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What is your most controversial opinion?
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, "trust me bro" is not a valid argument.
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Representative Democracies have failed (are failing) like all other political ruling systems have failed so far. Some failed just faster than others that failed more catastrophically while some fail silently (agonizing). In the end all systems failed.
Is your argument only that democratic republics will fail? Are you arguing that it would be better to implement democracy in a different way, or that it should be foregone altogether? I imagine most people would agree that they inevitably fail, but not that there is a better option.
I intentionally wrote: representative democracies. I'm not aware of any ongoing implementation of complete direct democracy, not even in Switzerland so I can't tell for those.
So what's the alternative then? Representative democracies devolve into shit shows given sufficient amount of time. Dictatorships are horrible, council-led states (Sowjet) don't work either... So what's left?
Anarchy doesn't work either...
I believe we must replace leadership with A.I.
The only AI we have currently is taught by what we already do.
That hasn't worked for North America, it's not working in the EU and if I look at South America... no I won't.
Wow there's so much wrong with this:
The concept of a digital data processing machine was made by Charles Babbage, a mathematician from England.
The first phone was constructed by Italian engineer and inventor Antonio Meucci, Bell just got the patent for something that was being "invented" in several forms in previous years.
Karl Benz from Germany invented the automobile but it was already Leonardo Da Vinci who conceived the idea of mechanical vehicles. The French Nicolas Cugnot built the first steam propelled tractor/car in 1769.
The moon might be yours but only because the USA confiscated all the German knowledge about rockets and took the engineers like Wernher von Braun
If the US eliminated starvation is something I can't deny nor confirm but you certainly invented the largest drug abuse crisis (opioids and derivatives) in the history of mankind. Oh and mass imprisonment is also an achievement that probably challenges China or North Korea.
Not sure about the progress aspect there, I have doubts. But one thing I know for sure: The US needs better education, it's horrible how wrong you were.
They were wrong on a few things but I think they have the right idea. If we can agree every form of government will fail eventually, then why wouldn't we focus on simply trying to improve conditions before it fails? We can argue about democracy all day but the best way to actually improve things is by donating or volunteering.
Dear god...please everyone. Understand not all Americans are this dense. And yes, our education system requires serious overhaul.
You must be a parody account or on a rolling level like Borat/AliG.
Not my cup of tea, have a good day sir.
I don't think it's representative democracy that is the problem per se. That said i would take your hypothetical 51% taking from the 49% over the current practical reality of the 1% voting to take from the 99%
My brother, gestures broadly at the world behind him i cannot fathom where you are getting this idea.
But i do agree that I'm getting very hungry
The current system persists because most people are happy enough not to complain. And the current wave of democratic backsliding is arguably caused by people becoming unhappier, and trying to fix that by voting for far-right candidates/parties.
Remember Brexit? 51% vote for one thing, suddenly the entire economic situation goes to shit, without consulting experts, union leaders, economists, diplomats, anyone. Just "yea sounds good let's leave this shit". That is what direct democracy is.
What representative democracy seeks to do is the exact opposite: the agonizingly slow parliamentary processes, coalition politics, political pandering, social dialogue, and general unwillingness to do anything rash is the entire point. It makes democracies stable. That's their whole job. To provide a stable, predictable political environment in which people and businesses can thrive.
Autocracies scare businesses away because every time a ruler dies or is deposed, there is a high likelihood of deep political troubles. Even during the ruler's lifetime, there is a higher likelihood that he will do something rash (say, invade Ukraine) and then refuse to acknowledge mistakes because an autocratic political apparatus just doesn't tend to reward honesty. Democracies can make mistakes as well, but every election cycle gives everyone an opportunity to change direction without losing face. And the balance of powers ensures that, if a mistake is made, it probably isn't a catastrophic one.
Now democracies can be too slow to change sometimes. They may be too meek to appropriately deal with an expansionist autocratic state (see: WWII). Some (e.g. France, the US) have "fixed" this issue by giving a lot more power and flexibility to the Executive branch of power. It's a hard balancing act, because while the advantages to "reactivity" are obvious, it also concentrates power in a way that makes it easier for a wannabe autocrat to hijack.
Furthermore reality isn't so black&white. There are as many democratic systems as there are democracies. Switzerland has some direct democracy. Some countries (Germany, the Netherlands) are way more parliamentary than others (the US). Lots of Democratic countries have strong social safety nets to ensure that, literally, people don't go hungry (if your idea of a "socialist" country is Canada, know that Canada is a mere starting point for social-democracy). Voting systems greatly affect democratic outcomes (ranked choice FTW). Unions and citizen involvement makes social democracies work. Many democracies are experimenting with modern methods of citizen involvement, for instance I personally like the idea randomly selecting a diverse section of the population to study a subject, consult experts, and draft propositions to be voted on; it removes a lot of the "useless" aspects of ministerial politics.
51% rule is a symptom of the voting system, not the divide between populations.
I would wager the actual divides on topics are in much different ratios when you can vote how you like without disadvantaging yourself.
How would you change the voting system in case of a referendum? It was the easiest possible case, for or against. There's no advantage to voting "for" when you're against or vice-versa. You could require a supermajority, but on which basis? Because you don't like the outcome? Setting arbitrary thresholds would just be indirect democracy with extra steps.
Now of course the UK should get rid of FPTP in favor of another voting system, but that doesn't have anything to do with the referendum.
Wow, that is unpopular. I've been campaigning against republics for a long time, but I've never seen anyone agree.
Nowadays you can cause riots by saying: Humans come in XY and XX chromosomes by genetic program, the correct expression of this genetic program leads to male or female genitalia and there's currently no medical or surgical procedure to change that, no matter how much you insist. So that was one notch less controversial.
You can't cause riots by saying that. Obviously you can't literally change your dna. No one is trying to do that. What people are saying, is that gender, while related to sex, isn't the same thing as sex. The meaning of the word is basically category, and if you look at other cultures, they often have more than 2 genders, and they are not related to or are only partially related to sex. That's what people mean when they say gender is a social construct. Trans people are truly changing genders, not sexes. That's why the term "transgender" is used.
Sounds to me like they are recognizing the issue that gender is a construct, and making the issue worse by enforcing more made up social boxes to stuff things into, instead of recognizing and accepting the realities of sex and disrespecting gender as the oppressive tool it is. Just like how non-binary people who submit to their specific place in the trans story are enforcing the idea of two main boxes they fit between. I think the misstep in most languages development that pushed sex information/assumptions into pronouns has made it harder to think of things logically now. Someones genetic configuration have no relevance to the vast majority of communications. Unfortunately, I think this has cause bad people to enforce oppression and impacted peo people to create more fantasy that modifies the issue but doesn't help it. I personally think the biggest danger in trans led communications is a lack of focus on looking to accept yourself as a physical being and disrespect what people expect from that, as a first step anyways. I think more steps beyond that are certainly good for some people. I think that sounds of the things trans people are advocating for is great for humans, but only because they're the quickest way to get a slightly better quality of life using fantasy. I don't know if eradicating the social constrains built into our very languages is as easy as creating fantasy social constraints that give more people more peace. It's a difficult topic in my opinion.
It would be essentially impossible to convince people to just stop using gendered pronouns. Some languages already do this, like Turkish, but it introduces more problems. It becomes much more difficult to differentiate between people in conversation if you use the same pronouns for everyone. People who natively speak Turkish, and other languages like it, learn to structure their sentences in ways that make it clear who they are talking about without the use of gendered pronouns. So not only do you have to convince people to stop using those pronouns, you have to change the way they speak entirely.
I think its a much better idea to have more than 2 genders, maybe 3 or 4, and randomly assign them at birth regardless of sex. This way you could differentiate between people even more effectively as well as remove the social constraints. This would also be extremely difficult and probably impossible to make happen, but I think its ideal.
We assign a random token at birth, that is used purely to identify you in conversations?
That's called a name my homie
Yes, but why would you refer to people by their name every time you mention them? It gets very tedious very fast.
I'm not sure about that. People are conflating sex and gender all the time and this looks even intentional to me just to create more confusion and potential for drama.
If you check pre-millennial definition of gender you see that it was widely used synonymously. The distinction between sex and gender is just a form of newspeak.
The current mainstream teaches that gender expression is constructed and gender typical roles are assigned at birth and by society during infancy. This is utter nonsense, has been debunked over and over again and is still based on John Moneys gender experiments with the Reimer twins.
Gender and sex were used synonymously in this culture because they were effectively synonymous. But, as I have said, other cultures do not necessarily treat them as the same thing.
"The current mainstream teaches that gender expression is constructed and gender typical roles are assigned at birth and by society during infancy. This is utter nonsense". This isn't completely accurate, but it isn't nonsense. Do you think a girl is born with the idea that she should wear dresses and like the color pink? Those aspects of gender are entirely dictated by society.
Science does believe that a perceived gender develops in a child's brain, but as far as I know, its unclear when or how it develops. It could be before birth, or years after. It could be genetic, or come from external influences, or both. What science does know is that if your perceived gender is incongruent with your sex, it can cause gender dysphoria. The way to treat it is to transition to your perceived gender.
No, science does not believe that. Sociologists with questionable record regarding the validity of their studies believe that, however they do completed forget that humans are not isolated and decoupled from animals.
Males and females are vastly different and there's nothing constructed about this.
Science does not know this. It's a mainstream belief now but not backed up by good data. All we know is that transition does not remediate high suicide rates, despite greater societal acceptance of transgender in general. Some studies even show higher suicide rates after transition, however the datasets are too small and the studies are all biased on way or another. We don't know!
That's one hypothesis. The other one is not to treat it and just wait because a good number of those affected by gender dysphoria turn out to be just gay and very unsure about their sexual orientation. Again: We don't know because data is insufficient.
Based on an unproven hypothesis you want people to transition despite this potentially having devastating results? I would be less sure about this, I have doubts.
What sociologists with a questionable record? Also sociology is a kind of science.
Of course they are, I made no argument they aren't. My point is that many aspects of gender are determined by society. That's why I mentioned dresses and the color pink.
Since when did we know this? In fact I recall it being the exact opposite. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10027312/
edit: I should have mentioned the paper I linked is not definitive by any means, but it strongly suggests a reduction in suicidality following gender affirming healthcare
I sure wouldn't prevent anyone from transitioning, if that is the decision they've made. To many conservatives in my country want to control how people live their lives.