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Hey mate. Aussie here. I'm sorry to say that it seems to me no one around here gives a flying fuck about politics let alone anyrhing to do with digital rights.

Hey mate. Aussie here. I'm sorry to say that it seems to me no one around here gives a flying fuck about politics let alone anyrhing to do with digital rights. This is a war we've already lost. I blame Murdoch but quite frankly most of the people I talk to are too wrapped up in working to pay their bills and care for their families to care about anything else.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
Tasmanian here. I’m still going to blame Murdoch and the LNP. We could have had an amazingly well educated, liberal, progressive, and wealthy nation, but the Murdoch media and the LNP usurped the national agenda for their own personal gains and ideology. We are an apathetic bunch, but that doesn’t give malicious actors the right to take advantage. They’re still responsible to a large degree.
brutusborn 5y ago
There's still a few of us, but I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to being too busy. Political reporting tends to either oversimplify things to the point it is not useful, or be so verbose that only the most committed citizens will read it. I have started working on the idea of using knowledge graphs to fix this problem. The idea is basically representing political values/ beleifs/policies as nodes that are connected by edges representing reason (e.g. "cut income taxes" -> because -> "low taxes are good" -> because -> "high taxation makes the economy less efficent" ). This way, voters can fill out a survey of their values/beleifs and this can be compared to the graph that represents the beleifs of all candidates. Thus, instead of spending tens of hours just trying to understand the political landscape (and likely failing), voters can spend less time and have a greater certainty that they are making a good choice. Also, evidence could be added to the graph, so that 2 people who disagree on basic ideology could easily see the basis for their differences (by diffing their graphs)
- adamrezich 5y ago
  this is a really cool idea!!

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago

Tasmanian here. I’m still going to blame Murdoch and the LNP. We could have had an amazingly well educated, liberal, progressive, and wealthy nation, but the Murdoch media and the LNP usurped the national agenda for their own personal gains and ideology. We are an apathetic bunch, but that doesn’t give malicious actors the right to take advantage. They’re still responsible to a large degree.

brutusborn 5y ago

There's still a few of us, but I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to being too busy. Political reporting tends to either oversimplify things to the point it is not useful, or be so verbose that only the most committed citizens will read it. I have started working on the idea of using knowledge graphs to fix this problem. The idea is basically representing political values/ beleifs/policies as nodes that are connected by edges representing reason (e.g. "cut income taxes" -> because -> "low taxes are good" -> because -> "high taxation makes the economy less efficent" ). This way, voters can fill out a survey of their values/beleifs and this can be compared to the graph that represents the beleifs of all candidates. Thus, instead of spending tens of hours just trying to understand the political landscape (and likely failing), voters can spend less time and have a greater certainty that they are making a good choice. Also, evidence could be added to the graph, so that 2 people who disagree on basic ideology could easily see the basis for their differences (by diffing their graphs)

adamrezich 5y ago
this is a really cool idea!!