mass politics being the complex of the public and the media that attempts to steer it, and lately proliferating communications channels attempting to subvert media
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the media was long before facebook optimizing for engagement even if they didn't have the same sense of it, and in fairness a project like this actually would be a Big Deal
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but so many of governance types are status quo-biased status-obsessed incompetents _because_ their inverse see systemic failure and insane media kabuki and decide against
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most smart competent results-oriented future-focused people rightly don't want to be involved in that quagmire because of the problems their presence would be required to solve
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I'm always a bit sad reading code for america testimonials (members of which do seem to be generally smart competent etc)
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because they always amount to "we found this one incredibly fucked up thing and through an enormous amount of fighting bureaucrat intransigence made it measurably less so"
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anyway the only way around the circular dependency I see is:
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a) preference cascade of smart etc people who value reforming the system wholesale deciding there's enough of them to take it over entirely, who b) maintain the attitude the public can go fuck itself
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but I don't think this is likely to happen because the democracy meme is too strong, and what's more probable is at least partial societal collapse in the coming decades
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and a protracted chaos that ends when enough people begin to favor stability over all other terminal values and thus desire to produce a stabilizing force no matter what it is
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I do earnestly believe we are somewhere in the spring and autumn and one of my fondest wishes is, if this is true, to be able to live to see the hundred schools of thought
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End of conversation
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it's worth considering how much effect stirring will have as the public has more access to longer term news and media that dismantles political narratives.
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>more access to longer term news and media that dismantles political narratives sure maybe, but access is not utilization
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it seems clear the public has instead gotten more fragmented, insular, and myopic via social media
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which makes sense, traditional media at its best curates a shared universe and gives marching orders, both things that are healthy for most people
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and a lot of media dysfunction now is them trying to compete in a space they no longer control
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They only had power in the past because of the high barriers to entering the market, which are now almost zero. Opinions are no longer top-down but memetic.
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e.g. value of mainstream media to influence public to see movies has declined as opinions are shared by small groups on social media.
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