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> If that worked then drunk toddlers wouldn’t win elections promising the baseball bat. Even if one believes that overall, over a long term, democracy tends to

> If that worked then drunk toddlers wouldn’t win elections promising the baseball bat. Even if one believes that overall, over a long term, democracy tends to produce more “accurate” assessments of merits of policy disputes than other systems—which, of course, is not generally the argument for democracy—that still wouldn't imply that there are no cases where the electorate just makes completely bad judgements. So, I’m not sure what your basis for the claim here is; as presented the argument seems to be the electorate never makes bad decisions, which is ludicrous on its face.

rayiner 2y ago
Nobody knows what the “bad judgments” and what the “good judgments” are, and we certainly can’t trust anyone with self interest to tell us. Democracy is a means for empirical truth finding that’s resistant to manipulation. I’m 40 years old. In my lifetime, educational and healthcare overheads have exploded while outcomes have gotten worse. Nobody working within these systems understands why or is capable of fixing them.
- sympil 2y ago
  Democracy is a means for empirical truth finding that’s resistant to manipulation. This is obviously not true. …educational and healthcare overheads have exploded while outcomes have gotten worse. Ther topic is medical research. What is the basis for the belief thar medical research outcomes have gotten worse?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Democracy is a means for empirical truth finding that’s resistant to manipulation. That's wrong in a number of ways. 1. Democracy is not, in any way, a means of truth finding. That's not simply what it does: propositons of truth are not an output of democracy. 2. Even if you create some mapping of the outputs of democracy to "truths" about anything other than "this is what this particular democracy produced at this particular time", popularity isn't empiricism. 3. Democracy is extremely sensitive, rather than resistant, to manipulation.
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  - rayiner 2y ago
    Democracy is an empirical way of finding policies that work, where of course what “works” reflects what a particular population values. Democracy isn’t sensitive to manipulation. What’s really sensitive to manipulation is administrative systems run by credentialed professionals. Who invariably are captured by their petty interests and personal ideologies.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > Democracy is an empirical way of finding policies that work No, its not. At best, it is a source of policy variation which could be the input to an empirical process of discovering what works. > where of course what “works” reflects what a particular population values. Even dropping the improper reference to "empirical" and steel-manning your claim into "Democracy is a manner of progressively optimizing policy for a particular population over time", no, it really isn't, for a large number of reasons, starting with the fact that the "particular population" is in constant flux, and the policy changes produced by the system are an influence on that flux, so it it does as much to shape the population to the policy as vice versa.
    - dctoedt 2y ago
      > Democracy isn’t sensitive to manipulation. So I guess Russia, China, Iran, etc., have been wasting their time and money in seeking to manipulate elections. And the thousands of political consultants around the globe have been just scamming the candidates for whom they work.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Democracy is a sensor type. It's implementation in a control system may vary. You can't just wire an accelerometer to an engine and expect an autopilot to work. The code logic itself is critical. It contains the noise filtering, physics model, and the response curve.

rayiner 2y ago

Nobody knows what the “bad judgments” and what the “good judgments” are, and we certainly can’t trust anyone with self interest to tell us. Democracy is a means for empirical truth finding that’s resistant to manipulation. I’m 40 years old. In my lifetime, educational and healthcare overheads have exploded while outcomes have gotten worse. Nobody working within these systems understands why or is capable of fixing them.

sympil 2y ago
Democracy is a means for empirical truth finding that’s resistant to manipulation. This is obviously not true. …educational and healthcare overheads have exploded while outcomes have gotten worse. Ther topic is medical research. What is the basis for the belief thar medical research outcomes have gotten worse?
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Democracy is a means for empirical truth finding that’s resistant to manipulation. That's wrong in a number of ways. 1. Democracy is not, in any way, a means of truth finding. That's not simply what it does: propositons of truth are not an output of democracy. 2. Even if you create some mapping of the outputs of democracy to "truths" about anything other than "this is what this particular democracy produced at this particular time", popularity isn't empiricism. 3. Democracy is extremely sensitive, rather than resistant, to manipulation.
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- rayiner 2y ago
  Democracy is an empirical way of finding policies that work, where of course what “works” reflects what a particular population values. Democracy isn’t sensitive to manipulation. What’s really sensitive to manipulation is administrative systems run by credentialed professionals. Who invariably are captured by their petty interests and personal ideologies.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Democracy is an empirical way of finding policies that work No, its not. At best, it is a source of policy variation which could be the input to an empirical process of discovering what works. > where of course what “works” reflects what a particular population values. Even dropping the improper reference to "empirical" and steel-manning your claim into "Democracy is a manner of progressively optimizing policy for a particular population over time", no, it really isn't, for a large number of reasons, starting with the fact that the "particular population" is in constant flux, and the policy changes produced by the system are an influence on that flux, so it it does as much to shape the population to the policy as vice versa.
  - dctoedt 2y ago
    > Democracy isn’t sensitive to manipulation. So I guess Russia, China, Iran, etc., have been wasting their time and money in seeking to manipulate elections. And the thousands of political consultants around the globe have been just scamming the candidates for whom they work.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Democracy is a sensor type. It's implementation in a control system may vary. You can't just wire an accelerometer to an engine and expect an autopilot to work. The code logic itself is critical. It contains the noise filtering, physics model, and the response curve.