4 ms·

Why shouldn't it be allowed? Either people are capable of independent thought, in which case this doesn't matter. Or they are too stupid to form their own deci

Why shouldn't it be allowed? Either people are capable of independent thought, in which case this doesn't matter. Or they are too stupid to form their own decisions, in which case democracy is a sham anyway. It's like the people claiming the Brexit vote was illegitimate because people didn't know what they were voting for. If that's the case, why not put Elizabeth in charge and save on admin?

beepboopbeep 7y ago
The world does not exist as a series of binary choices.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? It seems much fairer. After all, corporations aren't allowed to put out misleading ads, so why should politicians? It's a smaller harm if I buy diet products that don't work than if I vote for a politician who does the exact opposite of what he promised. Yet only the former is illegal. Here we have Donald Trump's 'Contract with the American Voter': https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102.... How much of this did he accomplish?
  - ianleeclark 7y ago
    > So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? Lying, especially when Politicians do it, isn't a binary. There are varying degrees of truth, deliberate omissions, and a difficult to discern intent. So it would be incredibly difficult to enforce.
    - heartbeats 7y ago
      So your only qualm is that it would be difficult to enforce? After all, this does not seem to be a problem with false marketing.
      - ianleeclark 7y ago
        My qualm is that it would be impossible to enforce. And I don't really think that false marketing is as big of a problem as most people think because marketing tends to sell simulations, not promises of reality. When you see most advertisements, they're promising simulacrum: a hatchback filled with happy-looking, outdoorsy people; axe body spray being insatiable to women; someone actually drinking diet Pepsi (editorializing a bit on this last one). You don't need to make marketing claims if you just imitate the idealized form. This seems to echo many American politician's rhetoric: the entire Democratic field is representing an idealized form wherein their presidency could somehow overcome the blockade of the Senate.
  - sjy 7y ago
    In the United States, making it illegal for politicians to lie is usually regarded as inconsistent with the First Amendment.
jfengel 7y ago
Voters are too stupid to form their own decisions, but oddly, that doesn't mean democracy is a sham. Democracy exists because voters are too stupid to form their own decisions. It relies on the hope that stupid decisions are largely random, while informed decisions will all tend in the same direction. It takes only a small minority of people to know what they're doing, if the uninformed ones can be counted on to mostly cancel each other out. That's obviously a fraught assumption, but mass media puts an increasingly large wrinkle in it. It takes only a small thumb on the scale of uninformed votes to overpower a minority of informed voters, and new techniques increasingly enable people with a lot of money to apply that thumb. If only 1% of voters are informed, and a misinformation campaign can sway 2% of otherwise evenly-divided voters, it becomes the dominant factor -- even if the informed voters are unswayed.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  But we've had mass media for a long time, whereas social media advertising is a rare concept. The former probably has a much greater effect. The only reason people are concerned now is because Trump manipulated the electorate in a different way than politicians usually do, and this is a great violation of tradition.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    People have been concerned for a while. Even before social media, there was a shift from what was widely perceived as a roughly balanced TV news media, to major news channels run by party donors and being quite clear that they were skewing the news for their benefit. These, along with even more obviously ideological web sites and social media bubbles, were causing "epistemic closure" that helped people believe even the most obvious falsehoods. It's true that this ratcheted up to 11 in the last major election, and was co-opted by somebody outside of the establishment. In the end, the establishment pivoted, and are getting nearly all of their goals met. More, in fact, than under their own plans. So they're pretty happy about it, and see it more as an innovation for their benefit than as a violation. I don't mean to be picking sides here. In theory, the same tools are available to their opponents, and I'm sure they're trying to. In practice, I suspect that they will not fare as well using the same techniques. They'll continue to develop others, just as they had used social media innovatively in the past two.

beepboopbeep 7y ago

The world does not exist as a series of binary choices.

heartbeats 7y ago
So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? It seems much fairer. After all, corporations aren't allowed to put out misleading ads, so why should politicians? It's a smaller harm if I buy diet products that don't work than if I vote for a politician who does the exact opposite of what he promised. Yet only the former is illegal. Here we have Donald Trump's 'Contract with the American Voter': https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102.... How much of this did he accomplish?
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > So why don't we make it illegal for politicians to lie? Lying, especially when Politicians do it, isn't a binary. There are varying degrees of truth, deliberate omissions, and a difficult to discern intent. So it would be incredibly difficult to enforce.
  - heartbeats 7y ago
    So your only qualm is that it would be difficult to enforce? After all, this does not seem to be a problem with false marketing.
    - ianleeclark 7y ago
      My qualm is that it would be impossible to enforce. And I don't really think that false marketing is as big of a problem as most people think because marketing tends to sell simulations, not promises of reality. When you see most advertisements, they're promising simulacrum: a hatchback filled with happy-looking, outdoorsy people; axe body spray being insatiable to women; someone actually drinking diet Pepsi (editorializing a bit on this last one). You don't need to make marketing claims if you just imitate the idealized form. This seems to echo many American politician's rhetoric: the entire Democratic field is representing an idealized form wherein their presidency could somehow overcome the blockade of the Senate.
- sjy 7y ago
  In the United States, making it illegal for politicians to lie is usually regarded as inconsistent with the First Amendment.

jfengel 7y ago

Voters are too stupid to form their own decisions, but oddly, that doesn't mean democracy is a sham. Democracy exists because voters are too stupid to form their own decisions. It relies on the hope that stupid decisions are largely random, while informed decisions will all tend in the same direction. It takes only a small minority of people to know what they're doing, if the uninformed ones can be counted on to mostly cancel each other out. That's obviously a fraught assumption, but mass media puts an increasingly large wrinkle in it. It takes only a small thumb on the scale of uninformed votes to overpower a minority of informed voters, and new techniques increasingly enable people with a lot of money to apply that thumb. If only 1% of voters are informed, and a misinformation campaign can sway 2% of otherwise evenly-divided voters, it becomes the dominant factor -- even if the informed voters are unswayed.

heartbeats 7y ago
But we've had mass media for a long time, whereas social media advertising is a rare concept. The former probably has a much greater effect. The only reason people are concerned now is because Trump manipulated the electorate in a different way than politicians usually do, and this is a great violation of tradition.
- jfengel 7y ago
  People have been concerned for a while. Even before social media, there was a shift from what was widely perceived as a roughly balanced TV news media, to major news channels run by party donors and being quite clear that they were skewing the news for their benefit. These, along with even more obviously ideological web sites and social media bubbles, were causing "epistemic closure" that helped people believe even the most obvious falsehoods. It's true that this ratcheted up to 11 in the last major election, and was co-opted by somebody outside of the establishment. In the end, the establishment pivoted, and are getting nearly all of their goals met. More, in fact, than under their own plans. So they're pretty happy about it, and see it more as an innovation for their benefit than as a violation. I don't mean to be picking sides here. In theory, the same tools are available to their opponents, and I'm sure they're trying to. In practice, I suspect that they will not fare as well using the same techniques. They'll continue to develop others, just as they had used social media innovatively in the past two.