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Comment by anal_reactor | Hacker News Reader

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Your phrasing of the reality of democracy and voting is basically a less-polite version of where political science has been on the topic for 80ish years. The first half or so of that they spent trying to figure out some way that the stupidity and ignorance naturally balances out into… something that’s not scary. Law of averages, wisdom-of-the-crowd sorts of stuff.

They eventually (more or less) gave up, finding all their efforts at comfortable explanations unsupportable. Nope, it’s just luck, momentum, and the difficult of intentionally directing large chaotic systems keeping things tolerably sane. It’s, in fact, very scary and it’s astounding it works at all.

It’s, in fact, very scary and it’s astounding it works at all.

It no longer does. Social media was the tipping point.

Religion wasn't enough to break democracy, newspapers weren't enough, radio wasn't enough, TV was almost enough... but now, with social media as the proverbial last straw, the bug is fully exploited, completely unfixable, and likely fatal.

Oh, I agree. I think it more likely than not that we have invented a combo of technologies that produce an environment in which liberal democracy cannot exist outside maybe smallish countries with tight controls on incoming media from outside (so, also fairly tight foreign capital ownership rules).

The medium is the message, and I think the “message” of the global Web + social media + (now) generative AI may not include liberal democracy.

> turns out, majority of voters are dumb fucks.

In fairness, many people have been working hard for decades to turn as many people into illiterate dumb fucks as possible. We didn't get here accidentally.

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