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Comment by zer0gravity | Hacker News Reader

1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.

This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying..

2. In my post I'm not trying to make value judgements, but just offer a possible explanation why things are the way they are, and who may have better chances to change them.

3. I don't think that we should/can decentralize everything, but I do believe there is a worrying tendency towards extreme centralization. This may not neccessarily be a bad thing though. The world we live in is the expression of our choices, and if this is the result, then this is the result. We can observe and adjust if we feel the need, by changing our behaviour, if not, then that's that.

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> 1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. > This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying..

I don't think that's what condescending means.

Decentralization/Centralization is nothing new. In fact the entire history of humanity is about pendulum swinging back and forth between centralization and decentralization. And in 100% of the cases when this happens it's not because of some elites convince people to switch, but because it makes sense for people. "Normal" human beings are not as dumb as these elites think. So we don't have to worry about decentralization never happening. It will happen. And probably back to centralization. And then back to decentralization again. Just not through these efforts to "educate" people. It's because these elites are so out of touch with how real people think that their attempts at convincing people don't work.

> I don't think that's what condescending means.

Not a native speaker, so maybe I got that wrong, but this is the definition Google gives: "having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.", and this is what I was referring to.

Agree with what you say about the varying degrees of centralization/decentralization throughout history, but don't think that these changes happen out of the blue. Education is usually needed to bring about change and not because people are dumb, but because information doesn't always gets to them easy. So maybe this is what's happening now. You can think of it as a balancing force...

>Not a native speaker, so maybe I got that wrong, but this is the definition Google gives: "having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.", and this is what I was referring to.

Well, who is patronized? Those decentralized groups that think that the masses "don't know what's best for them", or someone pointing out that such groups are out of touch with reality?

In the end, any critique can be though as "patronizing" -- it implies the one making it knows better than those he criticizes. But I think that's too low a barrier.

>This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying..

It's usually a safer bet to dismiss the assumptions of some small group of people than think that the whole general population are idiots.

Just saying...

http://i.imgur.com/oTBYE5r.jpg

I agree, it's usually a small group of idiots that conflate high IQ with not being an idiot.

If that was really true, it's be a safer bet to dismiss what experts in a given field think and just go with what the uninformed population's opinion is on the matter.

E.g. to dismiss scientific opinion on a topic to go instead with lay opinions on it

By all means, we should dismiss what experts in a given field think too.

What we should respect are hard results and proofs from said experts.

Science is not about trusting experts, it's about trusting a methodology (the scientific method) to produce results.

Yes, but I was responding to a claim that equated to "go with the most broadly held view".

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