[ExI] Cosmopolitanism, collective epistemology and other issues

[Anders]

On 2016-07-11 13:08, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>  I am reasonable sure that expelling Oxford scholars is not what 
> Brexit is about.

To the ones shouting at people in the street for using foreign language, 
that is all it is about. To Cameron it was a simple sop to keep the 
party together with no real risk.

The meaning of chains of events is not set by intentions of originators, 
or even the forces causing them. The fall of the East Bloc or the Arab 
Spring were not "about" anything, just big chains of events that led to 
lots of consequences - the various groups trying to push them in certain 
directions did not have great success in imposing a particular overall 
meaning.


While one can argue there will be a cutting of red tape, a plausible 
outcome is actually that the red tape remains but without an UK voice 
(the EES option, which I think soft brexiters like May want to aim for), 
plus regulatory uncertainty and the addition of hastily added patches - 
in a administrative/legal system that rarely removes broken pieces. Hard 
brexit means that every piece of EU regulation has to be checked and 
possibly imported as a new law, possibly differently in Scotland and N 
Ireland; there is plenty of potential for accidents there even if there 
is an overall reduction in rules. The EES option will most likely 
require free movement of people (greatly angering many of the voters), 
the hard brexit will require some quota system and may lead to the 
expulsion of millions of British expats.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University