<story><title>The great British Brexit robbery</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>candiodari</author><text>The point of democracy is the implicit threat: if you, as a leader of the country, mess up the lives of the people you govern, you&amp;#x27;ll get kicked out. Aside from that, democracy has mostly negative&lt;p&gt;This prevents the situation from getting out of hand before it completely descends into violence.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s it. That&amp;#x27;s the sum total of what democracy gets us.&lt;p&gt;Analyzing critical ideas is not now, and wasn&amp;#x27;t ever part of the democratic process. Cicero was complaining about citizen&amp;#x27;s lack of analyzing critical ideas (except when directly hurting them in the wallet) in 70 BC. You can read about leaders from the French revolution lamenting the same, and even in cases where only limited self government exists, like today in Bahrain, you find most analysts complaining that the large majority of the people who have influence (usually local landowners) do not think critically at all.&lt;p&gt;What has happened is simple: the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn&amp;#x27;t get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people&amp;#x27;s lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. So they were voted out.&lt;p&gt;Now you can argue that they were right, that it wasn&amp;#x27;t their fault that this happened, and I might even agree with you. But as the government, I do understand, this is not good enough.</text></item><item><author>kristianc</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s really scary about these recent developments is that we&amp;#x27;re losing the ability to critically analyze the ideas and arguments that are being used to influence people.&lt;p&gt;Back in the days of network TV, you might not agree with everything that was being said, but you could at least see the arguments that were being used to convince others.&lt;p&gt;Even the early so-called behaviour change campaigns, such as &amp;#x27;Five a Day&amp;#x27; (a marketing campaign that most didn&amp;#x27;t realize was a marketing campaign that has long since been accepted as a piece of general health advice) were quite benign.&lt;p&gt;Here it seems that an influence &amp;#x2F; behaviour change campaign could be waged relatively cheaply against a relatively small number of people, exist completely outside the normal rules for fact checking  or veracity, and the majority of the population would have no idea about it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure I agree with the thesis of the piece - that Cambridge Analytica played even a primary role in Brexit happening (I think it was always pretty likely, due to UK tabloids having campaigned for around 20 years on the issue, lack of organization in the Remain campaign, Corbyn failure to engage working class voters etc, hell even a latent feeling that the EU maybe isn&amp;#x27;t that great after all), but the techniques for doing this will only become more sophisticated and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised to see them become a common feature of our democracy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;gt; the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn&amp;#x27;t get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people&amp;#x27;s lives worse in a very concrete and visible way.&lt;p&gt;Are you thinking of Greece here?&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;imposed austerity&amp;quot; was purely the choice of the Conservative government in the UK, and the &amp;quot;concessions&amp;quot; demanded seemed to be an end to freedom of movement, which was always a non-starter &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; wouldn&amp;#x27;t make the lives of Brits better in any discernable way.&lt;p&gt;What has happened is simple: there has long been a war inside the Conservative party between the pro-EU side and the anti-EU side. Cameron hoped that calling a referendum and deploying &amp;quot;project Fear&amp;quot; which had won the Scottish indyref would settle the question. Unfortunetely he&amp;#x27;d misunderstood the Scottish result and Project Fear was hugely counter-productive.&lt;p&gt;This is why UKIP have ceased to exist in the council elections: they&amp;#x27;re now in control of the Conservative party.&lt;p&gt;(I mean, if &lt;i&gt;I&lt;/i&gt; wanted to make a case against the EU, I&amp;#x27;d do it on the basis of how Greece was treated - but even Greece didn&amp;#x27;t choose to leave, as they recognised that it would make them even worse off economically. UK anti-Europeanism seems to be built around a mixture of desire to deport foreigners, &amp;quot;bendy bananas&amp;quot; lies promulgated by Boris, and hatred of the metric system)</text></comment>
<story><title>The great British Brexit robbery</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>candiodari</author><text>The point of democracy is the implicit threat: if you, as a leader of the country, mess up the lives of the people you govern, you&amp;#x27;ll get kicked out. Aside from that, democracy has mostly negative&lt;p&gt;This prevents the situation from getting out of hand before it completely descends into violence.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s it. That&amp;#x27;s the sum total of what democracy gets us.&lt;p&gt;Analyzing critical ideas is not now, and wasn&amp;#x27;t ever part of the democratic process. Cicero was complaining about citizen&amp;#x27;s lack of analyzing critical ideas (except when directly hurting them in the wallet) in 70 BC. You can read about leaders from the French revolution lamenting the same, and even in cases where only limited self government exists, like today in Bahrain, you find most analysts complaining that the large majority of the people who have influence (usually local landowners) do not think critically at all.&lt;p&gt;What has happened is simple: the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn&amp;#x27;t get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people&amp;#x27;s lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. So they were voted out.&lt;p&gt;Now you can argue that they were right, that it wasn&amp;#x27;t their fault that this happened, and I might even agree with you. But as the government, I do understand, this is not good enough.</text></item><item><author>kristianc</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s really scary about these recent developments is that we&amp;#x27;re losing the ability to critically analyze the ideas and arguments that are being used to influence people.&lt;p&gt;Back in the days of network TV, you might not agree with everything that was being said, but you could at least see the arguments that were being used to convince others.&lt;p&gt;Even the early so-called behaviour change campaigns, such as &amp;#x27;Five a Day&amp;#x27; (a marketing campaign that most didn&amp;#x27;t realize was a marketing campaign that has long since been accepted as a piece of general health advice) were quite benign.&lt;p&gt;Here it seems that an influence &amp;#x2F; behaviour change campaign could be waged relatively cheaply against a relatively small number of people, exist completely outside the normal rules for fact checking  or veracity, and the majority of the population would have no idea about it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure I agree with the thesis of the piece - that Cambridge Analytica played even a primary role in Brexit happening (I think it was always pretty likely, due to UK tabloids having campaigned for around 20 years on the issue, lack of organization in the Remain campaign, Corbyn failure to engage working class voters etc, hell even a latent feeling that the EU maybe isn&amp;#x27;t that great after all), but the techniques for doing this will only become more sophisticated and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised to see them become a common feature of our democracy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kristianc</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s interesting - as Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and Mill (On Liberty) argued precisely that it was civil society and discourse that help us protect against a tyranny of the majority.&lt;p&gt;And that generally what separates &amp;#x27;democratizing&amp;#x27; nations from &amp;#x27;democracies&amp;#x27; is that one simply has democratic institutions such as voting, and the other has a culture of democratic decision making, civil discourse etc etc to go with it. Iraq may have elections and be able to kick out its leaders but it sure isn&amp;#x27;t a democracy in the same way Britain and the United States are.&lt;p&gt;Now its not a &amp;#x27;the people are stupid&amp;#x27; argument that I&amp;#x27;m making - there have been people throughout history who have contended that we take a too simplistic view of affairs. Fine, blah, I&amp;#x27;m sure they do, and I&amp;#x27;m happy to accept there are people who don&amp;#x27;t reason critically on both sides and there&amp;#x27;s no reason to think one side has a monopoly on those.&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;m saying is that we can&amp;#x27;t fairly determine the information that is being seeded to all parties. It&amp;#x27;s the equivalent of someone turning up to lots of Tocqueville&amp;#x27;s town hall meetings and distributing pamphlets biased to one side to people who look like they&amp;#x27;re from a certain socioeconomic background as they walk in.&lt;p&gt;There is something that happened in Britain in the last five years that merits explanation. A population which according to Eurobarometer 2010 data, only five years ago was 45% Pro-EU and 33% anti voted 52% to 48% to Leave when the government of the day, international instutitions, and all major political parties were arguing that we should stay. This, in Britain, a country not generally known for upending its whole political system on a whim.&lt;p&gt;Now you can pin the explanation for that on whatever you want (and I happen to think your austerity theory has something in it), but it&amp;#x27;s reasonable to think in a democracy that we should be able to have a discussion (or at least know about) the factors that swayed people.</text></comment>