= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
MichaelAnissimov comments on Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (295)
Because you are so incredibly smart that today you will get everything right, and those old mistakes done by lesser minds are completely irrelevant...?
Maybe it's not about people really wanting to live under some majesty's rule, but about an irresistable opportunity to say that you are smarter than everyone else, and you have already found a solution for all humanity's problems.
(This was originally my observation of Communists of the smarter type, but it seems to apply to Neoreactionaries as well.)
Read ten pages of "Democracy: the God That Failed" and see if you still feel that there's so little substance to what we believe.
Even before reading it, I already agree that democracy does not work the way people originally thought it would, and some pretend it works even today. (People voting to get money from their neighbors' pockets. Idiots who know nothing and want to learn nothing, but their vote is just as important as Einstein's. Media ownership being the critical factor in elections.)
That just doesn't give me enough confidence that my solution would be better. Let's say it would avoid some specific problems of democracy successfully. How about new problems? (Or merely repetition of the old ones, enhanced by the modern technology.)
Einstein was a physicist. He probably had more sense about politics than random inattentive person who votes on the basis of emotion, but I'm going to hope that people who actually know something about politics get influence by writing and/or politicking. Their influence isn't limited to their vote.
In fact, Einstein was pretty politically active and influential, largely as a socialist, pacifist, and mild Zionist.