Hacker News Reader

Comment by lapphi | Hacker News Reader

“The mob” being the voting citizens of a free and open democratic society, of course.

Interesting point of view/source of internal tension there.

Yeah for sure. Revolutions are messy and its easy to lose sight of that when you're on the winning side. I'm personally very glad to not live under a imperial monarchy, but I do wish the founders could have kept their concerns over voters out of the way.

There are historical examples of why trusting the mob goes poorly, but keeping that on the table fundamentally ruins the point of a democratic society. Its all well and good to say we need an educated populace, but the system should offer the public a chance to live up to the ideal rather than guard against their failure.

I don’t think the founding fathers much less the ancient greek democrats anticipated the level of idiocy in the public discourse we are dealing with today. A huge swath of the country has been manipulated by propaganda to the point of not believing in reality at all. It’s a dangerous position we find ourselves in today.

I think the founding fathers actually had a more educates populace than we do today. For all the modern education and fields of study we have today, is the level of idiocy an anomaly or is it a symptom of of modern education?

I would also say the propaganda environment the founding fathers found themselves in was very nascent. It certainly wasn’t so married with findings from neuroscience or psychology supported by data like it is today. The media market was also generally more competitive. When you are down to one regional paper and thats that, there is little incentive for quality journalism and informing people factually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com