Re mismatched expectations with voting and representation versus liberal use of
metaphor: yes, they are strongly related. My impulse is to object slightly and
say that I'm a big fan of metaphor. But I'm not a big fan of constant
reflection on our (ubiquitous) metaphors. It's analysis paralysis ... or navel
gazing. It's human to see *through* the metaphor, as a tool, to it's target and
constant focus on the tool is debilitating ... similar to arguing about word
definitions.
Re personal vs political position: yes, I feel the same way you do in wondering if/how my
individual *can* possibilities help construct the world I *want* to see. This is another
form of (forward) map from individual to collective. We see lots of posturing about how
some one person thinks they know how that map works (e.g. individualists claiming it
doesn't work at all, socialists claiming all their favorite examples demonstrate how it
should work, technologists claiming "if you build it they will come", etc.). I
tend to push back and ask that we study the map(s) before making such claims.
Re Parscale/Bannon gaming: Exactly. The more our representation depends on
first-past-the-post, and the more technology we insert in between the humans
being represented and the humans doing the representing, the more *gamable* the
system.
Re what are we trying to achieve with our representation?: I don't know. It
would be *great* if we could ask that of the people, everyone, homeless and
wealthy alike, in such a well-formed way that their answers would parse and
compose. But I doubt we can. That question and its forms co-evolves with the
answers. And that coevolutionary, wandering, implicit set of objectives argues,
again, for a more robust and spread out representation. I.e. a parliamentary
system which allows the wings and extremes to participate in the government
helps ask good questions and helps provide parsable and compositional answers.
A ranked choice voting scheme helps formulate the questions and answers. The
electoral college (and Senate/House structure) was a (failed) attempt to do
that, too, I think. The reason I think a steady re-org of representation is
necessary before digital vote tech is because these questions are not
well-formed. If you don't understand the input, you won't understand the output.
I *love* the idea of the paintball gun. But it does sound a bit like suicide
... suicide by gun nut.
On 8/21/20 1:10 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
On 8/21/20 9:58 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:
The problem is that we expect our representation to be, somehow,
faithful/accurate. We can see this in microcosm with the false
equivalence between household budgets and national economies (or in
comparing the USPS to a corporation, or in approval rates for our
representative vs Congress as a whole, or in thousands of other
individual vs collective contexts).
And I take this to be strongly related with your issue with metaphor...
metaphors can be used thoughtfully to help explain or understand one
system in terms of another, but they can also be used to *generate* or
*exploit* conflations for various purposes misaligned with understanding
or explanation.
As I've tried to exhibit re: guns, I am unabashedly two-faced.
Personally, I think anyone ought to be able to destroy the world.
Politically, socially, that's madness and we ought to ban handguns
entirely.
I appreciate this span. I experience it more *generally* in the sense
that my extreme awareness of Libertarian ideals unto Anarchism is that I
can do anything I *can*. But as you imply (I think), I *choose* to
live within the context of a culture where I have to constrain many of
the things I *could* do, as a participant in shaping the society/world I
want to live in. [...]
Any tool designed to accurately hone in on that tiny little wiggle in
the popular vote will continue this false equivalence between
individual and collective, increasing the us-vs-them tribalism that
produced Trump's win.
And in some way perhaps magnify it, or make it something the likes of
Parscale/Bannon could exploit into a (slim/faux but qualitatively
signifcant) win.
Voting and polling are simply symptoms. I'd welcome tools that target
the disease rather than making it worse. In the meantime, I'm with
Nick. Transparency means paper ballots and some human connection to
the tabulation and aggregation process. If Jon thinks that position
helps him understand how Republicans win elections, then it's useful
to go into a little more detail about the actual problem like I'm
trying to do, here.
And so, explicitly, can you elaborate yet more on this abstraction?
What I think you introduce (well) above is the conflation between the
personal/collective, private/public conceptions. I could (as I often
do) riff on *my* apprehension of what that looks like or how it goes
wrong, but I would welcome your's and other's thoughts on this. In
particular I'm interested on "just what is it" we are trying to achieve
with our representative democracy and how well are we and where might
there be room for improvement?
Mary and I have been discussing the details of how (mechanically) we
will participate in this November 2020 election. As denizens of a
fairly strongly blue state, I don't worry that my vote will make or
break the "Blue Tide", but it feels like there are lots of
meta-narratives implied in if/when/how/who we vote. I'm torn between
wanting to help prove/exercise the mail-in voting system and wanting to
engage/enjoy the implied spirit of in-person voting and contrasting it
with my father's admonition of "vote early, vote often" by taking
advantage of generous early voting here and avoiding being part of "the
rush". I think I have settled for simply "voting vert early" and
paying close attention to the dates/times/location so that I'm not
scurrying at the last minute like Mary had to for the Democrat Primary
(I'm "unaffiliated").
Paralleling your schizm on guns, I'm fantasizing about taking a
paintball gun to (the perimeter of) my polling place and "marking" any
poll watchers who think they need to show up exercising *their* open
carry rights at that perimeter. I am sure I will not do such a thing
for myriad reasons, but I enjoy considering the irony of the various
ragtag "Militias" that have chosen to involve themselves in other things
in a disruptive/intimidating fashion being confronted with a mock
shooting. For the faint of heart here, I re-iterate "I am sure I will
not", just like I don't actually go around cutting the truck-nuts off
of pickups even though I tell my friends who are likely to sport them
that I *do* carry bolt-cutters for precisely that purpose. I just can't
resist the cognitive dissonance of the image.
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