I think this is very true, but how do we organize a society around science? Science can tell us many important things, but it can’t necessarily tell us what we should value or what is moral. There are very intelligent, educated people trying to develop moral and ethical frameworks, using critical thinking and reasoning, but how do we ensure those frameworks become the basis for society? Even in a democracy, the people can choose to adopt those moral and ethical frameworks (assuming the people are even aware they exist), but they can also choose not to. Of course that’s true of any ruler, so I’m not saying that’s unique to democracy, but I’m just saying that democracy doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of rulers ruling unethically.
There’s technocracy, but for a technocracy to function, wouldn’t the technocrats need to have a fairly significant amount of power? I don’t necessarily think that technocracy is completely antithetical to democracy, but the technocrats would need the authority to override the people, whenever the people would try to implement some policy that was unscientific, making the technocrats, not the people, the ultimate authority.
The biggest shift that can be made is to limit the competitive aspects of Markets and push for cooperation, along a common plan and goal. Markets are useful at lower levels of development for rapidly building up productive forces, but to truly take a scientific approach humanity needs to be able to take master of production to fulfill its specific needs and ends, not just for profit.
I think just using “science” as a catch-all term makes it harder to comprehend what a society would look like. Instead, I try and think of it by using research-backed policies.
This research shows that providing free childcare results in better educated students, happier families, and less crime later in life.
This research shows that having walkable cities reduces pollution, better supports small businesses, and makes our population healthier.
This research shows that getting yearly vaccinations, washing hands, and wearing masks when sick greatly reduces the spread of germs.
Banning abortion makes women more at-risk for dying during childbirth and ends up having families make risky decisions since a fetus isn’t actually a person yet.
Then after all the research and actual peer-reviews (not just for-profit journals having a say), policies would be made to support what makes for a better society.
Then after all the research and actual peer-reviews (not just for-profit journals having a say), policies would be made to support what makes for a better society.
Policies would be made by whom, though? The people, or democratically elected representatives of the people, can choose to make policies informed by peer-reviewed research, but they can also choose to ignore peer-reviewed research entirely. Here in the US it’s done all the time. Many of our politicians, and the people who vote them into office, often reject evidence and research based information that they find inconvenient or which runs counter to their world view.
Yeah, but that’s basically the point. Posts like this are nice to have because they inspire a different way of thinking of what could be. I would love for democratically-elected leaders that are well-educated and actually serve those they represent and vote/make policies that are backed by facts and research. The system we have now realistically works well to an extent, though there are large problems. And as much as most people don’t want to admit, it’s going to take large, slow efforts at the bottom in order for the changes at the top to happen.
Also, back to the point about elected officials not representing the people, I actually think they do for the most part. The bad part is that the people that vote those politicians in are people that reject facts and research themselves and/or blame others for their problems. But again, the large, slow effort is needed at the bottom to talk to neighbors and family members that they are wrong and try and help them see things not from a hateful world view.
All that to basically say that I understand reality, but I can still wish for a better system and better people haha
This is why the older I get, the more cynical I become about democracy. People are easily frightened herd animals who often refuse to look past the surface level shiny veneer. It always devolves. Every single democracy in history falls prey to the populist who takes advantage of this human weakness.
The modern globalist system has left you out of the manufacturing job you expected to have? Are you frightened about your financial future and your children’s future? Here, I have a solution for you. We will build a wall and deport the brown people. It’s all their fault. Please ignore the man behind the curtain.
Instead of us having an educated populace that sees through the wool being pulled over their eyes, they instead put their heads in the sand and choose to full-send into whatever right-wing ideology is thrown their way. It happened before, it will happen again.
The superior system, I think, would look something like the Chinese although they are not perfect by any means.
What they do is in primary school, they test the children and see who has a strong aptitude. They take these children out of the normal class and groom them to be party leaders. These party leaders then eventually end up as the leaders in the future. China actually is a pseudo-democracy- it’s just that only party members get to vote. And there are actually over 2 million party members. But the difference there is that it’s more of a meritocracy. There is still nepotism and whatnot, but the leaders slowly rise up over time based on results.
Look at Xi Jinping for example
He lived in a yaodong in the village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi province, where he joined the CCP after several failed attempts and worked as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China’s coastal provinces. Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, before becoming governor and party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of the party secretary of Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to replace him for a brief period in 2007. He subsequently joined the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) of the CCP the same year and was the first-ranking secretary of the Central Secretariat in October 2007. In 2008, he was designated as Hu Jintao’s presumed successor as paramount leader.
The way it works is you start in a lower spot and work your way up slowly over time. And he was actually destined for failure due to his father being a “traitor”
The son of Chinese communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi was exiled to rural Yanchuan County as a teenager following his father’s purge during the Cultural Revolution.
But his results ended up pushing him to the top anyway.
This sort of meritocratic technocratic society will always win out over our populist oligarchy. And to the doubters, consider that our system is not any less elitist.
Instead of testing children and grooming them for leadership, we do it based on last name and wealth. If your parents went to Harvard, you grow up with tutors and extracurriculars and all the support you could want. Then you are groomed for success by joining an Ivy League school, you join some sort of fraternity that presidents were a part of and you meet the future senators and CEOs.
It’s the same thing except instead of results and meritocracy- it’s more influenced by wealth and nepotism.
Of course I’m not claiming the Chinese system is somehow ideal, but I believe democracy is fatally flawed. Plato wrote about this in “The Republic” already countless years ago. Ironically, in his ideal Republic (which to be fair is sort of a dystopia) they actually groom capable children like the Chinese do for party leadership.
Maybe we can just develop generalized artificial intelligence and have it run our society for us. I’d have more faith in the AI than I do in our congress.
I think this is very true, but how do we organize a society around science? Science can tell us many important things, but it can’t necessarily tell us what we should value or what is moral. There are very intelligent, educated people trying to develop moral and ethical frameworks, using critical thinking and reasoning, but how do we ensure those frameworks become the basis for society? Even in a democracy, the people can choose to adopt those moral and ethical frameworks (assuming the people are even aware they exist), but they can also choose not to. Of course that’s true of any ruler, so I’m not saying that’s unique to democracy, but I’m just saying that democracy doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of rulers ruling unethically.
There’s technocracy, but for a technocracy to function, wouldn’t the technocrats need to have a fairly significant amount of power? I don’t necessarily think that technocracy is completely antithetical to democracy, but the technocrats would need the authority to override the people, whenever the people would try to implement some policy that was unscientific, making the technocrats, not the people, the ultimate authority.
The biggest shift that can be made is to limit the competitive aspects of Markets and push for cooperation, along a common plan and goal. Markets are useful at lower levels of development for rapidly building up productive forces, but to truly take a scientific approach humanity needs to be able to take master of production to fulfill its specific needs and ends, not just for profit.
I think just using “science” as a catch-all term makes it harder to comprehend what a society would look like. Instead, I try and think of it by using research-backed policies.
This research shows that providing free childcare results in better educated students, happier families, and less crime later in life.
This research shows that having walkable cities reduces pollution, better supports small businesses, and makes our population healthier.
This research shows that getting yearly vaccinations, washing hands, and wearing masks when sick greatly reduces the spread of germs.
Banning abortion makes women more at-risk for dying during childbirth and ends up having families make risky decisions since a fetus isn’t actually a person yet.
Then after all the research and actual peer-reviews (not just for-profit journals having a say), policies would be made to support what makes for a better society.
Policies would be made by whom, though? The people, or democratically elected representatives of the people, can choose to make policies informed by peer-reviewed research, but they can also choose to ignore peer-reviewed research entirely. Here in the US it’s done all the time. Many of our politicians, and the people who vote them into office, often reject evidence and research based information that they find inconvenient or which runs counter to their world view.
Yeah, but that’s basically the point. Posts like this are nice to have because they inspire a different way of thinking of what could be. I would love for democratically-elected leaders that are well-educated and actually serve those they represent and vote/make policies that are backed by facts and research. The system we have now realistically works well to an extent, though there are large problems. And as much as most people don’t want to admit, it’s going to take large, slow efforts at the bottom in order for the changes at the top to happen.
Also, back to the point about elected officials not representing the people, I actually think they do for the most part. The bad part is that the people that vote those politicians in are people that reject facts and research themselves and/or blame others for their problems. But again, the large, slow effort is needed at the bottom to talk to neighbors and family members that they are wrong and try and help them see things not from a hateful world view.
All that to basically say that I understand reality, but I can still wish for a better system and better people haha
This is why the older I get, the more cynical I become about democracy. People are easily frightened herd animals who often refuse to look past the surface level shiny veneer. It always devolves. Every single democracy in history falls prey to the populist who takes advantage of this human weakness.
The modern globalist system has left you out of the manufacturing job you expected to have? Are you frightened about your financial future and your children’s future? Here, I have a solution for you. We will build a wall and deport the brown people. It’s all their fault. Please ignore the man behind the curtain.
Instead of us having an educated populace that sees through the wool being pulled over their eyes, they instead put their heads in the sand and choose to full-send into whatever right-wing ideology is thrown their way. It happened before, it will happen again.
The superior system, I think, would look something like the Chinese although they are not perfect by any means.
What they do is in primary school, they test the children and see who has a strong aptitude. They take these children out of the normal class and groom them to be party leaders. These party leaders then eventually end up as the leaders in the future. China actually is a pseudo-democracy- it’s just that only party members get to vote. And there are actually over 2 million party members. But the difference there is that it’s more of a meritocracy. There is still nepotism and whatnot, but the leaders slowly rise up over time based on results.
Look at Xi Jinping for example
The way it works is you start in a lower spot and work your way up slowly over time. And he was actually destined for failure due to his father being a “traitor”
But his results ended up pushing him to the top anyway.
This sort of meritocratic technocratic society will always win out over our populist oligarchy. And to the doubters, consider that our system is not any less elitist.
Instead of testing children and grooming them for leadership, we do it based on last name and wealth. If your parents went to Harvard, you grow up with tutors and extracurriculars and all the support you could want. Then you are groomed for success by joining an Ivy League school, you join some sort of fraternity that presidents were a part of and you meet the future senators and CEOs.
It’s the same thing except instead of results and meritocracy- it’s more influenced by wealth and nepotism.
Of course I’m not claiming the Chinese system is somehow ideal, but I believe democracy is fatally flawed. Plato wrote about this in “The Republic” already countless years ago. Ironically, in his ideal Republic (which to be fair is sort of a dystopia) they actually groom capable children like the Chinese do for party leadership.
Maybe we can just develop generalized artificial intelligence and have it run our society for us. I’d have more faith in the AI than I do in our congress.