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View Poll Results: Who do you want to win?

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  • Trump

    4 15.38%
  • Biden

    22 84.62%
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Thread: 2020 US General Election

  1. #2641
    Administrator Letters's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn View Post
    Your imperative seemingly comes from the belief that an uninformed populace has the potential to cause harm with their voting choice. My contention is that if the Face Eating Leopard party appears on the ballot, then it becomes a legitimate choice. Plus in actuality despite the histrionics, people don’t die as a direct result of how other people vote. So again I say how much thought someone put into their vote is really no one’s business
    You can say it as often as you like, doesn't make you right. Votes, and the results of them, have consequences. Some of those consequences cause deaths. We left the EU because of a vote. We can debate whether that was a good or bad thing ad nauseum, and people have, but there are clear consequences to that decision. If the Face Eating Leopard party win an election then people are going to get their faces eaten by a leopard. Isn't that going to affect people? Have people not died as a result of a lack of NHS funding? Do government not make polices about stuff like that? You can argue about whether this is a "direct" result, but there's a pretty clear chain of cause and effect there.

    I chose those countries because as English speaking countries it’s easier to discern the relative levels of ignorance. But for your Dad’s sage counsel to have any relevance to this situation it would be helpful if you were able to point towards a country which you think is clearly better informed even if just for something to aspire to.
    My dad's wisdom isn't really relevant to this situation and actually any comparison is a bit irrelevant.
    It doesn't matter if we are the most educated, best informed country in the world. The only relevant thing is are we educated and informed enough and, if not, what can we do to improve that. Noting that other countries are worse (I think the US probably are although it's hard to objectively measure this) isn't really relevant. You could get a D in an exam and be top of your class, that doesn't make D a good result.

    As I've said multiple times, I'm not saying this is a particularly good idea. I can see issues with it. But sometimes I look at how people vote or people's opinions and can't help thinking "holy shit, there should be a test!". But some of your suggestions as to how to encourage people to inform themselves may be more practical.

  2. #2642
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    But again you miss the point, no one is obligated to consider the impact their vote has on other people nor should they be. It’s a matter of personal preference. And to compare what is a direct consequence of poor behaviour like poor driving which has a far higher risk of directly negative consequences is foolish. Plus with most votes, whether it’s Brexit or even election votes the impact it has on other people is unforseeable (the referendum didn’t decide which manner of post Brexit deal was agreed with the EU)
    There’s a thing called Loser’s consent and accepting the risk that when people choose something it might not be the same thing you’d choose…and I think too many people seem unwilling to accept that.

    The NHS argument doesn’t work because there’s no evidence of a lack of funding for that public service (actually it’s one of the few public services that has been consistently well funded and was insulated from austerity). The problem with the health service is it was set up to be a way of rationed health care, it simply cannot function a) as a result of the miserable failure that is the Trust system - which absolutely wasn’t in New Labour’s manifesto and b) it’s treated as a sacred institution when in fact we should be on an insurance based system and the reason we aren’t is because people see that system and think of America rather than France or Germany.

    You can argue a better informed public might not have that belief, but I don’t need to tell you that belief and faith run deeper than fact.

    It is absolutely relevant if you’re making the statement we are not informed enough, this is not a statement I believe you’ve even sufficiently evidence apart from vox pops and google searches. Your argument comes from the belief that if there is any percentage of uninformed people voting that’s not acceptable but at the same time you seemingly agree that there’s no way to make 100% of the population sufficiently informed.

    So it’s for you to set out the criteria for what you consider to be acceptable level of people who you deem to be sufficiently informed.

    And with all these things it’s interesting that the one thing lacking from the types of proposal you make is intellectual curiosity. If the Face Eating Leopard party existed and people voted for it, why do you suppose that might be…do you think it would purely be a result of failure to comprehend that Leopards do in fact eat faces or in their own risk/reward analysis they determined the potential reward to outweigh the risk. Or that things are already so bad that having one’s face eaten is not that dire a consequence


    Because actually there’s far more evidence that what you might consider unwise decisions being taken by the electorate during times of uncertainty and disillusion. Hitler and the Nazis as I’m sure you know came to power by the ballot box (they became the largest party in Germany as a result of the plurality of the vote) this probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the Wall Street crash because Weimar Germany had started to recover in the mid to late 20s.

    A lot of people felt…well they won’t be as extreme as they come across when they are in power, and it’s better that than let the country fall into the hands of the communists

    The point is you can firewall the system as much as you like. You have to accept that other people having the same freedoms you do, comes with risk.
    Last edited by HCZ_Reborn; Today at 10:08 AM.

  3. #2643
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    Godwin's Law

    Took us a while, but we got there.

  4. #2644
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    Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
    Godwin's Law

    Took us a while, but we got there.
    Godwin’s Law would apply if I suggested your plan was akin to Nazi Germany…the point of it is to suggest that I am using it as hyperbole. Where as actually I’m just using it as historical example of how bad shit/bad decisions are made when people feel unhappy or desperate more than simply not knowing enough.

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