Venkatesh Rao

It seems weird, but Kennedy's "Moon in a decade" was fundamentally more coherent a technical proposal than something like "decarbonize without nuclear energy to hit 50% emissions target by 2030."

So what we're seeing here is a 3-stage process: a) ignore the science/tech that's too hard to explain to voters b) promise them impossible things c) attach unrelated side goals that are possible to achieve but don't actually hit the main goals.

You know what this feels like? It's a "Wall" except with "Science Scare" rather than "Brown Immigrants" as the rallying flag. To the extent the "Science Scare" is real, it's not meaningfully acted upon. To the extent it's an expedient scare, it's a means to other ends :(

If this is the best democracy can do in a world based on really complex technologies and global intertwingling, then I see why many see democracy (and more broadly, the nation state as a problem solving unit) as the problem. Still there's a bit of hope.

First there is hope that it is possible to make the *processes* of democracy more scientifically literate somehow, in ways that are not quite as anemic as having toothless scientific committees "advising" politicians. Can we add more teeth to scientific influence over policy?

Maybe. After all, we ended up in a place where corporations are people, and can influence politics in a very toothy way with money, directly (a condition I am broadly in favor of btw, even if the specific mechanics leave much to be desired...). Perhaps ideas can be people too?

Second, the practice of lumping together popular and unpopular policy pieces was expedient pragmatism in a low-tech world, but in a complex tech world, is suicidal. I don't think there's anything necessarily either "democratic" there or psychologically fundamental.

Not quite sure how you retain a democratic spirit in political processes, but I have a few at least theoretical, spherical-cow ideas. For example, I proposed somewhere once that everybody on the planet should have at least a small fractional vote in all elections.