Bus Stabbing

[ar81]

B I N G O !

It's what I've called in some of my own work, "user-friendly WMD." Unfortunately, there are huge segments of our society that are in deep denial about the problem.

Geez. We are having problems around the world to have user friendly jobs, user friendly software and user friendly relationships... but we have user firendly WMDs... :blackeye:

Is it that the humans are prompt to this? :suicide::hunter::compbash2::compbash:

Of course, you're right. What gets me, though, is not the lack of deference to "experts" in political philosophy -- that just comes with the territory of democracy, as you correctly point out. It's the lack of a "meta-level" in the way people approach these problems: In other areas of life, people seem to be better at assessing their own lack of knowledge, and qualifying their opinions accordingly -- They'll offer opinions tentatively, they'll be aware that their opinions are based on only a relatively shallow and perhaps very uneven understanding of the issues involved. But in matters of politics and social organization, people seem to go straight to a relatively high level of certainty without much thought to how they got there.

Well, if you are a citizen you participate in politics either if you act or refuse to act.
It is like being shareholder of a company.

Either if you know the business or not you have a share and therefore you have the right and duty to act upon destiny of your country, unregard of how much you know or ignore. If we think on a planetary level, same happens.

 

[GregBurch]

Well, if you are a citizen you participate in politics either if you act or refuse to act.
It is like being shareholder of a company.

Either if you know the business or not you have a share and therefore you have the right and duty to act upon destiny of your country, unregard of how much you know or ignore. If we think on a planetary level, same happens.

Right, so let's say you and I are shareholders in company "X". You come to the shareholder meeting and, based on only a superficial review of the company's books, and on only a very shallow understanding of the market that the company operates in, and with no real knowledge of how the company got to where it is, you vote in a way that doesn't make sense.

That would be bad -- right? You wouldn't think that it would be a sufficient response to say, "I don't care if I really don't know any of those things -- I'm a shareholder and I get to vote ... end of discussion!"

 

[Urwumpe]

GregBurch: I don't mean that this is my problem - politics are simple to understand once you walk through your country with open eyes. I just wanted to excuse that I don't know who said that quote.

Also the layman is not expected to design a spacecraft or a orbital trajectory. But he is expected to be able to choose experts to complement his weaknesses. So, when people are expected to decide if one candidates spaceflight program is better as the concept of another, sure only few people will know the implications. But many people can ask experts on what this all means and make their own opinion.

I for example doubt that any NASA director should be a good engineer. But he is expected to tell which information he needs for making good decisions and rely on help, if he needs it.

The same IMHO with crime protection: People cannot be expected to become experts in law and martial arts. But they should be able to tell when they need to ask experts for help and when they can do stuff themselves for their protection.

"I can do this all myself" is a pretty good example of famous last words.

 

[simonpro]

Of course, you're right. What gets me, though, is not the lack of deference to "experts" in political philosophy -- that just comes with the territory of democracy, as you correctly point out. It's the lack of a "meta-level" in the way people approach these problems: In other areas of life, people seem to be better at assessing their own lack of knowledge, and qualifying their opinions accordingly -- They'll offer opinions tentatively, they'll be aware that their opinions are based on only a relatively shallow and perhaps very uneven understanding of the issues involved. But in matters of politics and social organization, people seem to go straight to a relatively high level of certainty without much thought to how they got there.

I think the main problem is that politics is a much more personal thing than many other areas of life. In sport you can guage your expertise by, say, how frequently you score a goal or a touchdown. In engineering you can guage your expertise by how well your designs work. How do you guage your expertise in politics? It's much harder, IMO.
The other major issue is that politics is inherently opinionated. I know my opinions don't match yours, and that yours don't match some other people's. the problem then is trying to find, or even recognise, someone who you agree with who does actually have experience in political philosophy. I have to meet a great deal of (usually self proclaimed) political "experts" every month, and most of them don't have a clue what they're on about. It must be even harder for the 'average joe' who will be getting most of his information from newspapers or the TV. Neither of which are particularly exemplary in their political opinion

 

[GregBurch]

Also the layman is not expected to design a spacecraft or a orbital trajectory. But he is expected to be able to choose experts to complement his weaknesses. So, when people are expected to decide if one candidates spaceflight program is better as the concept of another, sure only few people will know the implications. But many people can ask experts on what this all means and make their own opinion.

I for example doubt that any NASA director should be a good engineer. But he is expected to tell which information he needs for making good decisions and rely on help, if he needs it.

The same IMHO with crime protection: People cannot be expected to become experts in law and martial arts. But they should be able to tell when they need to ask experts for help and when they can do stuff themselves for their protection.

"I can do this all myself" is a pretty good example of famous last words.

All correct. My point in response to Simon was that my perception is that people are far less competent to judge their own competence in matters of social organization and political philosophy than they are in matters of science and technology. Why this is so is something I have lots of thoughts about, but I'm hijacking this thread and I suppose I'll let it go ...

But, for what it's worth, I do strongly disagree with this statement:

GregBurch: I don't mean that this is my problem - politics are simple to understand once you walk through your country with open eyes.

I think this is a myth of modern democratic sentiment, and not really grounded in any kind of rigorous analysis.

I think the main problem is that politics is a much more personal thing than many other areas of life. In sport you can guage your expertise by, say, how frequently you score a goal or a touchdown. In engineering you can guage your expertise by how well your designs work. How do you guage your expertise in politics? It's much harder, IMO.
The other major issue is that politics is inherently opinionated. I know my opinions don't match yours, and that yours don't match some other people's. the problem then is trying to find, or even recognise, someone who you agree with who does actually have experience in political philosophy. I have to meet a great deal of (usually self proclaimed) political "experts" every month, and most of them don't have a clue what they're on about. It must be even harder for the 'average joe' who will be getting most of his information from newspapers or the TV. Neither of which are particularly exemplary in their political opinion

OK -- one last comment. Inherent in what you've written is the idea that it really is harder to know what works and what doesn't in the realm of politics and social organization. I'm coming to the conclusion that this isn't as true as almost all people assume it to be, but rather that it is yet another of the comforting myths of modern democratic sentiment.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think this is a myth of modern democratic sentiment, and not really grounded in any kind of rigorous analysis.

See it with the following set of eyes: Patterns repeating in bigger scales repeating in bigger scales... democracy is a pretty fractal.

Why should a party behave different as any other group of humans? Group dynamics make 99% of what a party does.

Also, maybe this one here could be interesting reading...

http://www.geocities.com/danielmacryan/antimac.html

Did not know an English translation exists of it.

 

[GregBurch]

See it with the following set of eyes: Patterns repeating in bigger scales repeating in bigger scales... democracy is a pretty fractal.

Why should a party behave different as any other group of humans? Group dynamics make 99% of what a party does.

Damn ... if you keep responding, so will I, since we're at the core of what I spend most of my quality mental time thinking about.

At the level of generality and abstraction at which you make your comment, consider that complex systems often exhibit "level-related" emergent behavior, i.e. that behavior exhibited by the system at one level is actually very different from the behavior exhibited by the system at another level. Consider even very simple cellular automata like the famous "Game of Life."

Thus, generalizing about "group dynamics" in large groups from observations of small groups might in fact not be a very good guide at all.

With that said, your reference to fractals is very important. The question is whether there are emergent "strange attractors" that don't operate at all levels of the fractal's generation.

There are.

Also, maybe this one here could be interesting reading...

http://www.geocities.com/danielmacryan/antimac.html

Did not know an English translation exists of it.

By even knowing that Frederick the Great wrote a response to Machiavelli, you place yourself above 99.9% of your fellow citizens. Believe it or not, though, there's been some interesting work on the questions addressed in these two books since the 18th century

 

[Urwumpe]

With that said, your reference to fractals is very important. The question is whether there are emergent "strange attractors" that don't operate at all levels of the fractal's generation.

There are.

Well, you mistake result with cause in that case. What parties produce and how they behave might look different to smaller social groups, like for example families. But the mechanism which cause the results are the same. Pretty much like in a fractal. I would even dare to say, that how a party will react to situations and which politics it will support, is pretty likely to be predictable as soon as you know those few key elements in the party, which define the party.

 

[GregBurch]

Well, you mistake result with cause in that case. What parties produce and how they behave might look different to smaller social groups, like for example families. But the mechanism which cause the results are the same. Pretty much like in a fractal. I would even dare to say, that how a party will react to situations and which politics it will support, is pretty likely to be predictable as soon as you know those few key elements in the party, which define the party.

So you're saying that precisely the same set of causal factors impact social groups at all levels, they just produce different results at the different levels?

 

[Urwumpe]

So you're saying that precisely the same set of causal factors impact social groups at all levels, they just produce different results at the different levels?

Yes. Pretty much that. The people do the decisions out of the very same reasons they would use for smaller groups, but they could decide completely opposite at a different level, if this better suits their aims.

 

[GregBurch]

Yes. Pretty much that. The people do the decisions out of the very same reasons they would use for smaller groups, but they could decide completely opposite at a different level, if this better suits their aims.

Let me propose for your consideration that large groupings of people, especially when they become institutionalized, sometimes behave as if they were themselves organisms in an ecology, and that the behavior of these "organisms" is sometimes quite different from how an individual person might behave in response to an analogous set of stimuli. Again, it's the question of emergent phenomena in complex, adaptive systems.

But this is a quite abstract discussion. And unfortunately, real-world work calls: I have a major hearing next week and a pile of briefing three feet thick I have to review ...

Let me say before I sign off for a while that I sincerely appreciate your forthright and open-minded attitude toward these subjects, Urwumpe. I would like to have gotten you into one of my classes when you were just a little bit younger