Young Master Smeet
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At heart is the old 6th Form saw: "If a democratic society voted democratically to execute you, what would you do?" To which the obvious answer is to dodge the question, and point out that if an overwhelming majority of people want you dead, you will be killed, whether you submit or fight. However, that dodge isn't as weak as it first sounds, since it brings up the essential point that democracy is also about power. We cannot vote to hold back the tide, and we cannot vote the moon out of the sky. If we deny a democratic society a means of enforcing its views, then the vote doesn't really matter, its what boots on the ground say (I can think of at least one or two resolutions of Party conference that have been ignored into the long grass). Votes have to be useful to those that are effectved by them. If society has no means of compelling labour, then it can vote till it's blue in the face if people simply refuse to enforce them. It becomes much like Wikipedia (despite it's protest that Wikipedia isn't a democracy (they actively discourage voting) because the free consensus that rules there is the self=-organisation of editors. Now, of course, there are admins, who have extra power becuase they control the code (much as our beloved moderators have power).So, the limit of democracy is our capacity to carry out the results of a vote (including willingness) and the utility to us of holding such votes in rder toc o-ordinate action. Democracy is about more than nose counting, it is about the open ended debate, and the capacity of people to join in that debate (thus, it means decisions should be made in a way in which they are readily revocable, but compatible with actual decisions being made).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracyAlso known as Liquid Democracy (aka Delegable Proxy Voting) is sueful to look at, with people opting into and out of various layers of decision making, i.e. while things are running smoothly, we leave well enough alone, and when things go wrong, we intervene. So, while the bins are being collected, all well and good, when they start exploding, we vote together. This is the same as any manager/CEO does now, delegate what you can and leave it alone until you have to intervene. the difference is that society as a whole will be the CEO.
So much for theory and practice, and the architect who unlike bees sees his vision whole in his mind before he commits it to paper. Labird cannot even, in theory, explain how voting relates to knowledge and the scientific process, beyond a mere fetish for voting. Lbird demonstrates a misunderstanding of democracy: democracy is the organisation of the people by the people themselves. Now, ISTR is was Neurath who distinguished between democracy between enemies (where you count up how many guns each side has, and declare the numerically superior team to be the winners) and democracy between friends, the process, say, whereby since you are agreed to go to the cinema together, you negotiate and all go to see the same film, despite it not being the first preference of some of the gang. Now, in the context of a socialist community, obviously, sometimes we're going to need to make such calls. We'll need to decide whether to act if AGW is true, because that is something that connects us in our ongoing communal existence. Whether 1 kilo is a litre of water at 4C at sea level is something we will have to agree, in order to have authoritative weights for our industry. Whether pulsars are made of dark matter or string is something we can agree to disagree on and still be friends.
Yes, in my memory we convened an online Special Party Meeting to discuss attacks on Party members in Africa, that'll be about twelve years ago.
I note that Lbird declines to explain the consequence of voting in any practical manner. We have some movement here, the vote establishes the socially objective truth: but what does that mean in practice? And how does that differ from Asimov's degrees of wrongness?. Yes it was 'true' to say the Sun went round the Earth: for all practical applications and with the observation available, that was good science. But we now know that to be wrong, because we extended both the range of our practical needs and our ability to sense the universe.Anyway, the problem of selection is well known, as Schopenhaeur tells us in the Art of Being Right:
Quote:Dialectic, on the other hand, would treat of the intercourse between two rational beings who, because they are rational, ought to think in common, but who, as soon as they cease to agree like two clocks keeping exactly the same time, create a disputation, or intellectual contest. Regarded as purely rational beings, the individuals would, I say, necessarily be in agreement, and their variation springs from the difference essential to individuality; in other words, it is drawn from experience.{…} For human nature is such that if A. and B. are engaged in thinking in common, and are communicating their opinions to one another on any subject, so long as it is not a mere fact of history, and A. perceives that B.'s thoughts on one end the same subject are not the same as his own, he does not begin by revising his own process of thinking, so as to discover any mistake which he may have made, but he assumes that the mistake has occurred in B.'s. In other words, man is naturally obstinate; and this quality in him is attended with certain results, treated of in the branch of knowledge which I should like to call Dialectic, but which, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I shall call Controversial or Eristical Dialectic. Accordingly, it is the branch of knowledge which treats of the obstinacy natural to man.But it is Lbird who is here putting forward their case, and the onus is on Lbird to say how it would work in practice, and on Lbird to rebut my case that voting would be undemocratic in the context of science, as it would close down the ongoing dialogue, raher than open it.
I think the onus is on Lbird to ellucidate on what happens after the vote.Lets take an absurd example. Suppose the Bedford level experiments were apparently refuted (link), and socialist society voted that the world is flat. What next? Would all textbooks have to state the world is flat? Teachers? Professors? Would Air traffic controllers have to produce flat earth flight plans? What about geologists and researchers: would they get resources for experiments that looked at the round earth theory (or presupposed it)? Would we all be expected to make public professions of adherance to the result of the vote? Would a Round Earth Society get premises and resources to disseminate their views, even a journal? Would libraries stop stocking Round earth Books in Geology and move it to the 100 section?What would be the conditions that call for a revote?I've put forward a relatively detailed model of how I think science in a genuinely collectivist and democratic society of common ownership would work, which AFAICS Lbird hasn't engaged with. A vote is a device that brings debate to a resolution, this sems to me antithetical to the notion of science as an open ended debate, and it is this that Lbird needs to refute.
Science will be controlled by everyone, in as much as science if a free and open debate that people can choose to join or to leave. We will listen to authorities in so much as it is rational to do so. We can ignore them if we feel their wrong. People would associate freely, if they don't want to abide by the rules of a given association, they'll be free to go practice elsewhere. I can't predict (and wouldn't want to) how every association would work, but in general that's how it would go. As I suggested before, we would seek, as a community to allow the flat Earth society to have resources to research and propagate its views. The right of a minority to try and become a majority demands that.
No, I'm saying the only person whose opinion counts is me! me, you hear! The fools, I'll show them all!!!!!!!That, or, as I've repeatedly said, that information needs to be openly available, learned societies/organisations need to be democratically organised internally and within the framework of a democratic society. Access to knowledge and information resources needs to be free, and people need the time and education to access and process them adquately, and thereafter form their own conclusions, and any member of society needs to have the opportunity to practice science and pursue their research interests, within available resources and the democraticaly decided priorities of the community.Peopl should have the opportunity to contribute to the discussions and ebates around scientific questions. We should have a much fuller and rounder knowledge fo the state of the debate than how many bums were on the seats.So, I am totally opposed to democracy in all its forms.
I think need to reclarify a point: voting on scientific questions is pointless, not voting in general. I fear I have been quoted out of context. I continue to counterpose my democratic methods to your nose counting.
As I've also indicated, democracy is more than voting. It is an ongoping debate regarding self organisation, nose counting is just one means to that end. So here I'm actually arguing against you, in favour of democracy.
I've already stated my probhlem with voting: it's pointless. The winners will win, the losers won't change their mind. We can't "forbid" research into the losing proposition, because majorities have the right to try and become majorities, that includes collecting sufficient evidence. What I prefer is the democratic method of everyone making up their own mind. People can choose to rely on the rational authority of experts, or they can challenge it as thy please/ What is important is that information and education are widely available, and there are multiple fora for debate and discussion.Democratically we can set research priorities, allocate resources to research and support the administration of research. We can set up expectations of the democratic organisation of learned societies. As I've already set out. I just don't need to see why we need to vote on the results.
OK, so lets reformulate:Socialism is a system of society in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.Is that better?Anyway, to selection. We inhabit a roughly similar planet to each other. Our brains are constructed in roughly the same way, and our sense organs operate in roughly the same fashion (there are degrees of variation but I think we can average them away). We inhabit a similar culture. So, it's far to say that our selections will be roughly similar, and we can average them away. Selections and biases can be accounted for (and minimised).So, if "The Truth" is unobtainable, then it doesn't matter. What mattersw is that we mutually inhabit a world where according to our best ability to sense and to reason we can say that certain claims about the world can be true to our observations.Members of our community, who are similar to us, can go forth and collect knowledge, that we will believe because we have confdence in their method. Personally, I have no experience or proof that India exists, but I have no good reason to doubt the evidence therefore presented to me by otehr people. That's what it means to be a social being.
Lbird,democracy isn't nose counting, it is an ongoing debate without force whereby the minority have the right and opportunity to try and become the majority. Are you really going to use force to make scientists abide by the vote? What will that entail? A public statment? Making them work on projects they think of as seriously floored: bread without flour or water? Willt he minority be able to go on with their research to try and become a majority? If so, again, what is the point of the vote. It won't change anyone's minds, and it can't direct our research efforts.Socialism means the free association of producers, that's its first premise.
LBird wrote:So, if the baker insists that "it's tasty bread, and good for you", that's it, is it?The eaters of the bread are not allowed a collective opinion about the baker's recommendations?It doesn't sound very democratic to me, YMS!Just time for a quick one. We're allowed an opinion, but since the labour of the baker is free, we can't force them to do any specific baking, nor can we vote for a recipe that simply won't work. "We demand bread without flour, yeast or water" (There you go, have some nice lard). I can discuss with the baker, or take up baking myself, but for the most part, I'm free to leave it to the baker. It's not rocket science.
Oh, and a quick Charlie quote. AFK rest of today, so enjoy:
Charley wrote:On the one hand, therefore, it is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for man in society the world of man’s essential powers – human reality, and for that reason the reality of his own essential powers – that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, become objects which confirm and realise his individuality, become his objects: that is, man himself becomes the object. The manner in which they become his depends on the nature of the objects and on the nature of the essential power corresponding to it; for it is precisely the determinate nature of this relationship which shapes the particular, real mode of affirmation. To the eye an object comes to be other than it is to the ear, and the object of the eye is another object than the object of the ear. The specific character of each essential power is precisely its specific essence, and therefore also the specific mode of its objectification, of its objectively actual, living being. Thus man is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking, ||VIII| but with all his senses.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
