Hacker News Reader

Consuming information by choice allows us to express ourselves later with our opinions. Everyone should make an effort to learn about their surroundings to be an informed, contributing member of a democratic society. People say politicians are out of touch, but compared to a lot of Americans who willingly cut off their exposure to news, are they really?

If you are not an expert on a political issue. You are uninformed, period. You don't have time to write papers, do extensive research, email scientists. The reality of being humans is that we don't know most of everything and we can't. We specialize, not have uber intelligent men decide the fate of humanity.

This is the problem with politics. It's not that we are stupid, it's just that our brain can't store and think through the vast amount of knowledge needed to decide on multiple complex issues. To believe that we can build our society with informed voters in democracies is extremely naive.

> To believe that we can build our society with informed voters in democracies is extremely naive.

To believe we can do anything else is the road back to Dachau.

>To believe we can do anything else is the road back to Dachau.

I am arguing that democracies can't work due to the impossibility of having informed voters by the way our democracies are organized. The first step to the road of better governance is acknowledging human limitation and nature.

> I am arguing that democracies can't work due to the impossibility of having informed voters by the way our democracies are organized.

And I am arguing that undemocratic forms of government have been tried repeatedly and found wanting repeatedly.

There are very many different ways to do "democracy" though, it's not just the one axis with more democratic or less.

Yes, and the US is a federal republic, with a very specific electoral system to boot...so many other types of democracy exist before we get to non-democracy lol

That's argument from ignorance. Just because we doesn't know a better solution doesn't mean there aren't any. Hackers build solutions. And as the above poster said, the first step to start building better practical solutions is to acknowledge the limitations of the resources and tools at our disposal.

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

- Sir Winston Churchill

"the best argument against democracy is a ten minute conversation with the average voter" - reportedly Churchill as well

Yeah, that's the point. Democracy sucks. But what's the alternative?

Lichtenstein, Singapore. Consumer capitalism is not tied to democracy. And it is consumer capitalism that is raising the world's desperate out of subsistence.

Democracy is a luxury good that rich nations purchase.

I was wondering just that a few weeks ago. I found this perspective interesting to think about, even if it's impractical... http://www.see.org/garcia/e02.htm

Appoint experts and practice Science?

Fortunately, most of the time voters choosing "representatives". As human creatures, we do tend to be better (yet far from optimal) at recognizing worthy people to follow.

> To believe that we can build our society with informed voters in democracies is extremely naive.

To believe we can do anything else is the road back to Dachau.

These are the stakes: http://www.archive.org/details/nazi_concentration_camps

I don't think your point is at odds with the OP. Even though the OP essentially advocates cutting out all new sources from your life at the end of the article, the real point of the article is to disabuse you of the illusion that these news sources are contributing to your productivity. So, if you want to keep up with the news so you can participate in water cooler discussions and build your social network[1], that's fine. But if you are spending large fractions of your time reading news because you think it will somehow improve your productivity, or even make you more informed, you're fooling yourself.

[1] I mean your actual social network, in the sense we all used that term before Facebook came along.

I think the OP was saying: try cutting out noise, see what a difference it makes. Then you can better decide what news is worthwhile.

haha, that's fascinating -- I can appreciate that some perspectives don't form correctly until you're older.

i'd like to mention that i wasn't really writing this from the perspective of productivity. i think it's a wellness thing to fade out noise.

Gotcha; I definitely hear where you're coming from and admit my lifestyle could use an audit in this regard.

My first step was keeping my iPhone out of the bed room :)