The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

(https://image.ibb.co/mWLqOQ/trust_issues.png)

(https://image.ibb.co/iydBf5/american_trust.png)

I have written about this now:

(https://image.ibb.co/jkrQvF/trust.png)

http://archania.org/criteria_for_a_healthy_democracy.html (http://archania.org/criteria_for_a_healthy_democracy.html)

Here is a music video related to this problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2frJ3e0hxPE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2frJ3e0hxPE)

Here is something I read about why the level of trust is so high in China:


http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/government-for-the-people-in-china/ (http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/government-for-the-people-in-china/)

How do you treat the varying demands of a diverse population?
Rich people will want more responsiveness on lowering taxes, poor people on better welfare etc.

Since there are much more poor people in the world we need more taxes for the rich and more welfare for the poor.

http://archania.org/decreasing_economic_inequality_with_a_progressive_tax.html (http://archania.org/decreasing_economic_inequality_with_a_progressive_tax.html)

Also, being responsive doesn't necessarily mean to give into the exact demand, but could also mean to find other solutions. For example, unemployed coal workers want to work. But they don't necessarily need to work with coal, like Donald Trump offered them. They could be offered work somewhere else. For example in the production of solar panels. It is however important to not ignore large segments of the population, because that generates distrust in the government.

The starting image, of a climber on the edge of a cliff, seems a bit off. I don't think it would convince anyone of anything, and could get people to dismiss whatever follows.

I live in a country where we have free healthcare, free universities, and so on. Mothers get almost 1 year full salary after giving birth. Kindergartens are heavily subsidized. We get tons of help from the government in my country.  So I think most people in my country would consider it to be a good metaphor, but maybe not in your country.

Anyhow. I didn't create that image, so it is not mine, and I am not going to use it in any of my documents.

I have made separate pages for all of the main sections in the "blueprint for a progressive world democracy".

(https://image.ibb.co/kVOiza/new_menu.png)

http://www.archania.org/ (http://www.archania.org/)

One thing that is glaringly obvious, atleast where I'm standing, is that western democracy isn't really a democracy and our politicians lie and come back on their promises regularly.
Even when the people speak up and ask for a referendum, which was possible by law a while ago, these politicians can twist and turn and disregard that referendum. As it stands now the law that enables the people to have such a referendum, has been cancelled.

Normally you would expect uprisings, people taking to the streets, heavy dissatisfaction all over. But aside from a few 'dissidents', the general population remains quiet.
I think I know why that is. We're wealthy, educated, healthy and happy. So we don't have a reason to blame the government for our misfortune. That's why it can continue to do these maleveloent practices which have nothing to do with democracy.

Also, it appears that politics is really more about power than about actually caring about the people you represent. People who care aren't succesful enough to be voted into their governmental seats.

That, and the general population is really only interested in what thay read in the newspapers, see on TV and internet.
They only outcry about something after they have read a snappy article about it with a sensational headline. But after a month, nobody cares about whatever it was that was written anymore, and people move along with their daily lives.

All these media are by and large controlled by the western governments and companies. For example pro-russian, pro-muslim or pro-china articles never reach us, or atleast not in sufficient numbers to have any impact.
The people's opinion of the govt is mainly controlled by the media. If they read soothing articles they will be passive. If they read sensational articles they will outcry about it -- for a few days, at their work's lunch table, in a bar or share a post about it on facebook, and then move on with their lives until another sensational artticle appears. In the future controlling the media will become easier and easier, since less and less open minded humans are actually writing these articles (the simpler articles get written by alrogithms with a good understanding of the English language). Also, machine learning is already enabling google, facebook and twitter to show you only tweets, articles and sites that you are interested in, but with enough computer power and money pumped into them it could also be used to influence the opinion of the masses. Kinda like the thingy you proposed where researchers would use machine learning to determine which foods are unhealthy, you could use it to measure what content is neccesary for each person to see to sway his opinion about a certain subject into a certain direction.

Anyway, that's how we get indoctrinated in a very subtle way to keep passive. By keeping us well-fed, wealthy, well-educated and happy, and by controlling the media.
When time passes, this will get easier and easier due to technological advances and globalisation of companies. However, keep in mind that Russia and China are doing the same on their side, but we don't really know about this because we don't really saturate our news with it.
Eventually WW3 could happen and we wouldn't know about it until it is already on our doorstep. Then again, by having kept ourselves dumb and passive for so long we will always have the excuse 'Wir haben es nicht gewusst'.

PS: In the referendum that was held, I disagreed with the people opting for that referendum. But I believe that now the 'people have spoken' it should be upheld.

That's what I like best about May.
She was against a BrExit, she was against a referendum.
And here she is the currently strongest pusher for the Brexit. Because the people told the government they want it. (They may have done so for the wrong reasons, but there were enough publications showing the lies of the pro-Brexit side.)
She is helping Europe forward.
Despite me not liking the politics, I love her guts to push it through. (And if no-one had done the Brexit, a new referendum would've ensued a few years later, because the Brexit-team would have told the people that they have been cheated from their Brexit, and that all would have been much better by now if the Government would've followed the first referendum.)
And I love that she is so pro-democratic that she pushes for something a majority of people voted FOR, despite it not having been her agenda.
She does what the real Brexit team is too chicken to do themselves. (I bet they are preparing their speeches "I would've handled it much better than Ms. May did. Vote for me!" already now. Yes, Mr. Johnson, I am thinking about you.)

I think this is mostly related to inadequate language skills of the journalists, and possibly related to that people aren't necessarily so interested in reading insightful news from "far away". I seriously doubt that the western European newspapers have an agenda to create disharmony in the world. I think they want to sell as much as possible, and that they are limited by the language skills of the journalists working for them.

Anyhow. I have a friend from Russia, that I hadn't seen for many years, which I met in Prague a few months ago. He told me that some western European journalists had been really rude to him, when interviewing him. And that I think is completely unacceptable. Even if many western Europeans don't like Putin, we need to be polite and respectful when we meet people from other countries in general.

Btw. Have you seen this Russian Rammstein song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJboSby7nW0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJboSby7nW0)

Exactly! I disagree with brexit, but now that the people have spoken, it should be upheld.
Fun thing about May is that after the recent terrorist attacks the dutch TV channel NOS reported on it, but edited May's speech. They left out the word 'muslim' to color their report. The same channel also called the dutch prime minister to ask 'what should we do???' when a person came into their studio with a gun, instead of reporting the actual news they put the channel on black and asked the prime minister for advice :').

Atleast in the Netherlands there are numerous ex-employees that wrote books about the media and how it's bought by the govt.

Here people are mostly complaining that they think the media is too left-wing. Anyhow, of course newspapers can be politically oriented either to the right or the left, but their main orientation today seems to be towards making more money, which means more sensational news, and less investigative journalism.

This is also a big problem when it comes to informing the public about scientific ideas, because newspapers tend to write about new controversial scientific publications as if they were a newly established scientific consensus, even though most such new controversial articles are dismissed by the scientific community.

The NOS is state funded but it pretends to be independent.


Most published research findings are actually false, whether they be sensational or not.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

I could also find a research paper about indoctrination by AI if you want :).

I can understand if you double post to reply to different discussions, but please edit your post in cases like this.
I also assume you broke a "quote" tage somewhere in the post above.

Media in the Netherlands is bought by the government through the (previous) "postbus 51" information actions. That brings a lot of money to the TV-medias, and in a now different form also to the printed newspapers.

I actually like them, and the distribution of the money is one by reach of the media. It goes more or less independent from the government. It's government money, but it's spent indiscriminate across all media to make sure that the public did have access to important announcements and informations.
The content though is sometimes more political than informational, and those are the ones I object to.

In Germany I often missed important information, as there was (and is) no "push" system to get important information passed to the public.

To be honest, I could not care less


postbus 51 is announced as being controlled by the govt. NOS journaal isn't, it pretends to be independent.

Yep. I need to say however, that even though I am a strong supporter of an integrated Europe (and integrated world), I am somewhat against the EU and the UN for multiple reasons. But the main reason is that  people living in the EU should be directly involved in electing the people working for the EU, just like the world population should be directly involved in electing the people working for the UN. Electing people that are going to represent us in other elections makes room for corruption. We need to minimize room for corruption.

(https://image.ibb.co/iCCSUa/room_for_corruption.png)

I have now added this figure to my concluding remarks: http://archania.org/concluding_remarks.html (http://archania.org/concluding_remarks.html)

This should also make it bloody obvious why the EU and the UN are dysfunctional governing bodies, and why we need more directly elected governing bodies.

Should countries even have a right to be independent today? I mean, if USA and China make so much CO₂ that they make the entire planet too warm, is that OK for all the other countries?

Just wanted to say that they just have released a new course about humility at Coursera.org (https://www.coursera.org/learn/intellectual-humility-science (https://www.coursera.org/learn/intellectual-humility-science)), which I am taking now since I need to become more humble.

They have also released a book about intellectual humility now, which I have ordered: https://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Humility-Introduction-Philosophy-Science/dp/147423674X/ (https://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Humility-Introduction-Philosophy-Science/dp/147423674X/)

Module 1: Humility, exploration, and the psychology of child development

(https://image.ibb.co/jGqP9a/inconsistencies.png)


Module 2: What makes us arrogant? Biases, heuristics and cognitive psychology

(https://image.ibb.co/czacea/illusion_of_explanatory_depth.png)





Module 3: Dogmatism and open-mindedness in politics, religion, and life

(https://image.ibb.co/iDy2Cv/correlations.png)

Module 4: Humility, emotions and human relations: a view from social psychology

(https://image.ibb.co/f3d2Ua/seeing_other_person.png)

I have now added this, based on Cristine H. Legare's (http://www.cristinelegare.com/) research (I love that woman):

(https://image.ibb.co/mJyg7v/mystery.png)

http://archania.org/education_motivated_by_intellectual_curiosity.html (http://archania.org/education_motivated_by_intellectual_curiosity.html)

This seems so obvious now. Of course we find mysteries more interesting than dry facts...That's why people are so interested in black holes. There is even a movie genre called "mystery". This gives a whole new dimension to the benefits of magic mushrooms and psychedelics, since they tend to make everything seem more mysterious. I don't understand why I didn't realize this myself earlier.

My approach to magic mushrooms and psychedelics might have been completely wrong. Maybe I should have just focused upon making them appear more mysterious.....

(https://image.ibb.co/dY1SfF/fairytalekit2.png)

http://www.archania.org/magic_mushrooms_and_mysterious_phenomena.html (http://www.archania.org/magic_mushrooms_and_mysterious_phenomena.html)

I think you should focus your research on methoxetamine. It's the closest thing to the drug in Limitless.

Anyway... :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZOUyslti8
Here Elon Musk talks about how AI can manipulate news to cause wars.

Well... I don't know, maybe if it is a deep learning algorithm working for a company that sells military equipment. But even then I think people working for that company would need to guide it in that direction, which of course they could.

Deep learning algorithms working for Google and Facebook might have a lot of power to manipulate news, but will do so probably mostly on guidelines from the people working in those companies, and I doubt they are interested in starting wars. If I have a lot of money, I could however pay for advertising on Google and Facebook, and those advertisements could contain fake news.

I do think deep learning algorithms, just like nuclear physics, can be made into weapons. The greatest treat might be from deep learning algorithms developed by Russia and China, which might have been  made with the intention to destabilize western Europe and USA.

That's a very western-centric statement. Do you remember the bush administration fabricating evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? AI-assisted mass media manipulation would make that even easier, and it could even personalize the news for specific groups of people or even individuals, to sway you from finding out the truth.

Since you think I am so western-centric, I made this graph to you, which compares Netherlands, Germany, USA, Russia, and China according to Press Freedom Index, Corruption Perceptions Index, and Democracy Index.  I don't live in any of these countries.

(https://image.ibb.co/eX6Cpk/rankings.jpg)

Those numbers don't really say anything. The Netherlands is very high in those things but I know for a fact that the press is steered into writing what government and more importantly corporations want. Corruption perception? My parents were offered a house if they voted for a certain political party. And many politicians use their power to enrich themselves or their friends. Democracy? That's quite possibly the biggest farce. For example the referendum which we talked about earlier. And one of the political parties promisiing the lowering of the own risk with the health insurance, but immediately going back on that promise when they enter the government. And then there's the poldermodel, which basically gives local or national governments the possibility to delegate their decision power to stakeholders involved (which is usually companies vs people or something like that). It does well in giving the illusion of democracy while giving more power to corporates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index)


(https://image.ibb.co/dvDtUk/unreliable_generalizations.jpg)

http://archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html (http://archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html)


I am sure there are lots of things that are not perfect in Netherlands. I live in a country which comes up better than Netherlands in all of these indexes, and there are lots of things here that aren't perfect.  But I have a wife that comes from a country which scores much worse in all of these indexes, and she thinks the problems I am  complaining about in this country are very trivial compared to the problems they have in the country she comes from. I have also lived in a country which scores much worse in all of these indexes, and even if things aren't perfect here, things were certainly much worse there in regard to corruption and such things. Netherlands might be a shitty country, but it comes up better than most other countries, because they are even more shitty.

Also, the difference between Netherlands and China/Russia is HUGE in these indexes. One might argue that Germany might be a more democratic country than Netherlands, since it is so close in the ranking. But Russia and China aren't exactly close to Netherlands in any of these indexes.

It makes no sense discussing with you, Zanthius, but would you please research what through what country the most profit of american companies is sent, to make sure that no taxes have to be paid?
Cayman islands? Bermuda? No, the Netherlands. 18% of all foreign profit by american companies goes through the netherlands, to effectively pay no taxes.
All arranged by a deliberate loophole introduced by former state sectretary Joop Wijn, who made sure that american companies up until now have evaded 450 billion dollars in taxes.

But feel free to come up with another list or graph :)

You know, you can also add a source and/or graphs to your own assertions.

(https://image.ibb.co/eTgQuk/taxes.jpg)

This shows that Netherlands is heavily involved in letting the super rich multinational companies steal from the poorest people in the world, but it doesn't necessarily indicate that you have an undemocratic country, overall corrupt country, or don't have press freedom. In fact, you probably read about this in a Dutch newspaper, which shows that you do indeed have freedom of the press. If this had happened in Russia or China, newspapers wouldn't necessarily dare to write about it, since they would risk being liquidated then.

Quite - the three assertions about the Netherlands made up top have nothing at all to do with being a tax haven. This can be considered corruption, but only in a loose sense, because the interests of the Netherlands are not being betrayed by its servants. Instead, they are playing a negative-sum game with other countries, which is a rather different thing altogether.

Yep, and Leiden University (in Netherlands) even have a course about this topic: https://www.coursera.org/learn/international-taxation (https://www.coursera.org/learn/international-taxation)

So, even if Netherlands is heavily involved in this dirty business, there are lots of smart people from the Netherlands working against this.

Due to the low level of trust in US government, the US national debt and the large military expenditure, I think USA might have been on an inevitable trajectory to become a failed state even long before Donald Trump became president. I also think the American Medicare system must be extremely inefficient compared to the west European ones, since west Europeans actually aren't using significantly larger proportions of their budgets on health care. West European citizens just get much more from their health care expenditure, probably because the West European system is much more efficient. Could also be related to the high price of pharmaceuticals in the United States.

But western Europe might also not survive the next decades, due to the large amount of immigrants coming from Africa to Italy. European countries should be spending tons of money on helping to build infrastructure in African countries. Instead, I suspect Europeans might rather eventually start to fire at African immigrants. But what is left of humanity in Europe then.

There seems to be a huge problem with humanity. Long term thinking is mostly absent in politics, which means we are unlikely to be able to substantially decrease the amount of carbon dioxide we are using, or that we are unlikely to solve the emerging immigration crisis in Europe. We simply aren't able to invest enough in long term goals. This might be the main reason why human societies almost always fail eventually. Human brains are not sufficiently developed for long term thinking.

It isn't Medicare in particular, but the entire medical system. Might want to check out Slatestarcodex's article on cost disease (SSC is linked from LW ind it's a recent article) to get a primer on the US's peculiar horribleness in respect to medical care.

I will look into it.

By the way, I am a bit scared that long-term thinking might be distributed according to a gauss curve similarly to IQ, where the median isn't particularly "long-term".

(https://image.ibb.co/hxFXZk/long_term.jpg)

You're forgetting that these companies are sitting on huge sums of cash over which they had paid no taxes while earning it. Ie. they need to spend it some way.
And they usually do this by taking over other companies -- and since dutch companies do have to pay taxes this puts the americans at an unfair advanctage.

That is a direct consequence of democracy.

If you want to stay in power to do the best for your country, even if you want to be the best long-term, you cannot push for very drastic consequences (like China did with the one-child-policy).
Germany should push for harsher sanctions against the Diesel-scandal, just like Italy and France. But these three countries build a lot of Diesel-engines. The whole technology base of these countries profits from Diesel, so no politicial wants to decide something which might kill jobs, which would reduce economic welath, which would cost jobs, which would create disgruntled voters, which would mean someone else wins the next election.
Even if this decision means, that the vehicle companies think they can continue, and will not force the development of alternative propulsion sufficiently, which means that in ten years, foreign vehicle-makers will dominate the market with their electric vehicles, which will mean a much larger loss of jobs here. But that's two-and-a-half election cycles away, and no now-top-politician can expect to be in a position to grab the power then.

Democracy is not a good thing for really severe long-term crisis. It's good for personal freedom, and social equality, but not for problems like alternative energies and climate change.

A benevolent dictatorship would be the option to go for, but these systems have in common that they either collapse (having given the people to much freedom, thus the possibility to rebel), or turned into a strict dictatorship.

But, seeing how certain politician came to power, would you trust any of them to be a benevolent dictator with the best interest of "his people" in mind?
Kingdoms worked astonishingly well in that regard. Social inequality, yes, but the people were rather free under the reigning powers. Also due to a lack of supervision technologies.

The EU revealed that Apple has paid 0,005% taxes in the EU.
That's 50 euro per 1 million euro.

Sometimes, maybe. Many kings had the equivalent of secret police. That was one of the purposes of the Stamp Tax, back in the pre-revolutionary period of American history.

I think the entire population needs to be involved in deciding who is going to rule, otherwise we will just create room for corruption and the general population is likely to grow distrustful of the government.

However, western democracies are deteriorating right now, and one could perhaps argue that things aren't necessarily so much better now than during the reign of a good king.

I have added this to my page about "criteria for a healthy democracy" today:

(https://image.ibb.co/b35i6a/political_advertisements.jpg)

http://www.archania.org/criteria_for_a_healthy_democracy.html (http://www.archania.org/criteria_for_a_healthy_democracy.html)

I have no doubt that our democracy has deteriorated here. Yesterday, I checked for political debate programs broadcasted by our national TV-channel during the 80's and 90's. There were lots of interesting political debates broadcasted then, while political advertisements were illegal here at that time. Now, I can barely find any political debates in our national TV broadcast, while I am flooded with oversimplified stupid political advertisements.

Also, I think people should start to realize that the age of nation states is coming to an end. We are living in an interconnected world today, and we couldn't sit and talk like this with people from all around the world 30 years ago. Traditional TV-broadcasting, radio, and newspapers are losing to the flow of information from Internet. Europeans are becoming increasingly nationalistic, maybe more because of Internet than because of foreigners. People are starting to feel an identity crisis, since their national identities are deteriorating.  Ironically, this tends to make them even more nationalistic, since they are scared of losing their national identities.

A good king, yes. That's the trick. So long as the ruler is good, it's better to give them more power. Once they have more power, precedent is set for them to have a lot of power, and this precedent will apply to the office after the good king has been replaced by someone who can be quite bad at it.

Aristotle had it right - most governments are not very good at what they do, and democracy mostly mitigates the damage while curtailing the best possibilities.

I agree that the 4th estate can be abused to bend it towards kakistocracy.

How well a democracy functions depends a lot on how well educated people are. This is why we need to focus upon education before democracy. Implementing democracies in third world countries, without first educating the people living there, is a bad idea. A much better idea is to only focus upon educating people, and then a functional democracy might emerge almost by itself.

Problem: that sounds really, REALLY patronizing. Because it is. And people don't like that.

If at the educational facility, you also provide free food, lots of people will come, since they want/need food. The educational facility should also provide free medical assistance. That is also likely to increase local popularity.

Western media covering a recent event, combining 2 totally unrelated facts as if they are cause and effect..
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/898080759935848449

CNN journalist reveals that the agency is paid by governments to spread fake news.
http://yournewswire.com/cnn-journalist-governments-pay-us-to-fake-stories-shocking-expose/

What about the credibility of the page you are getting this information from?


https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/YourNewsWire (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/YourNewsWire)

Ouch, looks like I Forgot to fact-check that. Sorry. It was mentioned by a dutch politicologist and historian in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypVZNd_mqNo and I took his word for granted.
It looks like this is another reason for me to have trust issues, :)

It is a strength of character to admit it when we might be mistaken, and a weakness of character to be unable to admit it when we are mistaken.

In this age of Internet and information technology, we should almost always check the credibility of our sources. Especially when controversial claims are made, since they often tend to be based on weak sources.

in this case I was fooled by the status that his job titles bring :).