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I think you haven't quite reached the core problem. Many programmers understand "the wants and needs of the average human" just fine; that doesn't really cause as severe a problem as you suggest. We support non-programmers and non-experts, and we mostly frown upon people who attack newbies. More generally, beyond programming, we often have decent solutions for political and social issues, usually generated by ignoring the baggage associated with them and just dealing with the actual issues.

The fundamental problem, in my opinion: as programmers, we hold rationality as a core value above most other things. We expect rationality from others, and we cope very badly with irrationality. To the extent programmers manage to understand irrationality at all, we have an almost moral inhibition against exploiting it. That makes us utterly awful at politics, which currently requires expert-level manipulative tactics to deal with the majority of voters, who don't deal with political and social issues in rational ways. Anyone who refuses to use such tactics will lose to those who do.

A political hacker would need to have expert-level skill in rhetoric, not just in rational argument and problem solving. This doesn't seem like an impossible goal, but we first have to understand and accept the fundamental problem, and get over the constraints we've hamstrung ourselves with.

>> That makes us utterly awful at politics

But makes us fairly good activists that don't just use hype but real arguments (and in some cases real action).

Proper activism may not be able to change political scenes all the time, but it does usually leave a dent.

I agree. However, if we could ever manage to master both hype and real arguments and action, we could much more effectively change the world.

> But makes us fairly good activists that don't just use hype but real arguments (and in some cases real action).

You're joking, right?

Programmers, engineeers, scientists all will/do use hype so on.

Disagree? Emacs vs vi. risc vs cisc. There are plenty of examples near our "core" - do you really think that we get better as we get away from that?

To put it succinctly: "Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it."

I agree with it but I'm also inclined to agree with the defeatist attitude the quote represent. Your comment does point out the problem (which is a step in the right direction), but I fear there's no "sustainable in the long run solution" for the problem.

Opinion based news, short attention span, easy consumption of wide array of opinions, consumerism and the resulting sensationalist attention-grabbing behavior of companies/corporates/politicians is disconcerting to common populace and I, very much, count myself in this population. I've been swayed by one or more of these tactics more than I'd like to admit.

Citizens used to be apathetic, will it be better/worse if they become confounded?

> Citizens used to be apathetic, will it be better/worse if they become confounded?

Politics always attempts to confound people who don't subscribe to rational argument; they might as well get confounded in the right direction. This is not WarGames, where "the only winning move is not to play". We lose nothing by trying, and we stand to gain a great deal.

Yeah, but "Opinion based news, short attention span, easy consumption of wide array of opinions, consumerism and the resulting sensationalist attention-grabbing behavior of companies/corporates/politicians" (and of course, social media) is making it so much easier to disorientate general population.

Rationality requires constant introspection and vigilance; the short attention span and sensationalism is making it increasingly difficult. I'm not saying "the only winning move is not to play", I'm wondering, is there a winning move (the defeatist attitude that I alluded to in the previous comment)? Maybe I'm just looking for a quick fix that never exists for any serious problem.

Edit: Sorry if it looks like I'm thinking out loud.

Disruptive tech innovation is pretty much the only hope IMNSHO.

Ie invent something that makes politics irrelevant in some area. This is somewhat happening with education (ie Khan, Codecademy, Stanford, etc), for instance.

>sparking the Wall Street protests ... which have been completely ineffective in getting anything done.

You're thinking in Internet Time. In IRL Time, OWS has accomplished a great deal in terms of shifting the debate. No, the bankers haven't been sent to jail and students are still unemployed. Just yesterday, however, we had Newt Gingrich of all people saying that capitalism shouldn't benefit the few at the expense of the many, and that the reckless pursuit of profit at the expense of people is a perversion of capitalism. Were it not for OWS, we would never be hearing that (and certainly not from Newt).

We technorati tend to be pretty self-effacing, which is usually a good thing. When we ignore our real successes, however, we sell ourselves short and discourage future attempts to change things.

I agree, we're generally pretty bad at convincing people that we're right. We usually adopt the, "I know I'm right, who cares if this idiot agrees" attitude. That said, we've been very successful at empowering others to advance causes. We can acknowledge our failings without ignoring our successes.

Just yesterday, however, we had Newt Gingrich of all people saying that capitalism shouldn't benefit the few at the expense of the many, and that the reckless pursuit of profit at the expense of people is a perversion of capitalism. Were it not for OWS, we would never be hearing that (and certainly not from Newt).

I disagree. I think it only has to do with Romney's status as the front-runner. Romney portrays himself as a businessman that knows how to create jobs. Newt is trying to paint Romney as an 80s-style corporate raider. I am fairly certain OWS has nothing to do with it. If Newt was the front-runner, he wouldn't be bringing it up.

Were it not for OWS, we would never be hearing that (and certainly not from Newt).

Yes, Newt would certainly never advocate for statism over capitalism were it not for OWS.

Not only that, but OWS also caused Newt to advocate in favor of Obama/Romneycare (the individual mandate in particular), lobby on behalf of Fannie Mae, and support redistribution of wealth from the young to the old.

Oh, my mistake - Gingrich did all that other stuff years before OWS.

Gingrich was never a capitalist. He's just a christian nationalist who wants a big government (albeit a big government organized slightly differently). His current position is unsurprising, particularly since it helps him score political points against Romney.

Programmers don't just suck at politics, they tend to be actively apolitical. Or have some kind of abstract view of an ideal system that has more in common with eg Star Trek than real life. Real politics is just too tied to the cool kids in high school and their dynamics for status stratification and meme transmission.

I'm the same way btw so I'm not being holier-than-y'all.

historically true but coding is a much different pursuit than it was a generation ago. the population of programmers is changing from the legacy of i.t. department hermits towards people coding the internet as a means of self expression. as the net becomes indistinguishable from society itself this inevitably leads to politics.

> Programmers suck at politics. Always have, always will. Programmers are so far removed from the wants and needs of the average human we need translators (managers) to even speak with them

My thought exactly. I was going to read the original article but then I saw something about visualising binaries with space-filling curves and read that instead. I think this is one reason programmers suck at politics.