Excited to get a copy and read this book in full. We are all so mired in this, it’s both an unsettling and a relief to have such a clear mirror to reflect us back to ourselves.
I keep thinking about the workload implied by “informed citizen”. Busy, tired, overloaded and trying to make sense of things through headlines, feeds, summaries and half-remembered arguments is enough to drive anyone spare.
That rings true from inside public-sector machinery too. Even when people are paid to understand systems, it can still be hard to cut through the noise. Briefings, emails, Minutes, legislation, charts, more emails. Everyone trying to hold the whale by one body part and hoping it’s the important bit.
So, I’m wary of answers that stop at “teach civics” or “give people the facts”. Yes, obviously. Please do. But understanding can’t just be bolted on afterwards. If the machinery is too complex, too fast, too opaque and too full of incentives to confuse people, facts arrive as one more thing to sort, mistrust or weaponise.
Seems to me (from West Pacific) that influential members of that “Great Community” allow themselves to be branded, from birth, by the partisan divide, and, for many, the intense desire of parents for admission of their children to one of the "great" schools. Maybe it's those demonising Us-Them divides that are prelude to the current despotism. Maybe Trump was always the destiny of USA.
Anyway, this bracketing of books at Amazon - "The Technological Republic, The Rise of Superman & The Science of Being Great How to Be Your Best Self (3 Books Collection Set) by Nicholas W.Zamiska Alexander C. Karp (Author), Steven Kotler (Author), Wallace D. Wattles (Author)" - is telling.
A guy called Elon Musk has been doing some interesting research in this area. He set up a massive social media sandbox and allowed unfiltered political discourse with inputs of almost unlimited amounts of information. He also set up a rewards system whereby the most popular actors would be paid. I’ve seen the results and they’re absolutely fucking shocking.
Most Americans would never have anything to do with the federal government - their dealings were with the local and state governments.
Americans once learned Civics in the public schools. I've seen what purports to be Civics tests given to American children during the 1800s. Apparently, Americans could once recite the enumerated powers granted to the federal government, etc.
But the schools stopped teaching Civics. And Americans were too lazy to read the Constitution (and Declaration of Independence) for themselves. They just repeated what they heard from others.
For over a hundred years, the federal government has been dealing with thousands of issues where they have NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO ACT. It is impossible for Citizens to keep up with what the federal gov't is doing.
Our People perish for lack of Knowledge. If the federal gov't were downsized to its enumerated powers; and if Civics were taught in the public schools, the system might work as it should.
The informed citizen was always a legitimacy fiction for a communication regime that had already exceeded human bandwidth.
AI extends the same problem from information to cognition itself: not just more messages than people can process, but more “reasoning” than institutions can legitimate.
When hearing many opinions, my desire to find the facts leads me to city council meetings, etc. to find those truly in the know to interview. Then I go back to the sources of prior information to offer affirmation or the correction of misperceptions. It is time consuming, yet rewarding. Those involved in decision making appreciate the support and hearing the questions of the community. Perceptional shorthand translated into factual, verifiable longhand.
Excited to get a copy and read this book in full. We are all so mired in this, it’s both an unsettling and a relief to have such a clear mirror to reflect us back to ourselves.
I keep thinking about the workload implied by “informed citizen”. Busy, tired, overloaded and trying to make sense of things through headlines, feeds, summaries and half-remembered arguments is enough to drive anyone spare.
That rings true from inside public-sector machinery too. Even when people are paid to understand systems, it can still be hard to cut through the noise. Briefings, emails, Minutes, legislation, charts, more emails. Everyone trying to hold the whale by one body part and hoping it’s the important bit.
So, I’m wary of answers that stop at “teach civics” or “give people the facts”. Yes, obviously. Please do. But understanding can’t just be bolted on afterwards. If the machinery is too complex, too fast, too opaque and too full of incentives to confuse people, facts arrive as one more thing to sort, mistrust or weaponise.
Seems to me (from West Pacific) that influential members of that “Great Community” allow themselves to be branded, from birth, by the partisan divide, and, for many, the intense desire of parents for admission of their children to one of the "great" schools. Maybe it's those demonising Us-Them divides that are prelude to the current despotism. Maybe Trump was always the destiny of USA.
Anyway, this bracketing of books at Amazon - "The Technological Republic, The Rise of Superman & The Science of Being Great How to Be Your Best Self (3 Books Collection Set) by Nicholas W.Zamiska Alexander C. Karp (Author), Steven Kotler (Author), Wallace D. Wattles (Author)" - is telling.
A guy called Elon Musk has been doing some interesting research in this area. He set up a massive social media sandbox and allowed unfiltered political discourse with inputs of almost unlimited amounts of information. He also set up a rewards system whereby the most popular actors would be paid. I’ve seen the results and they’re absolutely fucking shocking.
Daunting! So what do we do?
The US Constitution created a federal government to which We The People delegated only a handful of enumerated powers. All other powers were reserved by the States or The People. Here's a one page chart which illustrates this: https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/chart-showing-federal-structure-with-meme-april-2019.pdf
Most Americans would never have anything to do with the federal government - their dealings were with the local and state governments.
Americans once learned Civics in the public schools. I've seen what purports to be Civics tests given to American children during the 1800s. Apparently, Americans could once recite the enumerated powers granted to the federal government, etc.
But the schools stopped teaching Civics. And Americans were too lazy to read the Constitution (and Declaration of Independence) for themselves. They just repeated what they heard from others.
For over a hundred years, the federal government has been dealing with thousands of issues where they have NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO ACT. It is impossible for Citizens to keep up with what the federal gov't is doing.
Our People perish for lack of Knowledge. If the federal gov't were downsized to its enumerated powers; and if Civics were taught in the public schools, the system might work as it should.
The informed citizen was always a legitimacy fiction for a communication regime that had already exceeded human bandwidth.
AI extends the same problem from information to cognition itself: not just more messages than people can process, but more “reasoning” than institutions can legitimate.
When hearing many opinions, my desire to find the facts leads me to city council meetings, etc. to find those truly in the know to interview. Then I go back to the sources of prior information to offer affirmation or the correction of misperceptions. It is time consuming, yet rewarding. Those involved in decision making appreciate the support and hearing the questions of the community. Perceptional shorthand translated into factual, verifiable longhand.