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Just to clarify, it sounds like his ideology is "rule by experts" only when the experts in office agree with the rest of his political ideology. When someone l

Just to clarify, it sounds like his ideology is "rule by experts" only when the experts in office agree with the rest of his political ideology. When someone like Trump is in office who he doesn't like, then I presume that this expertise to censor "falsehoods" is supposed to be found in unelected "experts" like our social media tycoons. "Brilliant guy"?

rayiner 6y ago
I give Sunstein more credit than that. He’s politically quite centrist, supporting Robert’s nomination. > But that is hardly the only reason to protect falsehoods, intentional or otherwise; there are several others. Even so, these arguments suffer from abstraction and high-mindedness; they do not amount to decisive reasons to protect falsehoods. These propositions are applied to old questions involving defamation and to new questions involving fake news, deepfakes, and doctored videos. It emerges that New York Times v. Sullivan is an anachronism, and that it should be rethought in light of current technologies and new findings in behavioral science.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  The issue here is not whether Sunstein's being centrist, but whether he's making sense at all. Who are the experts who get to decide what counts as a "falsehood"? For example, how many of us really know the details about how polls operate in each of the 50 states to know whether or not fraud could have occurred on such a level to affect the outcome. For my part, I don't really care all that much because the bigger problem in this country is not whether Trump or Biden becomes our next president in a few days, but for how much (in terms of corporate campaign donations) this new administration was purchased. Until we remove corporate donations from the election process, a lot of the candidates' campaign promises, on both sides, is just a bunch of empty rhetoric.
handedness 6y ago
The public confidence in experts is rapidly eroding in many sectors, in all major political factions. I would not want to bet on a near-term future that relies on public confidence in experts to function normally. It worked really, really well for the better part of the last century, but complexity and technology has grown exponentially, which makes that a less tenable system.
- rayiner 6y ago
  It’s not merely growing complexity. It’s that increasingly experts don’t share basic assumptions with the public. Prop 16, which would repeal the affirmative action ban in California, was pushed heavily by educational experts. It failed by a large margin. Here is how the Center for New American Progress, a think tank (whose CEO will lead Biden’s OMB), responded: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/news/2020/11/24/493186/california-not-bellwether-affirmative-action/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecond... This is one assertion they made to support trying again with different poll wording: > Moreover, older voters who remember the 1996 ban may hold the misleading view that the law was a “prohibition against discrimination,” as the law’s original backers framed it in this way. This is just a play on the fact that your average person defines “discrimination” quite literally (the majority of every racial group say race shouldn’t be even a small factor in college admissions). But educational experts often have a different view of “discrimination.” Thus it’s “misleading,” the article asserts, to say that the existing provision that bans disparate treatment by race is a ban on “discrimination.” When experts change the meaning of commonly understood words to get a different polling result, do you think that creates trust? (FWIW, I supported repealing the ban in California initially. But when you ask people “do you want to give some people more resources, preferential treatment, etc., in order to erase historic disparities” they say “no.” I want to do that, within reason. But it’s a dog that won’t hunt. So experts keep playing with the language, coming up with terms like “equity.” And thats made me very skeptical of trusting educational experts with these new powers.)
- pdonis 6y ago
  > It worked really, really well for the better part of the last century No, it didn't. Rule by experts got us a world war, a great depression, another world war, a Holocaust, tens of millions of people killed by Communist governments and well over a billion still ruled by one in China. And that's just picking out the biggest few items. The reason public confidence in experts is eroding is not that the experts have gotten worse. It's that the experts have lost control over the flow of information, so now they can't prevent everyone else from finding out how bad they actually are and always have been.
  - 6y ago
eyelidlessness 6y ago
What he’s describing is technocracy. It’s not a new idea, it’s literally how huge swathes of our government operate, without anyone knowing it because the roles are rarely politicized. One of the controversial themes in the last few years has been how much this administration has politicized seemingly professional and previously uncontroversial staffing to load up loyalists. There’s always been some cronyism in every kind of high profile appointment, but seeing purges in low level public health positions is ridiculous. We so much expect professionals in these roles that it’s almost never discussed that their roles even exist. They don’t have high turnover and they’re almost never used for political football. It’s not to say that that’s a panacea, people in comfortable professional roles don’t routinely shake things up. But making their job descriptions political isn’t the solution to that either.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Obama seriously politicized HHS to achieve unpopular things he couldn’t do through legislation.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  There is no such thing as a completely non-political government "professional" in a position of leadership where their decisions have the potential to impact people's lives in different ways. For example, Fauci's decision to prioritize the value of human life, including elderly life, over the economy is one I happen to agree with ... but will not deny that there is a political dimension, as well as a moral one, in taking such a position too.

rayiner 6y ago

I give Sunstein more credit than that. He’s politically quite centrist, supporting Robert’s nomination. > But that is hardly the only reason to protect falsehoods, intentional or otherwise; there are several others. Even so, these arguments suffer from abstraction and high-mindedness; they do not amount to decisive reasons to protect falsehoods. These propositions are applied to old questions involving defamation and to new questions involving fake news, deepfakes, and doctored videos. It emerges that New York Times v. Sullivan is an anachronism, and that it should be rethought in light of current technologies and new findings in behavioral science.

selfishgene 6y ago
The issue here is not whether Sunstein's being centrist, but whether he's making sense at all. Who are the experts who get to decide what counts as a "falsehood"? For example, how many of us really know the details about how polls operate in each of the 50 states to know whether or not fraud could have occurred on such a level to affect the outcome. For my part, I don't really care all that much because the bigger problem in this country is not whether Trump or Biden becomes our next president in a few days, but for how much (in terms of corporate campaign donations) this new administration was purchased. Until we remove corporate donations from the election process, a lot of the candidates' campaign promises, on both sides, is just a bunch of empty rhetoric.

handedness 6y ago

The public confidence in experts is rapidly eroding in many sectors, in all major political factions. I would not want to bet on a near-term future that relies on public confidence in experts to function normally. It worked really, really well for the better part of the last century, but complexity and technology has grown exponentially, which makes that a less tenable system.

rayiner 6y ago
It’s not merely growing complexity. It’s that increasingly experts don’t share basic assumptions with the public. Prop 16, which would repeal the affirmative action ban in California, was pushed heavily by educational experts. It failed by a large margin. Here is how the Center for New American Progress, a think tank (whose CEO will lead Biden’s OMB), responded: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/news/2020/11/24/493186/california-not-bellwether-affirmative-action/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecond... This is one assertion they made to support trying again with different poll wording: > Moreover, older voters who remember the 1996 ban may hold the misleading view that the law was a “prohibition against discrimination,” as the law’s original backers framed it in this way. This is just a play on the fact that your average person defines “discrimination” quite literally (the majority of every racial group say race shouldn’t be even a small factor in college admissions). But educational experts often have a different view of “discrimination.” Thus it’s “misleading,” the article asserts, to say that the existing provision that bans disparate treatment by race is a ban on “discrimination.” When experts change the meaning of commonly understood words to get a different polling result, do you think that creates trust? (FWIW, I supported repealing the ban in California initially. But when you ask people “do you want to give some people more resources, preferential treatment, etc., in order to erase historic disparities” they say “no.” I want to do that, within reason. But it’s a dog that won’t hunt. So experts keep playing with the language, coming up with terms like “equity.” And thats made me very skeptical of trusting educational experts with these new powers.)
pdonis 6y ago
> It worked really, really well for the better part of the last century No, it didn't. Rule by experts got us a world war, a great depression, another world war, a Holocaust, tens of millions of people killed by Communist governments and well over a billion still ruled by one in China. And that's just picking out the biggest few items. The reason public confidence in experts is eroding is not that the experts have gotten worse. It's that the experts have lost control over the flow of information, so now they can't prevent everyone else from finding out how bad they actually are and always have been.
- 6y ago

eyelidlessness 6y ago

What he’s describing is technocracy. It’s not a new idea, it’s literally how huge swathes of our government operate, without anyone knowing it because the roles are rarely politicized. One of the controversial themes in the last few years has been how much this administration has politicized seemingly professional and previously uncontroversial staffing to load up loyalists. There’s always been some cronyism in every kind of high profile appointment, but seeing purges in low level public health positions is ridiculous. We so much expect professionals in these roles that it’s almost never discussed that their roles even exist. They don’t have high turnover and they’re almost never used for political football. It’s not to say that that’s a panacea, people in comfortable professional roles don’t routinely shake things up. But making their job descriptions political isn’t the solution to that either.

rayiner 6y ago
Obama seriously politicized HHS to achieve unpopular things he couldn’t do through legislation.
selfishgene 6y ago
There is no such thing as a completely non-political government "professional" in a position of leadership where their decisions have the potential to impact people's lives in different ways. For example, Fauci's decision to prioritize the value of human life, including elderly life, over the economy is one I happen to agree with ... but will not deny that there is a political dimension, as well as a moral one, in taking such a position too.