Gotta disagree on the authoritarianisms. Millionaires have consistently been shit at running countries. All of them run the country like a business, where citizens are workers that can’t be fired and very few are able to quit. They also always play the cards to favour their “friends”, dragging the society towards kleptocracy.
A dentist has no authority over you. If you choose not to brush your teeth they can’t force you to, they can’t do dental work unless you willingly seek them put and consent.
A plumber has not authority to enter your home or mess with your plumbing unless you invite them in.
You’re misusing the word “authority” and applying it out of context.
We don’t confer power to them. I am the authority and I consent to the dentist cleaning my teeth but the second I say “no” their ability to operate is taken away.
Your dentist does not have the ability, to force you to do anything. They are an “authority” in the sense they know a lot about teeth so we willingly ask them for help.
That is clearly not the same type of authority being discussed in authoritarianism.
I partially disagreed in the first and strongly disagreed in the second.
The first can be resolved with education.
The second…
The funny thing is that both points are related in a horrid way:
Let’s say there is a despot who has a doctorate, it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be in quantum physics, which has nothing to do with politics, but it is enough to say that the guy is smart. The despot proposes something based on what you say: that those who are not “properly prepared intellectually” can not vote, this translates into those who do not have a university degree can not vote, as 40% of the population at best. Then this becomes that you have to have a Master’s degree to vote, then a doctorate, then only if you have a doctorate in a specific field, and so on…
On the one hand, we should not limit the exercise of democracy of the population, on the contrary. The population does not know how to read? Teach them, they don’t know arithmetic? Teach them. The vast majority do not have a university degree? Make university access more accessible, in an intelligent transforming way.
On the other hand, don’t give unlimited power to ANYONE. There is no individual being capable of providing a whole society with what it needs, because this individual will act according to his limited vision of the world and this will lead to the misfortune of the groups that escape his worldview. And that is only assuming that the despot really wants to “do what is best for all”, which is not at all the case in reality. The despots from the beginning choose a side (“Us”, the Aryans, etc) and an enemy (“Them”, the Jews, the blacks, the Latinos, the non-Aryan whites, etc), and openly act to harm “them” and only benefit “us”. And this is how genocides and so on happen…
Can, could, would, should… fact is if they don’t understand the subject then they don’t understand the subject. We aren’t going to put off the vote on the new dam till everybody gets their civil engineering degree. So no.
The funny thing is that both points are related in a horrid way:
They are literally the same situation from 2 different sides.
On the other hand, don’t give unlimited power…
But we do. We give power to a hundred specialists. They know their subject, we don’t, so we trust them to do the right thing. Every day we do that. Running our society seems like more of the same.
We are not going to postpone the vote on the new dam until everyone gets their civil engineering degree.
If the specialist cannot explain to the common population in a concise way the implications of carrying out a project of that size so that they can make a sensible choice in a vote, then the problem lies with the specialist, not the population. Giving that kind of explanation is education.
We empower a hundred specialists.
That is not at all the same as giving absolute authority to a despot. A specialist is not necessarily an authority, just as in most cases authorities are not specialists.
You could say that a doctor has the power over who lives and who dies, but what if the hospital director fires the doctor? Or demands that he give priority to some patients over others? And hospital directors are not necessarily Doctors of Medicine. Sure, ideally, the specialists in a field should be the aurities in that field, but that is an ideal and not a reality. The authority of the Hospital is not the doctor, but the Hospital Director. The authority that decides whether or not to build a dam is not the Engineer, it is the owner of the construction company.
Besides, the fact that we have been giving too much power to individuals for years does not mean that it is the right thing to do! For some reason we are on the verge of a new rebirth of fascism.
If the specialist cannot explain to the common population in a concise way the implications of carrying out a project of that size so that they can make a sensible choice in a vote,
There’s no concise way to explain something complicated to a layperson that doesn’t end with “trust me, I’m the expert”.
then the problem lies with the specialist, not the population. Giving that kind of explanation is education.
Shifting the blame doesn’t make the problem disappear. Whether the population is uneducated because of a lack of qualified specialists, or simply due to being incapable of understanding the information, the outcome is the same. You still have uninformed people making decisions.
There’s no concise way to explain something complicated to a layperson that doesn’t end with “trust me, I’m the expert”.
… So? At least with the explanation the layperson can decide if he trusts the work of the specialist, not so much on whether or not he knows how to do what he does but on how what he does will affect them. Explaining is taking the specialist’s field to the common ground, not the layperson to the specialist’s field.
Shifting the blame doesn’t make the problem disappear.
I’m not shifting the blame, I’m highlighting what I think is the real crux of the problem, of which I think you would also agree: there are far more ignorant people than wise ones. The point is that I advocate educating the ignorant, while others prefer not to allow the ignorant to do anything on their own or make decisions.
Whether the population is uneducated because of a lack of qualified specialists, or simply due to being incapable of understanding the information.
Why do you assume from the outset that there are people who “simply don’t understand”? In what sense “don’t understand”? Because they don’t want to understand or because they are idiots? And if you say that bullshit that “They don’t understand because they don’t understand!” then I’m going to assume that you are one of those who just “Don’t understand” things. I am sick and tired of such a reductionist response.
You still have uninformed people making decisions.
Ok, and what should be done about it? Leave that ignorant population and let others, supposedly more qualified, decide how they should live? Should we go back to feudalism? Let the king and the nobles decide for the commoners? Fortunately (or unfortunately) it seems that we are heading that way! with the nobles of Sillicon Valley taking control of the Technofeudos of the Internet, and the new totalitarian kings taking control in the United States, Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, El Salvador, etc, etc…
In any of the senses you’ve listed or haven’t listed. My point was that the outcome of the situation doesn’t change regardless of the cause of the ignorance. What it does affect is how you address the problem.
Ok, and what should be done about it?
A start would be acknowledging the existence of a problem so that we can start looking for a solution. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and what I think would be nice is if we had something akin to a direct democracy where people could vote on the areas where they are experts. For most people, that would be their own lives and the problems they face, so they essentially vote on what problems to fix rather than how to fix them. Let the experts take care of figuring out how to do the fixing. There’s still the problem of how to find good subject experts in domains where you’re not an expert yourself and keeping them accountable. I don’t have a good answer for those right now.
It is true that it is problematic for the whole population to intervene even in aspects they do not fully or partially master. It makes more sense for the experts to decide in a democratic way than for the expert to make all the decisions, the former is democratic, maybe limited, but democratic after all; the latter is pure and simple Authoritarianism.
Still, I advocate that the commons have at least a notion, however basic, that the experts are voting. Ignorance and lack of transparency are the points that make the population easily manipulated, because they think “Why pay attention to this supposed expert who tells me nothing or at best gives me a half-baked complicated explanation? I prefer to listen to the flatearther who does not take me for a fool and gives me easy to understand explanations”.
The ability to explain the subject to the uneducated is not something we generally expect in our engineers. What we do is trust their judgment. That’s how we do it when building dams, bridges, houses etc.
Ok. Just for conversation’s sake, here are 2 exceptions. Respectively :
Democracy is bad when addressing uncommon subjects. Because if you don’t know the subject then you shouldn’t vote on it.
Authoritarianism is good when the authority knows better than the populace.
Gotta disagree on the authoritarianisms. Millionaires have consistently been shit at running countries. All of them run the country like a business, where citizens are workers that can’t be fired and very few are able to quit. They also always play the cards to favour their “friends”, dragging the society towards kleptocracy.
I’d guess that they’re looking to change that in the USA.
A dentist is a pretty good authority. So’s a plumber. There are a hundred more examples we could cite.
Are we saying that running the country is an exceptional case?
A dentist has no authority over you. If you choose not to brush your teeth they can’t force you to, they can’t do dental work unless you willingly seek them put and consent.
A plumber has not authority to enter your home or mess with your plumbing unless you invite them in.
You’re misusing the word “authority” and applying it out of context.
We confer power to the dentist and the plumber because the dentist and the plumber are experts in their fields.
We confer power to our other authorities, political and otherwise, for similar reasons.
That’s how authority works.
What? Take the discussion seriously.
We don’t confer power to them. I am the authority and I consent to the dentist cleaning my teeth but the second I say “no” their ability to operate is taken away.
Try telling “no” to a cop trying to arrest you.
Not serious? Well argue with yourself then.
Yea not serious.
Authority means force.
Your dentist does not have the ability, to force you to do anything. They are an “authority” in the sense they know a lot about teeth so we willingly ask them for help.
That is clearly not the same type of authority being discussed in authoritarianism.
Stop comparing Hitler to your dentist.
I partially disagreed in the first and strongly disagreed in the second.
The first can be resolved with education.
The second…
The funny thing is that both points are related in a horrid way:
Let’s say there is a despot who has a doctorate, it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be in quantum physics, which has nothing to do with politics, but it is enough to say that the guy is smart. The despot proposes something based on what you say: that those who are not “properly prepared intellectually” can not vote, this translates into those who do not have a university degree can not vote, as 40% of the population at best. Then this becomes that you have to have a Master’s degree to vote, then a doctorate, then only if you have a doctorate in a specific field, and so on…
On the one hand, we should not limit the exercise of democracy of the population, on the contrary. The population does not know how to read? Teach them, they don’t know arithmetic? Teach them. The vast majority do not have a university degree? Make university access more accessible, in an intelligent transforming way.
On the other hand, don’t give unlimited power to ANYONE. There is no individual being capable of providing a whole society with what it needs, because this individual will act according to his limited vision of the world and this will lead to the misfortune of the groups that escape his worldview. And that is only assuming that the despot really wants to “do what is best for all”, which is not at all the case in reality. The despots from the beginning choose a side (“Us”, the Aryans, etc) and an enemy (“Them”, the Jews, the blacks, the Latinos, the non-Aryan whites, etc), and openly act to harm “them” and only benefit “us”. And this is how genocides and so on happen…
Can, could, would, should… fact is if they don’t understand the subject then they don’t understand the subject. We aren’t going to put off the vote on the new dam till everybody gets their civil engineering degree. So no.
They are literally the same situation from 2 different sides.
But we do. We give power to a hundred specialists. They know their subject, we don’t, so we trust them to do the right thing. Every day we do that. Running our society seems like more of the same.
If the specialist cannot explain to the common population in a concise way the implications of carrying out a project of that size so that they can make a sensible choice in a vote, then the problem lies with the specialist, not the population. Giving that kind of explanation is education.
That is not at all the same as giving absolute authority to a despot. A specialist is not necessarily an authority, just as in most cases authorities are not specialists.
You could say that a doctor has the power over who lives and who dies, but what if the hospital director fires the doctor? Or demands that he give priority to some patients over others? And hospital directors are not necessarily Doctors of Medicine. Sure, ideally, the specialists in a field should be the aurities in that field, but that is an ideal and not a reality. The authority of the Hospital is not the doctor, but the Hospital Director. The authority that decides whether or not to build a dam is not the Engineer, it is the owner of the construction company.
Besides, the fact that we have been giving too much power to individuals for years does not mean that it is the right thing to do! For some reason we are on the verge of a new rebirth of fascism.
There’s no concise way to explain something complicated to a layperson that doesn’t end with “trust me, I’m the expert”.
Shifting the blame doesn’t make the problem disappear. Whether the population is uneducated because of a lack of qualified specialists, or simply due to being incapable of understanding the information, the outcome is the same. You still have uninformed people making decisions.
(Goddamn, are we still discussing this? Ok…)
… So? At least with the explanation the layperson can decide if he trusts the work of the specialist, not so much on whether or not he knows how to do what he does but on how what he does will affect them. Explaining is taking the specialist’s field to the common ground, not the layperson to the specialist’s field.
I’m not shifting the blame, I’m highlighting what I think is the real crux of the problem, of which I think you would also agree: there are far more ignorant people than wise ones. The point is that I advocate educating the ignorant, while others prefer not to allow the ignorant to do anything on their own or make decisions.
Why do you assume from the outset that there are people who “simply don’t understand”? In what sense “don’t understand”? Because they don’t want to understand or because they are idiots? And if you say that bullshit that “They don’t understand because they don’t understand!” then I’m going to assume that you are one of those who just “Don’t understand” things. I am sick and tired of such a reductionist response.
Ok, and what should be done about it? Leave that ignorant population and let others, supposedly more qualified, decide how they should live? Should we go back to feudalism? Let the king and the nobles decide for the commoners? Fortunately (or unfortunately) it seems that we are heading that way! with the nobles of Sillicon Valley taking control of the Technofeudos of the Internet, and the new totalitarian kings taking control in the United States, Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, El Salvador, etc, etc…
In any of the senses you’ve listed or haven’t listed. My point was that the outcome of the situation doesn’t change regardless of the cause of the ignorance. What it does affect is how you address the problem.
A start would be acknowledging the existence of a problem so that we can start looking for a solution. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and what I think would be nice is if we had something akin to a direct democracy where people could vote on the areas where they are experts. For most people, that would be their own lives and the problems they face, so they essentially vote on what problems to fix rather than how to fix them. Let the experts take care of figuring out how to do the fixing. There’s still the problem of how to find good subject experts in domains where you’re not an expert yourself and keeping them accountable. I don’t have a good answer for those right now.
OK, now we’re into something…
It is true that it is problematic for the whole population to intervene even in aspects they do not fully or partially master. It makes more sense for the experts to decide in a democratic way than for the expert to make all the decisions, the former is democratic, maybe limited, but democratic after all; the latter is pure and simple Authoritarianism.
Still, I advocate that the commons have at least a notion, however basic, that the experts are voting. Ignorance and lack of transparency are the points that make the population easily manipulated, because they think “Why pay attention to this supposed expert who tells me nothing or at best gives me a half-baked complicated explanation? I prefer to listen to the flatearther who does not take me for a fool and gives me easy to understand explanations”.
The ability to explain the subject to the uneducated is not something we generally expect in our engineers. What we do is trust their judgment. That’s how we do it when building dams, bridges, houses etc.
Oh now it’s a question of right.
Like talking to a puddle of squishy goo.