homogeneously distributed.
alexashka 7y ago
How'd you arrive at this conclusion? Wars happen when enough people are willing to sacrifice themselves and others. Leaders sacrifice their own, foot soldiers sacrifice themselves and their enemies. What makes people willing to sacrifice? An opportunity/threat for a significant shift in quality of life. I don't think democracy, dictatorship or any other form of government or its customs make much of a difference at all. You can have stable dictatorships and unstable democracies - it's got much more to do with luck and sometimes competence of the people at the top.

CamperBob2 7y ago

Seems like the same infrastructure that supports omnipresent chatbots will serve adequately for interdicting and dispensing with the protesters^Wrevolutionaries^Wterrorists.

IIAOPSW 7y ago

>The thing about voting is, the purpose is not to increase the quality of the decision. The practical purpose of voting is simply to avoid civil war. Actually its both. Voting is a legitimacy mechanism (aka avoiding civil war) and a competence mechanism (aka making quality decisions). It is much better at the former, and typically better than historical systems (re: monarchy) at the latter. It is perfectly reasonable to consider a trade-off that buys us higher competence at a loss of 10%-15% legitimacy. That's a small enough fraction of the population that I wouldn't worry too much about them starting a civil war. Especially if homogeneously distributed.

alexashka 7y ago

How'd you arrive at this conclusion? Wars happen when enough people are willing to sacrifice themselves and others. Leaders sacrifice their own, foot soldiers sacrifice themselves and their enemies. What makes people willing to sacrifice? An opportunity/threat for a significant shift in quality of life. I don't think democracy, dictatorship or any other form of government or its customs make much of a difference at all. You can have stable dictatorships and unstable democracies - it's got much more to do with luck and sometimes competence of the people at the top.