6 ms·

I am confused. Isn't that how democracy works?

by polydevil 2y ago

jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
Yes it is. And it is possible for democracies to make bad decisions.
- polydevil 2y ago
  Do you think that not considering Russia a main cyber threat is a wrong decision? Why? Article gives no clear answer to why would it will make everything worse. It does, however, speculate on how it may be a bad decision, but no one knows for sure.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    From TFA: This comes just weeks after security analysts sounded the alarm on Sandworm stealing credentials and data from American organizations. Sandworm is the operations wing of Russia's Military Intelligence Unit 74455, part of the GRU, that has been blamed for waging cyberwarfare against America's critical infrastructure. That 'graph links directly to: "Two Russians sanctioned over cyberattacks on US critical infrastructure" (22 July 2024) <https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/russians_sanctioned_over_cyberattacks/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/russians_sanctioned_o...> And: "Kremlin's Sandworm blamed for cyberattacks on US, European water utilities" (17 April 2024) <https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/russia_sandworm_cyberattacks_water/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/russia_sandworm_cyber...> The Register has tags linking to other Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) stories which detail many further such instances: <https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Cybersecurity%20and%20Infrastructure%20Security%20Agency/ https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Cybersecurity%20and%20Infras...> Which is a very small sampling of what can be found online. HN itself turns up nearly 300 story submissions for "russia hackers": <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=russia%20hackers https://hn.algolia.com/?q=russia%20hackers> Let's dispense with the asking of facile questions readily answered within the article itself or very proximate resources. It is at best strongly disingenuous.
dworkr 2y ago
[dead]
GJim 2y ago
Democracy doesn't mean you get good leaders. It just means the people can (eventually) get rid of a bad one.
kennysoona 2y ago
Yes, and that's why democracy is honestly pretty terrible, despite all the championing it gets its still a tyranny of the majority. It can only really function with a well intentioned and educated population, and half or more of the US population is anything but.
mdp2021 2y ago
Democracy works proportionally to the good implementation of sub-systems that maximize the quality of decisions (e.g. checks and balances, election of the electors, education etc.). Otherwise, it is not a value per se: that would be a "tyranny of the majority".
- kennysoona 2y ago
  It's always a tyranny of the majority, just hopefully with enough checks and restrictions in place to stop the worst crowd/mob impulses from having an effect.
  - mdp2021 2y ago
    Read the original as "[sheer] tyranny of the majority" then. But no, given correct conditions you will manage to have decision making which is collectively beneficial and acceptable.
    - kennysoona 2y ago
      > given correct conditions you will manage to have decision making which is collectively beneficial and acceptable. Only if the population is sufficiently educated and good intentioned, and even then it's still the will of the majority, but because it's not a negative result it isn't considered a tyranny.
      - mdp2021 2y ago
        The crucial importance of education was mentioned in the original post, and "good intention" is implied as an effect of proper education. "Tiranny" in the intented context ("tiranny of the majority") is close to the actual meaning of the term, of "unfair power" (that of the usurper: illegitimate, hence dubious). But the point is, a proper decision system boosts optimality at most "under inspiration" from the preferences of the voters, but not bound to that. Those voters may not even be a "majority"; there are many implementations (already forms of "ranked preferences") in which the idea of "majority" largely loses its meaning, etc.
squarefoot 2y ago
The good about democracy is that everyone can vote, and the bad about democracy is that everyone can vote. Hence the need of proper education and unfiltered information, the first helping to digest and understand the second in order to know who you vote and why; if you tamper with those, you can have people vote for anyone, including a dictator. Voting is a right, doing it knowledgeably is a duty, and so many people forget about the 2nd.
- kennysoona 2y ago
  > the bad about democracy is that everyone can vote. This is what needs to change. Recently there was a story that Reese Witherspoon was in a jury, and the other jury members thought she was a real lawyer because of Legally Blonde. These people are not qualified to serve on a jury let alone vote. Why are we getting input from people that couldn't run a small low traffic corner store on how to run a country? It's ridiculous, and it's the reason the US is in the mess it is now.
  - _mitterpach 2y ago
    I agree that many people are not.. well intelectually suited for voting and making important decisions. But how do you decide who votes? The fairest is obviously to allow voting for everyone. As soon as you try to single out 'unsuitable' people, you run into a problems of how you would do so? You could try to give people a basic test, but these 'literacy' tests were historically used to supress all kinds of minorities. That is the true problem of democracy, it sucks, but everything else is miles worse. The people voted, the people get what they voted for. If you want a different result, convince people to vote differently.
    - beretguy 2y ago
      Need to ban propaganda that benefits our enemies on social media, news, etc.
    - kennysoona 2y ago
      > You could try to give people a basic test, but these 'literacy' tests were historically used to supress all kinds of minorities. That doesn't mean they would b e used to oppress minorities today. Except the minority that is deemed too ignorant to be granted a right to vote based on failing the test. > That is the true problem of democracy, it sucks, but everything else is miles worse. I don't think that's true, it's just that there is little motivation to come up with better alternative and people who try just get shit on for even trying as though it were an insurmountable goal.
malka1986 2y ago
Tyranny of the majority is not democracy

I am confused. Isn't that how democracy works?

jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago

Yes it is. And it is possible for democracies to make bad decisions.

polydevil 2y ago
Do you think that not considering Russia a main cyber threat is a wrong decision? Why? Article gives no clear answer to why would it will make everything worse. It does, however, speculate on how it may be a bad decision, but no one knows for sure.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  From TFA: This comes just weeks after security analysts sounded the alarm on Sandworm stealing credentials and data from American organizations. Sandworm is the operations wing of Russia's Military Intelligence Unit 74455, part of the GRU, that has been blamed for waging cyberwarfare against America's critical infrastructure. That 'graph links directly to: "Two Russians sanctioned over cyberattacks on US critical infrastructure" (22 July 2024) <https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/russians_sanctioned_over_cyberattacks/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/russians_sanctioned_o...> And: "Kremlin's Sandworm blamed for cyberattacks on US, European water utilities" (17 April 2024) <https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/russia_sandworm_cyberattacks_water/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/russia_sandworm_cyber...> The Register has tags linking to other Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) stories which detail many further such instances: <https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Cybersecurity%20and%20Infrastructure%20Security%20Agency/ https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Cybersecurity%20and%20Infras...> Which is a very small sampling of what can be found online. HN itself turns up nearly 300 story submissions for "russia hackers": <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=russia%20hackers https://hn.algolia.com/?q=russia%20hackers> Let's dispense with the asking of facile questions readily answered within the article itself or very proximate resources. It is at best strongly disingenuous.

dworkr 2y ago

[dead]

GJim 2y ago

Democracy doesn't mean you get good leaders. It just means the people can (eventually) get rid of a bad one.

kennysoona 2y ago

Yes, and that's why democracy is honestly pretty terrible, despite all the championing it gets its still a tyranny of the majority. It can only really function with a well intentioned and educated population, and half or more of the US population is anything but.

mdp2021 2y ago

Democracy works proportionally to the good implementation of sub-systems that maximize the quality of decisions (e.g. checks and balances, election of the electors, education etc.). Otherwise, it is not a value per se: that would be a "tyranny of the majority".

kennysoona 2y ago
It's always a tyranny of the majority, just hopefully with enough checks and restrictions in place to stop the worst crowd/mob impulses from having an effect.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  Read the original as "[sheer] tyranny of the majority" then. But no, given correct conditions you will manage to have decision making which is collectively beneficial and acceptable.
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    > given correct conditions you will manage to have decision making which is collectively beneficial and acceptable. Only if the population is sufficiently educated and good intentioned, and even then it's still the will of the majority, but because it's not a negative result it isn't considered a tyranny.
    - mdp2021 2y ago
      The crucial importance of education was mentioned in the original post, and "good intention" is implied as an effect of proper education. "Tiranny" in the intented context ("tiranny of the majority") is close to the actual meaning of the term, of "unfair power" (that of the usurper: illegitimate, hence dubious). But the point is, a proper decision system boosts optimality at most "under inspiration" from the preferences of the voters, but not bound to that. Those voters may not even be a "majority"; there are many implementations (already forms of "ranked preferences") in which the idea of "majority" largely loses its meaning, etc.

squarefoot 2y ago

The good about democracy is that everyone can vote, and the bad about democracy is that everyone can vote. Hence the need of proper education and unfiltered information, the first helping to digest and understand the second in order to know who you vote and why; if you tamper with those, you can have people vote for anyone, including a dictator. Voting is a right, doing it knowledgeably is a duty, and so many people forget about the 2nd.

kennysoona 2y ago
> the bad about democracy is that everyone can vote. This is what needs to change. Recently there was a story that Reese Witherspoon was in a jury, and the other jury members thought she was a real lawyer because of Legally Blonde. These people are not qualified to serve on a jury let alone vote. Why are we getting input from people that couldn't run a small low traffic corner store on how to run a country? It's ridiculous, and it's the reason the US is in the mess it is now.
- _mitterpach 2y ago
  I agree that many people are not.. well intelectually suited for voting and making important decisions. But how do you decide who votes? The fairest is obviously to allow voting for everyone. As soon as you try to single out 'unsuitable' people, you run into a problems of how you would do so? You could try to give people a basic test, but these 'literacy' tests were historically used to supress all kinds of minorities. That is the true problem of democracy, it sucks, but everything else is miles worse. The people voted, the people get what they voted for. If you want a different result, convince people to vote differently.
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Need to ban propaganda that benefits our enemies on social media, news, etc.
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    > You could try to give people a basic test, but these 'literacy' tests were historically used to supress all kinds of minorities. That doesn't mean they would b e used to oppress minorities today. Except the minority that is deemed too ignorant to be granted a right to vote based on failing the test. > That is the true problem of democracy, it sucks, but everything else is miles worse. I don't think that's true, it's just that there is little motivation to come up with better alternative and people who try just get shit on for even trying as though it were an insurmountable goal.

malka1986 2y ago

Tyranny of the majority is not democracy