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Comment by llanowarelves | Hacker News Reader

democracy is a threat to Our Democracy

well. what if the public consists of 10% independent thinkers and 90% that follows whatever propaganda gets shoved through their eyes and ears. And if you can use your current power and money to create the most propaganda. Are people really voting? Or is the money/power that does the voting? And this is not some invented theory, if you question people why they believe what they believe, you'll discover quit fast that they dont know why they believe what they believe, except for, they were told so, by friends, tv, media, etc etc. It's easier to copy opinions (and be angry) than to establish your own.

The definition of "democracy" is not subject to your broad, sweeping, unfalsifiable judgments about human nature and other peoples' apparent ignorance. (Presumably the author and reader are excluded from this, through some luck?)

Who'd be more qualified to assess what impacts voters than politicians, who have proven knowledge and ability to influence such? And they spend billions of dollars on media that amounts to 1 of 3 derivatives:

- "You're great. I'm great. We're great together. Now watch some emotionally exploitative happy music while watching emotionally exploitative happy imagery. Vote for me!"

- "You don't like bad people. I don't like bad people. My opponent is a bad person. Now watch some emotionally exploitative scary/dystopic music while watching emotionally exploitative angering/scaring imagery. Vote for me!"

- And a mixture of the two where you segue from the bad to to the good with mixed emotional exploitation alongside. "Hope and Change" and "Make American Great Again" are clear examples of this one.

Little to nowhere in the picture do appeals to logic, rational, education, or information come into the picture. It's just emotional manipulation and tribalism. And it works phenomenally well. Beyond this I'd also appeal to your own experience. Take any topic you're an expert on. Now go into any venue where "the masses" are discussing it, or the media. Cringe at the site of all of it, and now imagine the media and masses (including yourself/myself) are any better on the topics you are not an expert on.

What is it subject to? .. or defined by?

Democracy is a word with almost no consistent meaning or definition, yet everyone treats it as if it's clean and defined.

Other than "communism is whatever the communist party does," what is democracy anyway?

"Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (that's North not South) comes to mind — even less genuine than clicking "I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions" on the average pre-GDPR EULA, but nevertheless perfectly illustrates the vagueness of the word.

My own personal bugbear is when people say they want to "democratise" nouns and verbs, e.g. "democratise maths" or "democratise running" (both real examples) and yet there is no idea at all what that might mean. Votes? And if so, who and how and when?

Those usages are correct. "Democratize" is a word with more than one meaning, the one being used there is:

> to make (something) available to all people : to make it possible for all people to understand (something)

https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/democratize

Dictionaries are there to report actual usage not dictate how it should be. I still get to say it's being used as a way to unreasonably paint positive associations on unrelated topics in the same way that the word "right" means both "correct" and also a specific political team. Yes I know this isn't new, Latin for left is "sinister" etc., but I like clarity and dislike the entire pattern this represents, even if it is hard to get away from — both with positive and negative examples — in natural language.

That said:

Democratise running.

Running.

Even with that definition, nope.

(But what it does do is serve as a further example of why the word has such broad usage as to be almost meaningless).

I think you are reading far more into this than there actually is.

This is not a new meaning and is one that I learned a long time ago, have seen widely used for decades and has an even longer history.

The word is far from precise, but it is also far from meaningless. I understand exactly what is meant by "democratize running" (though I don't think running is a good example of something that needs democratization since there aren't systematic barriers to popular adotion.)

> I understand exactly what is meant by "democratize running"

I, sincerely, have no idea at all what this phrase is supposed to mean. Even with what you previously wrote.

Hmm. I'm British; where, geographically, did you encounter your usage?

Then see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

In my experience, "independent thinkers" are always the ones most susceptible to manipulation, because they believe themselves smarter than everyone else, which makes them perfect targets for propaganda.

As an extreme example, you would consider Einstein to be easily manipulated? He was certainly one of the greatest independent thinkers.

I think you're talking about the people that go against the mainstream ideas and authorities. It's very difficult to create an opinion about these people, because they might be right or they might be wrong or might be right/wrong 50% of the time. I cant really tell, and it changes all the time and also depends in which country/society you live.

All i can say is, questioning authorities is a good thing. As Einstein said: blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth

Quite, but the point still stands. Democracy gives 100% of power to the person who can convince 51% of the public. In reality in the US sometimes you just need to move the needle by a few thousand votes to make a difference, certainly changing 5% of the public views (either to flip or to stay at home or not stay at home) will settle it in your favour.

We have a trillion dollar industry designed to manipulate peoples views. Nobody is smarter than that.

Oh, look how smart you are!

Democracy is alway a threat to democracy.

#NotMyDemocracy

> Our Democracy

Meme of the year

Our Demarkacy

I like to say it in a slightly different manner: Democrats have won, but not Democracy.

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