I think it's very possible there are other species that use "oral history" to convey information to their children, like whales, dolphins, etc., so it's not "safe" -- again just IMO -- to consider it uniquely human.
I guess it is hard to say… if you looked at humans in any random moment when we’ve been around, I suppose we’d look a lot like dolphins (not making much increments progress generation-to-generation).
But, it does feel like there’s something in our storytelling tendency, maybe just a quantitative difference (we do it a little bit more and some up with slightly better summaries) that creates a qualitative one (positive feedback loop in our ability to reason about the universe).
From that point of view, writing is just an iteration of the loop. A big one, though.
I wonder if there's a cultural element to it: do people support democratic processes in their families, neighborhoods, companies, etc? If not, I imagine it might be hard to top-down enforce democracy.
There's definitely a cultural element to it! Many of my family members--college educated people from Bangladesh, many of them living for decades in Canada and Australia--have been celebrating the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Bangladesh. The result of that was replacing a somewhat authoritarian, but legitimately elected and quite popular,[1] government with a military-backed government nobody elected,[2].
Democracy doesn't come from reading books, it starts with what parents say to their small children. I'm a Bangladeshi married to a founding stock American. My wife was steeped in democracy from the beginning. As a kid, she attended mainline Protestant churches run by elected members of the congregation, and her dad participated in local government and civic organizations. This is so different from the relationship Bangladeshis have with their communities.
> I wonder if there's a cultural element to it: do people support democratic processes in their families, neighborhoods, companies, etc?
I don’t think that’s right - although some on the left have advocated “industrial democracy” or “workplace democracy”, it has by and large failed to take off - many democratic countries it doesn’t really exist (beyond rare exceptions), and even those which have some semblance of it (e.g. works councils in the EU) it is in practice rather toothless, comparable to the powerless “advisory” legislatures established by some Middle Eastern monarchies
Families don’t function democratically-the parents negotiate things between themselves and the children don’t really have a choice in it until they get old enough to leave the family home and fend for themselves.
My neighbourhood isn’t a democracy - yes we have an elected local government but it covers a much larger population and territory than just our neighbourhood. Even if one’s neighbourhood has something like a “homeowners association”, that’s usually timocratic (government by property owners) not democratic (government by the people) since renters don’t get to vote, adult dependents of homeowners don’t get to vote, a couple may jointly own a home but they get only one vote not two, some wealthy person owns five homes so they get five votes, etc (and sometimes even weighted voting, so rather than one property one vote, more expensive properties may give you more votes than cheaper ones)
While I agree that many organizations, families, and communities don't have strict direct, one-person-one-vote democracies, I do think countries that have more democratic governance tend to have behaviors that are more involved and participatory and not strictly top-down command-and-control hierarchies.
For example:
> Families don’t function democratically-the parents negotiate things between themselves and the children don’t really have a choice in it until they get old enough to leave the family home and fend for themselves.
Not all families operate this way. If a family is choosing where to go eat dinner, sometimes the father (or mother) always makes a decision and no one else gets to choose. Sometimes the father and mother negotiate. Sometimes the kids are the ones who almost always make the decision. Sometimes the parents consult the kids and have a group discussion and decision. Sometimes there's actually a vote amongst all family members and majority rules.
I believe a similar pattern happens in communities. Maybe a little less so in companies, as they tend to be the most top-down structures I think in even the most democratic societies, and yet even there, I think there are culturally varying levels of involvement in the decision making process.
No, it's not, it's a weakness of democracy, otherwise you can 'democratically' enable any act, including aborting democracy. There have to be guardrails.
Yes, like sustaining democracy. I'm not a moral relativist, and don't condone allowing democracy to be wielded against itself. Nor would I tell the truth to an axe-wielding murderer asking me for directions, pace Kant. There is no grand philosophical paradox here; you just have to apply some commonsense.
Would you be okay living in a democracy whose majority voted to harm you?
Taxation is not theft, it is an obligation of living in a civilized society. Without a government funded by taxes, your country won't even be long for this world. Another country that has its act together will take over yours and you'll be having this philosophical debate from the comfort of your new country.
I'm not trying to debate the merits of various government. We're just discussing definitions.
It you take my property via threat of violence (coercion), that is thievery. School children understand this. So I'm sure you do as well. Taxes aren't voluntary and if you do not pay them, you will be jailed. If you resist being jailed, you will be violently detained. If you respond with violence in kind, you will be killed.
I don't care if you think that the ends justify the means. We're just discussing definitions.
> It you take my property via threat of violence (coercion), that is thievery. School children understand this. So I'm sure you do as well. Taxes aren't voluntary and if you do not pay them, you will be jailed.
If your landlord demands you pay your rent, is that thievery? Because that’s essentially what tax is
I own a house. I bought it off someone else who bought it off someone else who… go back 40-50 years ago, a property developer bought a farm and subdivided it… and the farmer bought it from another farmer who bought it from another farmer… and it all goes back to this massive farm which was subdivided into smaller farms… and that massive farm was originally a government land grant… and before that the government owned it… and the government got it by stealing the land from the indigenous people
The government land grant was made subject to the condition that the recipient paid taxes. And since you can’t give better title than you have, the same condition passes on to all subsequent purchasers. If the government has no right to my taxes, then I have no right to my house
If taxation is theft, then property is too. But if property is theft, then calling taxation “theft” is like a small time crook complaining a bigger crook robbed them
You're heavily indoctrinated by the State. There's no way I'm undoing all the damage they've done to you in a comment thread on a message board, so I'm not going to try. But I will plant this seed and maybe you'll take it upon yourself to dig out of the hole in which you currently are buried.
When the first ape walked upright, which government was there to tell them what land they could have?
Democracy only works if there is a shared belief in things like upholding the rule of law, respecting the separation of powers, not using government power for political purposes, etc. Without those shared beliefs democracy can fall apart quickly. After all, Hitler was elected democratically.
I'm really curious how these insights might apply to other internet media (mediums?). Similar principles at play for YouTube videos? Audio-only podcasts? I'm only halfway through the post but really excited to think of how this might extrapolate to other formats.
By using the word "efficient" without any reference point to what they want to make more efficient. It's similar to Make America Great Again. Great at what? Just GREAT!
It appeals to people who think government is inefficient and wasteful. Government doesn't HAVE TO BE inefficient and wasteful, just people need to believe it. And if media channels are hammering people over the head with the message that government is inefficient, then the official-sounding Department of Government Efficiency will save the day and rid the government of these evil inefficiency.
What these people may not realize is that the US government was intentionally designed to be inefficient. The checks and balances of three branches of government are constitutionally imposed inefficiency to make sure that one individual or group of individuals doesn't take the country in an efficiently harmful direction.
So if people want a hyper-efficient government, then be honest about rewriting the Constitution.
> The result, predictably, was that this person was ostracized from the community.
This one sentence probably explains why the vast majority of humans don't change how we behave. The fear of losing almost all of the people we love is SO strong.
Love the concept. Got annoyed with the scoring. I was off by about 200 years and got the country right and only got 2,995 out of 10,000. Felt sad i got such a low score then looked at the answer and felt proud I thought I was really close and then annoyed at how strict the scoring seemed.
But overall, I love the concept and will probably continue to play and ignore the scoring.
Yeah, same here. It's a humbling feeling... realizing how tiny we are in the grand scheme of things. But also kind of amazing that, despite our smallness, we've figured out how to explore and understand the universe at this scale
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