The Witches: Salem, 1692 | Hacker News Reader

The Witches: Salem, 1692

nytimes.com

22 pointspepys6 comments

I can't help but think politics whenever I read an article like this. Invariably, I always end up at the same place: Human governance structures are complicated.

On one hand, we have Winston Churchill: 'The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter'.

On the other hand, it feels like an unalienable right of a human to have equal say with their peers on decisions effecting the community.

And after considering both, my mind wanders to type 1 and type 2 errors. Humans can be savages. I find solace in a system that minimizes persecution of innocents - even if solely through bureaucracy that cools tempers through inefficiency.

These aren't easy questions. I feel like the ease and speed of the dissemination of information has fundamentally shifted the inputs to the info-political balance in a way which we, as a society, haven't yet accounted and balanced the system for.

Voters are constantly bombarded with soundbites, ads, opinion pieces posing as news... what's the use of a representative republic when engineered information can be disseminated as broadly and quickly as it is now?

The use, as it always was, is knowledge and judgment. But now more than ever, inundated with "news", meticulously crafted and expediently delivered with intent to obscure and persuade for one side or another.. we need to be able to vote for a representative whose opinions and judgement we trust.

....

Human governance structures are complicated.

Went to Salem for the haunted happenings this weekend and found Strandbeests: http://pem.org/sites/strandbeest/the_exhibition/ (Peabody Essex Museum is right on the Mall).

http://www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/strong-haunted-happ...

For all you hear about the Salem Witch Trials, it was a surprise when I found out that the total number of people who wound up killed was only nineteen. The amount of emphasis put on this one event, compared to many others long forgotten, is surprising.

Is it just the fact that people have been finding the Salem witch trials a convenient narrative to hang their contemporary political points off for the last 300 years?

"Witch hunting" (used in the metaphorical sense of "us" versus "them") goes back much farther than Salem. However, it's the most cited example that gets dragged up in discussions and leads people to think it's the first case of it. None of that is new to Western Civilization though. Many cases, religion was only the pretext for some monetary or status gain by the accuser, but if you look deeper into the Salem Witch Trials, the same goes for them as well.

Reformation and Counter Reformation had Protestants and Catholics killing and accusing each other in some of the bloodiest wars of Europe of the time[1].

Middle ages had it with Heretics, Jews, Muslims and sometimes even Roman Catholic versus Orthodox Catholic all accusing and killing each other.

Early Christianity, there was pagans versus non-pagans[2] as well as the various sects of Christianity denouncing each other[3][4].

Could go back further, but I think that's enough examples :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism

And if you want examples from today:

[1] http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/seven-accused-afr...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/opinion/the-persecution-of...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_witch-hunts

The US Guantánamo atrocities: our very own witch trials.

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