Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Starver]

Even better if there was some way of putting up someone like a live-signer/interpreter beside (and perhaps slightly behind) them on the dais who could solely provide instantaneous PolitiFact-like assessments.

Why not just skip the voters entirely and have a council of technocrats pick the president?  If they can judge the objective truth on behalf of people they are basically picking the winner anyway.

I don't say remove voter choice, just don't have them choosing based upon potentially obvious lies.

(At least encourage inventiveness.)

[mainiac]

I don't say remove voter choice, just don't have them choosing based upon potentially obvious lies.

If Kevin Drum is judging the lies, Hillary Clinton is an honest politician and Trump is the most dishonest man ever to run for office in america.  If Stephan Banner is judging the lies, Hillary Clinton is the most dishonest person in history and Trump tells nothing but the truth.  If Paul Krugman is judging the lies, the math checks out on Hillary's policy proposals but Trumps proposals have no resemblance to reality.  If Stephen Moore is judging the lies, Trump is a long overdue dose of reality and Clinton's ideas are based on theories made up to justify what she wants.

There isn't a magic device you can use to say truth and lies.  At the end of the day you are just asking a supposed "expert" what they think about a persons honesty or dishonesty.  And the supposed experts suck as much at judging honesty as anything else.  There has probably never been a better contrast between a dishonest and honest candidate then Bush and Gore and the media was passionate that Bush was the honest one.

Voters are responsible for their own votes.  That is the only way democracy can work.  The media can provide them with information but the voters have to figure things out.

[Max™]

I gotta say Onion, I'm disappointed. Dry humping a Seth McFarlane gag to rip on Nebraska is pretty weak for the US' preeminent satire news rag.

I'm disappointed you think McFarlane came up with that, really. I certainly didn't get the idea to use "Nebrahomansasotawaniana" from him, just lumping all those bland featureless plains into a bland featureless plane of eldritch horror. That was a thing long before Seth was born.

[Starver]

There isn't a magic device you can use to say truth and lies.

(I'll watch that link when I can get the bandwidth to do so...)

Hence:

I am convinced that semi-live fact-checking would he useful, if impractical.

But professional panel, perhaps? Mix of judges appointed by various authorities (parties, non-political representative groups, media experts, other relevent experts), each with a buzzer/dial, like a simultaneous (pauseless) version of Just A Minute. The panel's results (amount of Falsehood Buzzering or relative twist of the False/True dial) appear on-screen, accumulatively. A partisan panel-member's overly partisan opinion (positive or negative) can be seen, so blatant full-approval or full-disapproval outliers make themselves obvious, encouraging a more thoughtful discrimination than merely holding their own party line, regardless.

A post-event tribunal provides a more carefully consensus opinion. Panelists can confirm or reverse their opinions, according to how they think their original 'commentary' still stands up. A further whole follow-up broadcast could be a phone-in/twitterati-fest to let the public judge the judges to get a feel of the vocal majority (or hyper-vocal minority) and their own response to the panelist responses (both immediate and considered). To which the public will again want to make their views known, naturally.  Each level of opinion moderates every other level of opinion.  Ground can be stood, or given, by any or all participants ("Last time I addressed you, I said FOO. And I'm here to say that I (still think FOO|forgot to qualify FOO properly|did not properly say what I meant by FOO|see that I was misinformed about FOO|find that the circumstances bejind FOO have changed), and here is why...") and archive material can now be played overlaid with hindsight annotations ("Her health later deteriorated", "He later revealed he was being funded by foriegn loans", "Their opponent was later exonerated of all such charges.", "This promise was never fulfilled during the subsequent one and a half Presidential terms served.") of uncontestable facts, just for lulz...

Or something...

[NullForceOmega]

While turning the US elections into more of a game show would likely be very amusing, I can only imagine that it would end badly, with corruption so rampant that the system would be even better armored against attempts to change the status quo.

[RedKing]

Voters are responsible for their own votes.  That is the only way democracy can work.  The media can provide them with information but the voters have to figure things out.

But as you point out, that information is entirely dependent upon the media source. Voters are basically a machine: information goes in, votes comes out. Control the inputs, and you control the output.


Are "learned men" a better source than the media? I don't know. I'll grant that experts can be biased, but it feels like the media is beyond simple bias or ideology to the point of being actual mouthpieces of the political parties.

And there's the separate issue of media self-selection. If all you read is Breitbart and Drudge, you're unlikely to be voting for Clinton, and it doesn't mean that you're a bad person for doing so -- you've been told that Clinton has a shadowy plan to suck the lifeblood out of America's babies, while Trump spends all his time between rallies personally rescuing kittens from trees. Voting Trump seems like a rational decision when the informational inputs you're getting are so skewed out of reality. I'm really not sure what the answer for that is.

[Starver]

Remove all doubt and possible misconceptions on those two issues by pre-emptively and publicly killing all kittens and babies.

[NullForceOmega]

Remove all doubt and possible misconceptions on those two issues by pre-emptively and publicly killing all kittens politicians and babies pundits.

ftfy

[WealthyRadish]

Voters are responsible for their own votes.  That is the only way democracy can work.  The media can provide them with information but the voters have to figure things out.

But as you point out, that information is entirely dependent upon the media source. Voters are basically a machine: information goes in, votes comes out. Control the inputs, and you control the output.


Are "learned men" a better source than the media? I don't know. I'll grant that experts can be biased, but it feels like the media is beyond simple bias or ideology to the point of being actual mouthpieces of the political parties.

And there's the separate issue of media self-selection. If all you read is Breitbart and Drudge, you're unlikely to be voting for Clinton, and it doesn't mean that you're a bad person for doing so -- you've been told that Clinton has a shadowy plan to suck the lifeblood out of America's babies, while Trump spends all his time between rallies personally rescuing kittens from trees. Voting Trump seems like a rational decision when the informational inputs you're getting are so skewed out of reality. I'm really not sure what the answer for that is.

I'd say the other major consideration is the principles that a person develops before and after exposure to media, giving some frame of reference to consider the media critically from. Ideally a person would consider a piece's validity first by using "logical" principles before assessing whether they agree with it, but the natural reaction is to skip that and consider whether the piece aligns with their "moral" principles first.

I think the most important skill a person can develop in this modern age of media is the ability to distinguish those two types of principles both in yourself and others, since there aren't really any sources that aren't heavily biased. Everybody has things that they believe in a "moral" sense that can't or haven't been proved to them definitively with logic and sound evidence, but just because somebody is professing those same principles isn't enough to agree with them if their argument isn't sound. Now that literally any batshit worldview under the sun has an echo chamber somewhere to enjoy without confrontation, it's now an important distinction.

[mainiac]

But professional panel, perhaps? Mix of judges appointed by various authorities (parties, non-political representative groups, media experts, other relevent experts), each with a buzzer/dial, like a simultaneous (pauseless) version of Just A Minute. The panel's results (amount of Falsehood Buzzering or relative twist of the False/True dial) appear on-screen, accumulatively. A partisan panel-member's overly partisan opinion (positive or negative) can be seen, so blatant full-approval or full-disapproval outliers make themselves obvious, encouraging a more thoughtful discrimination than merely holding their own party line, regardless.

Look at congress.  Republicans discovered that when they purged the moderates from their ranks the voters blamed democrats.  Every issue turned into "all the republicans and a few democrats vs just democrats".  People didn't blame the republicans, they thought the democrats were being stubborn because even members of their own party didn't agree with them.  So then of course the democrats purged all moderates from their ranks as well and we got the happy situation where congress has an 11% approval rating.

A post-event tribunal provides a more carefully consensus opinion.

We already have those.  And they're shit.  It's the same spin process you get any other time except a bit faster.

Voters are basically a machine: information goes in, votes comes out. Control the inputs, and you control the output.

Sure, William Blake, the whole world is just thoughts and colors made up of chemicals.  So why are you arguing this in favor of creating a new technocratic elite?  You are just giving a select group control over the information.  It's the same problem that moral philosphers have butted their heads against since the dawn of history.  You are just defining some "merit" (good choices perhaps?) by some idealized standard (people get their fact checks).  But even in your idealized creation it's just the same problem once removed.  Before you had an unachievable merit.  Now you have an unachievable standard to achieve that merit.  Turtles watching the watchmen all the way down.

[Rolepgeek]

I mean, you say that, mainiac, but the more oversight, the better countries tend to do. While there is always the risk of failure or corruption, there's a reason why the USA prospered and the USSR didn't.

I'm personally in favor of changing the media and political systems, rather than creating a oligarchical commission. If you can change the way voters are presented with information to be more robust, honest, and even-handed (and yes, I do believe in the idea of objective truth, even if it's hard to find, so don't bother with that front), then you can probably make some significant strides. Same if you can get something like ranked election voting so that it's not about just a plurality of diehard supporters. Get rid of gerrymandering, put restrictions on lobbying (an investment into politics should not have a return rate in the tens of thousands, period)(don't get rid of it though it does have a fairly important role, though I'd really like for it be via a different means, perhaps), term limits on Congressmen (maybe like four terms for Senators, six for Representatives?), I don't even know if I care what the first-past-the-post system is replaced with.

I remember there once was a law about needing to provide news coverage, or in a certain way, or something, which networks usually wouldn't provide because they were a money sink. But Reagan got rid of it (most regulations that once existed and are now gone seem like Reagan got rid of 'em, good and bad alike). :/

[nenjin]

I gotta say Onion, I'm disappointed. Dry humping a Seth McFarlane gag to rip on Nebraska is pretty weak for the US' preeminent satire news rag.

I'm disappointed you think McFarlane came up with that, really. I certainly didn't get the idea to use "Nebrahomansasotawaniana" from him, just lumping all those bland featureless plains into a bland featureless plane of eldritch horror. That was a thing long before Seth was born.

I meant going at Corn as the only way to make fun of Nebraska. That usually tells me no one has really even tried.

[RedKing]

Sure, William Blake, the whole world is just thoughts and colors made up of chemicals.  So why are you arguing this in favor of creating a new technocratic elite?  You are just giving a select group control over the information.  It's the same problem that moral philosphers have butted their heads against since the dawn of history.  You are just defining some "merit" (good choices perhaps?) by some idealized standard (people get their fact checks).  But even in your idealized creation it's just the same problem once removed.  Before you had an unachievable merit.  Now you have an unachievable standard to achieve that merit.  Turtles watching the watchmen all the way down.

True, but the alternative would appear to be just "say whatever it takes to get people to agree with you, regardless of how false". Which is the current situation.
You're basically invoking moral relativism and saying that since no one's truth is objective, it's a free-for-all and whoever can lie and flatter the best deserves to be President.

[Helgoland]

He's assuming that the citizens are actually capable themselves (to a degree) of telling true from false, right from wrong, and that taking that decision out of their hands is inherently authoritarian.

A caricature would be: mainiac believes in the clear-minded citoyen, you believe in the bourgeois that's been given a ballot.

[Dorsidwarf]

I gotta say Onion, I'm disappointed. Dry humping a Seth McFarlane gag to rip on Nebraska is pretty weak for the US' preeminent satire news rag.

I'm disappointed you think McFarlane came up with that, really. I certainly didn't get the idea to use "Nebrahomansasotawaniana" from him, just lumping all those bland featureless plains into a bland featureless plane of eldritch horror. That was a thing long before Seth was born.

I meant going at Corn as the only way to make fun of Nebraska. That usually tells me no one has really even tried.

Trying to make fun of Nebraska is like trying to sit down at the end of a long and tiring day.