Hi-Tech Democracy: Oxymoronic?

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Hi-Tech Democracy: Oxymoronic?

I spoke of a ratio of understanding because I think this ratio is a good way to quantify our degree of self reliance. The higher the ratio of knowledge to understanding the lower is our confidence in our ability to rely upon our self. The less confidence we have in our self the more to are inclined to turn to experts and dogma. We seek to let the experts make the decisions that are too big for us to make or we turn to some religious dogma.

Compare the level of self reliance of the frontier family with the modern family. I choose this association because the answer is so starkly evident.

If we continue to doubt our ability to control our destiny then we cannot continue to depend upon democracy as a practical means for government.

I think the truly important stuff in life can be gotten at even if you aren't an expert in everything imaginable. The question then becomes: how do we arrange our life such as to retain our ability for self determination?

I think that the physical sciences might be a good focus for our attention. How can we lay persons know enough to make decisions regarding global warming, or stem cell research, or matters relating to genetic modification? We can and must because like war is too important to leave to the generals government is too precious to be left to the experts.

I think it is within the capacity of all normal humans to develop the intellectual means to make such judgments within a democratic system of government.

If a person understands the nature of the scientific method and the nature of rational thought that person can qualify him or her self to make such decisions with reasonable confidence. Any normal person can understand the scientific method and the nature of rational thought.

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It makes me wonder how much more enlightening your posts would be, Coberst, if you took your own advice and followed the scientific method.

Your armchair philosophies don't begin with observations of phenomena and develop hypotheses from them; instead, you begin with the hypotheses--often in the form of fancy-sounding platitudes, or "sound bytes to live by" as you called them in your last post--and then imagine what phenomena might look like if your hypotheses were assumed to be true. You do not use your hypotheses to predict future phenomena; you use them retroactively to justify a predefined (and usually utopian) future.

And, most importantly and unscientifically, you do not believe in testing your hypotheses. Every time you are challenged to measure your ideas against actual real-life phenomena, you retreat further into generalizations and abstractions.

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Shapless

Don't always be so negative. You can easily fill in those parts I leave unfinished. Lend a hand not just a negative remark from the bleachers. Get your hands into the solution!

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The way I see the solution you seem to have in mind is that it entails you being dictator and us following your simplistic notions to the letter.

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Cute. Lend a hand in what? Shouting from the pulpit rather than the bleachers? I'd like to think my hands are being lent in places beyond A2K, which doesn't strike me as a place to do much for the world except combat sloppy logic. Then again, that's a worthwhile task all its own.

The specter of negativity reminds me of one of my favorite comments, usually (but not always) attributed to Popper: "I'm not a positivist, I'm a negativist." Since the scientific method is fundamentally a process of skepticism, I'll happily accept the charge of negativity.

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Shapeless

You make sounds as if you understand. But your actions as evidenced by what you write indicates you are just bluster. It is kind of like the blowfish that gets all puffed up when encountering something unknown.

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coberst wrote:

But your actions as evidenced by what you write indicates you are just bluster.

I'd be greatly interested to know what you can tell of my actions by what I write. Please, enlighten us.

Indeed, I'd say that's exactly what characterizes your brand of philosophizing: the belief that words--or, in your case, catch phrases and sound bytes--are a plausible substitute for lived experience. You use the former in place of the latter because it's easy. Much harder is using the latter to bolster the former... it requires you to put down the thesaurus and actually study details, human interactions, things that happen in the real world and not on your imaginary frontier family's farm. But you've made it clear many times what you think of the real world; you never let such a petty thing as "reality" get in the way of your precious sound bytes.

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Hi-Tech Democracy: Oxymoronic?

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