• 9 Posts
  • 177 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: April 1st, 2022

help-circle

  • but nobody can win without being slick and two-faced

    And don’t forget ‘rich’, or more importantly, supported by the rich. A national-scale campaign requires resources that a typical organization can’t gather, and to win without such a campaign is miraculous in most systems.

    So, you’re assuming we’re all American here.

    Nah, like you said it applies to most democracies, even if America is an extreme example of these universal trends.


  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mldeleted
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    22 hours ago

    I don’t know what the culture is where you are, but I don’t give people money for friendly gifts. If anything, that just implies our relationship is transactional and shallow, rather than a community who care about each other more than money.

    What I do is return the favor by giving them free things later, just like they did. Like buying them a drink at a pub.








  • but they never seem to consider that it’s them that keeps electing those people.

    How so?

    If one doesn’t vote, a slimy politician still gets elected.

    If one does vote, in most elections they can only choose from a small group of people who probably fail to represent them, and even if there is a reasonable option, they probably won’t win the vote anyway.

    The system is rigged, when it comes to voting there usually* isn’t a correct option. Our political voice must exist outside of elections.

    (I say usually, because a few elections are better than other, but generally speaking at a federal level, it’s slime no matter how you vote)





  • You wouldn’t, because you are (presumably) knowledgeable about the current AI trend and somewhat aware of political biases of the creators of these products.

    Well, more because I’m knowledgeable enough about machine learning to know it’s only as good as its dataset, and knowledgeable enough about mass media and the internet to know how atrocious ‘common sense’ often is. But yes, you’re right about me speaking from a level of familiarity which I shouldn’t consider typical.

    People have been strangely trusting of chat bots since ELIZA in the 1960s. My country is lucky enough to teach a small amount of bias and media literacy skills through education and some of the state broadcaster’s programs (it’s not how it sounds, I swear!), and when I look over to places like large chunks of the US, I’m reminded that basic media literacy isn’t even very common, let alone universal.




  • How do you solve the problem that half the country can’t even be bothered to participate once every four years?

    I assume you’re talking about the US electoral system?? That’s very different.

    but how would we get people to engage with such a system?

    By empowering them.

    Consider how the current electoral system disempowers people:

    1. Some people literally cannot vote or risk jeopardizing their job taking the day off, others face voter suppression tactics

    2. The FPTP system (esp. spoiler effect) and the present political circumstances mean that there are really only two viable options for political parties for most people, so many feel that neither option represents them, let alone their individual positions on policy

    3. Politics is widely considered to be corrupt and break electoral promises regularly. There is little faith in either party to represent voters

    But, in a system where you are able to represent yourself at will, engagement is actually rewarding and meaningful. It won’t magically make everyone care, but direct democracy alongside voter rights reform would likely make more people think it’s worth polling.