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Humans are not rational, and it's naive to believe that they ever possibly could be. Governments need to be at least as big as the corporations and the other g

Humans are not rational, and it's naive to believe that they ever possibly could be. Governments need to be at least as big as the corporations and the other governments they seek to regulate and defend against, otherwise things get squirrelly and dangerous.

pdonis 7y ago
> Humans are not rational, and it's naive to believe that they ever possibly could be. If this is true, we're screwed, because governments are run by humans.
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  Governments have a couple of safeguards in place to deal with irrational humans running the show. Some of them are division of power and checks and balances. These safeguards are the reason why governance is sometimes slow and sometimes bulky but also why, by and large, governance doesn't fail entirely when it happens to be unjust: it can recover from most injustices (one argument against capital punishment is that there's no recovery from that). And all that is rooted in a distrust that humans do the right thing all the time - without that assumption you wouldn't need these mechanisms with all their overhead, you'd just appoint a philosopher king. [edit to add: One problem is when some of these powers aren't doing their job. Checks and balances break down when (for example) the legislature devolves into playing the executive's yes-men instead of directing its activities.]
  - pdonis 7y ago
    All of these safeguards depend on people being rational--at least rational enough to watch whether the safeguards are working. If people aren't willing to do that, the safeguards break down. For example: the US Congress has something like a 98% re-election rate for incumbents and an approval rating in the single digits. That means important safeguards are not working.
    - someguydave 7y ago
      Does that mean democracy is unsafe?
      - pdonis 7y ago
        It means a democracy in which voters are unwilling or unable to hold elected representatives accountable for maintaining the safeguards is unsafe.
        someguydave 7y ago
        Fair enough - we need to limit the vote to the responsible voters only - for the safety of the people.
        mikelyons 7y ago
        No. We need an educated populous, and not just educated in rationality but in spirituality as well. Not religious dogmatic mechanistic ritualism corrupted for selfish motives, but open one-with-all selfless spirituality that seeks to promote future generations instead of stealing from them for the goals of the ego.
- abathur 7y ago
  I don't really think it's all that useful to think of even individual humans as rational or irrational, but in any case: Governments (much like cities, markets, neighborhoods, societies, companies, social networks, "the media", political parties, academia, unions, religions, etc.) are "run by humans" somewhat like flocks are run by birds. Yes, studying the nature of individual birds can teach you a little bit about flocks, but you've zoomed out to a level where it's more useful to talk about systems and dynamics. Can't see the forest for the trees, as they say.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    This amounts to saying: we humans can't really predict the behavior of entities like governments. That just makes the problem I was pointing at worse.
    - abathur 7y ago
      No, it doesn't. It amounts to saying that different rules and dynamics govern higher-order systems. It's not that the ir-/rationality of individual participants isn't a factor--but multiple interacting systems and feedback loops are creating the weather that those actors have to make decisions within.

pdonis 7y ago

> Humans are not rational, and it's naive to believe that they ever possibly could be. If this is true, we're screwed, because governments are run by humans.

pgeorgi 7y ago
Governments have a couple of safeguards in place to deal with irrational humans running the show. Some of them are division of power and checks and balances. These safeguards are the reason why governance is sometimes slow and sometimes bulky but also why, by and large, governance doesn't fail entirely when it happens to be unjust: it can recover from most injustices (one argument against capital punishment is that there's no recovery from that). And all that is rooted in a distrust that humans do the right thing all the time - without that assumption you wouldn't need these mechanisms with all their overhead, you'd just appoint a philosopher king. [edit to add: One problem is when some of these powers aren't doing their job. Checks and balances break down when (for example) the legislature devolves into playing the executive's yes-men instead of directing its activities.]
- pdonis 7y ago
  All of these safeguards depend on people being rational--at least rational enough to watch whether the safeguards are working. If people aren't willing to do that, the safeguards break down. For example: the US Congress has something like a 98% re-election rate for incumbents and an approval rating in the single digits. That means important safeguards are not working.
  - someguydave 7y ago
    Does that mean democracy is unsafe?
    - pdonis 7y ago
      It means a democracy in which voters are unwilling or unable to hold elected representatives accountable for maintaining the safeguards is unsafe.
      - someguydave 7y ago
        Fair enough - we need to limit the vote to the responsible voters only - for the safety of the people.
        mikelyons 7y ago
        No. We need an educated populous, and not just educated in rationality but in spirituality as well. Not religious dogmatic mechanistic ritualism corrupted for selfish motives, but open one-with-all selfless spirituality that seeks to promote future generations instead of stealing from them for the goals of the ego.
abathur 7y ago
I don't really think it's all that useful to think of even individual humans as rational or irrational, but in any case: Governments (much like cities, markets, neighborhoods, societies, companies, social networks, "the media", political parties, academia, unions, religions, etc.) are "run by humans" somewhat like flocks are run by birds. Yes, studying the nature of individual birds can teach you a little bit about flocks, but you've zoomed out to a level where it's more useful to talk about systems and dynamics. Can't see the forest for the trees, as they say.
- pdonis 7y ago
  This amounts to saying: we humans can't really predict the behavior of entities like governments. That just makes the problem I was pointing at worse.
  - abathur 7y ago
    No, it doesn't. It amounts to saying that different rules and dynamics govern higher-order systems. It's not that the ir-/rationality of individual participants isn't a factor--but multiple interacting systems and feedback loops are creating the weather that those actors have to make decisions within.