Deduction - the folly of the many. Power to the people?

March 22, 2020

Let’s begin with me disappointing you. I won’t be arguing the point against democracy. No, sorry, not happening. I’m also not going to try to convince you how Marx was all right and how Socialism will safe us. It won’t and I won’t. Instead I want to look at how democracy is neither right nor wrong, but can be either. Further I’ll have a brief look at when it applies as a concept and when it makes no sense. In spite of that, let’s also shed some light onto how we are fooled in the most remarkably psychopathic way ever: Make people believe it is their choice.

Looking at different nations states in the world we can observe a clear tendency. Any country that has some ambition to compete in the global markets and capitalism in some form, clearly, not arguably, open democracies offer greatest freedom, peace and highest living standards to their citizens. One great exception are the USA. Instead of going into and discussing how and why most states are still extremely coercive and oppressive, which I genuinely, actually believe, let’s establish at least for the purpose of this post, that comparatively, relatively, democratic countries are mostly better to live in. There is much to criticise about say living in Spain, but you might find it easy to agree that compared to living in China or Russia, citizens have greater individual freedom and right, reversely face less oppression and coercion. In another post, I will write more about state coercion and how even in the free-ish western democracies this is problematic also compared to small undeveloped countries.

There exist two great problems with democracy. Maybe, and I’m really not so sure about this, hey are inherent problems or problems of implementation. I tend to think they are inherent, but would struggle to prove my point. But I guess you get the bias. Either way, both problems I want to address appear in that little ingenious Monty Python clip on top.

Problem 1

At least to me, the easier one to see in general and from the clip: In democracy we tend to forget that there are factual truths than one can prove within a certain framework or set of rules/logic that is independent of the person trying to prove it. There is another set of of truth which in this context I regard to be choices. For the latter, to give an example, by deciding to give everyone over the age of 65 retirement money you create a factual truth within the realm you live. This is truth, but truth by choice and vigour, dependent on the person of group of people making that choice. In contrast, th prior way of truth is more to be understood in the Wittgenstein kind of way what you can say you can say for sure (Let’s leave out Goedel, please^^). For instance, in this case I’d be more talking about something like 1 plus 1 makes two (given some assumptions you eventually have to believe and cannot prove, yeah, again let’s not get there). Still point being is that I can prove to you, without making the proof about me, that 1+1=2 is true - even though this is quite a hard proof as it turns out. Yet how would I prove to you that it is right to support people in need (e.g. financially by the state)? As it turns out politics if you ask me is insanely good at creating not only blurred line between these two categories, but to combine arguments and logic from one with those from the other, shake it well, and what comes out is sheer madness. In other words, you can go and have a democratic vote on whether 1 and 1 is 2 or whether 1 and 1 is 3. However, you see where this is going. Even if 99 out of 100 people agree 1 and 1 makes 3, it is sufficient for one person to be rightly sticking with 1 and 1 is 2. In fact, there are two more levels to this. At a first one, one can argue that it is sufficient to be able to proof the 99 people that 1 and 1 cannot be 3 by whatever means. In fact,one can for these type of problems even go as far as saying, there is no point in voting if you have no justification for the options, which brings us to problem two.

Problem 2

Now imagine yourself in a democracy or just some sort of vote among a group of people. If we stick with our example of what is 1 and 1 added together, we run into another problem. What if I were to give you the following two options: Does 1 and 1 make either a) 3 or b) 7. You can of course provide an arbitrary number of extra options that are equally not true. This incredible mindfu** of choices we have to subject ourselves to is what I call with a spectrum of falsehood. \This brain-bender works mainly in two ways. The vile part is that since we have a choice we surely feel like we deserve what we get because we naturally would pick the better choice (whilst being presented with news and images from how crap life can be in other parts of the world). The trick now is actually the second part, and its combination with the first. Provide people with a bunch of options, a spectrum of choice. Now, here is the trick, the choices don’t actually involve very good choices. They consist of a bunch of mixed bags with different levels of goodies and shit of some sort.

IMHO, that is actually a huge part of he problem. It is mixing matters than you can decide on clearly, like what is the result of adding 1 and 1, with matters where you cannot. And in matters where you cannot, there is even various levels of why you cannot. There is the level of (in)decidability, for some questions there simply doesn’t exist an answer, and a level of subjectivity. Shall we paint the house red or green, which is great if you are colorblind, as you either wouldn’t care or it’d drive you mad. To be clear, I’m well aware that on top of these two categories there or problems and questions that are a conglomerate of questions of either.

That, however, a friend described to me as what he sees a problem in everyday life and politics. There are many easy problems that are made difficult and many hard problems that are made easy. In the light of that an extra level of insanity is often added by not separating questions into digestible chunks. In doing so, the sub-problems can and have to often be reformulated. For example, take the premise of human life being indispensable and as a doctor you have vowed to save and protect people’s life and health above all other. Yet someone of unknown origin and without health insurance finds themselves in front of you. Since you cannot follow your normal work contract of doing x and claiming payment y from entity z you find yourself in a dilemma. Interestingly, you not only have the choice to either chose treating person at your expanse and without reimbursement/payment or to reject them. You can also chose to not come to a conclusion for quite some time until problem solves itself or turns into another. That is patient heals on their own accord or person dies whilst you are trying to decide. So what do you decide?

Further, I want to point out the folly of the many and the folly of conviction that partially comes stronger with that. There are numerous examples in mathematics, like the Monty Hall problem , or generally books on topics along those lines, like Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahnemann . The problem I am trying to get at is counter-intuition. We are often convinced or find it sufficient that we feel like things are correct. Don’t get me wrong I’m essentially a Taoist in many ways and think going with the flow and trusting your gut is great. Yet, with many things this doesn’t work and is a pretty bad choice to base a not-so-calm argument with folks on. I’m also not claiming to be always right or have the answers to it all. It’s more about a certain humility we seem to lack as a collective on a daily basis. It is a failure to on the one hand distinguish between and communicate that an opinion is just an opinion not necessarily based on fact but on gut feeling. And on the other hand, it the lack of humility to opt for discussion based on humility instead of argument based on banging heads and smashing opinions against one another’s. Discussion is constructive work. Argument in this case is destructive effort, a matter of dominance.

Lastly, there seems to be a herd stupidity with groups of people. We find great strength and mutual support in collectives sometimes. Yet, Seneca seemed to have a point when advising us to avoid the masses (in the colloseum). Be it football fans or political groups, one thing is clear: It is easy and tempting to leave your own brain and thoughts at home when it’s so easy to simply dance to someone else’s tune. Unfortunately, thinking for oneself is the harder choice to make and still will often proof you a fool, maybe even worse, will proof you wrong without the community around you. At the same time, why does it have to be one or the other?

Well, after all, in terms of politics I must admit: Instead of bashing heads and ideas, I generally think good constructive discussion on individual level is much better than comparing big guns, have the footfolk elect some wank stain representative and administer their wank to the masses. But, I also know we ain’t living in rainbow unicorn heaven. So, maybe as a take away of all the confusion, think of all the time we spend fighting and arguing and working against each other. Just imagine using half of that for something productive. And by productive I’m not talking about making money. I simply mean, lend a hand to someone in need, give someone a hug, have dinner with someone lonely, give someone a lift or help an old person with their shopping.

And before you start running around picking (intellectual) fights with one another, ask yourself whether, you are really sure you are sure.