[extropy-chat] Examining Risks (was RE: META: List Quality)

[kevinfreels.com]

Hal,
Once again I am stunned by your powerful insight. You just made the case
that people don't have to know what they are voting about to vote correctly.
It is completely about the quality of life and the feeling that things are
either better or worse. There is something very appealing about this. Would
you mind going a bit further in depth? A few hundred years from know someone
may do an analysis of  democratic governments and find that this is exactly
how they worked and individuals with their issues didn;t make one bit of
difference. It would be interestiung to plot this out as a computer model if
only we could determine how to assign values to years that were "good" and
those that were not.

The nation may not be collectively holding its breath to know what you have
to say, but at the moment, I am.

> So here is the real problem: society does need some mechanism to make
> decisions on grand questions, but it's not rational for the typical
> member of society to become informed enough to have a meaningful opinion
> on these matters.  So what do we do?  Well, one thing that happens is
> in a democracy, politicians lose their jobs when things get worse, and
> keep them when things get better.  This tends to happen whether it is
> the politician's fault or not, which may seem unjust.  But it does give
> them incentives to try to keep things getting better.  That's not such
> a bad way to run a world.
>
> Hal
> _______________________________________________