Technocracy is stupid, and just serves tech elites. Thankfully, there is a scientific political system out there called Scientific Socialism. It ruthlessly criticizes the world to find the best way to advance the interests of the great masses of people. It analyses the movement of history and society to make it develope smoothly. It studies its own struggle to make it be more effectively. However, it is not against democracy, but rather in favor of a truer democracy of the working class. Liberal democracy is simply the ruling class making up differences and fighting each other for show. In China they have a far better democracy without such fighting, and instead have tons of dialogue and study.
Scientific socialism sounds like the way to go, but don’t act like China is a democracy.
China is by no means perfect, but far more democratic than the US “beacon of democracy” ever was. There’s a reason over 90% are happy with their government. https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#is-china-a-democracy
They are also a good example of the practice of scientific socialism. They’ve extensively studied the Soviet Union as to avoid their mistakes. They also study the contradictions of their society to develop harmonically. I recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: a Foreigner’s Guide.
Both Russia and China are authoritarian. 90% are happy with the government in the same way that 86% voted for Putin.
It’s fake numbers.
Authoritarian is a nonsense term. You said you support socialism right? It cannot exist without capitalists feeling and being vocal about their oppression. All the media portrays China as evil because they are the antithesis of our sick society.
“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part…” - Fredrick Engels
Alright, let me say it differently.
China is a one party system. The party elects its leader themselves. There’s no choice. There’s no other direction. And when they censor things heavily, they also control the narrative.
China doesn’t perform well on living standard. Too many homeless and a great part of the population lives in poverty.
Work week is 6 days a week and 12 hours a day.
There’s not one thing China is the best at when it comes to welfare and living standards.
So no, it’s by no means a great example.
You did not look at the resources I sent lmao. Do you have any sources for your claims?
China is a one party system.
False. Even Wikipedia can debunk your claims. There are nine parties in China, which work together in consultation on policy. Boer has a whole chapter on this. There is no requirement of party membership for running in elections and they have tons of elections. The reason they don’t have a bunch of spectacle where people pretend they hate each other and the president is whomever can procure the most money and be the most charismatic like the US is because they manage their contradictions non-antagonistically (another thing Boer talks about).
China doesn’t perform well on living standard.
A laughable statement. China is doing better than the US. But, the US has centuries of imperialism it benefits from, so why compare it to China, when India is more comparable and has 7 years lower life expectancy.
Too many homeless and a great part of the population lives in poverty.
Of all the things to accuse China of, that is not it.
Work week is 6 days a week and 12 hours a day.
You really need to source these claims. Anyway, labor rights are increasing year by year. They a whole lot better than other countries with large manufacturing industry.
There’s not one thing China is the best at when it comes to welfare and living standards.
My shock when a country that’s less than a 100 years out of its century of humiliation isn’t the absolute best at everything.
So no, it’s by no means a great example.
Eliminating poverty, , leading the world by far in technological innovation, and being the largest economy not too long after being a feudal backwater without colonies isn’t exemplary?
Fake numbers about a US enemy from harvard? Shouldn’t we be hearing about the 10% who didn’t like the government being punished if there actually is coercion?
A clear indicator that I reached the bottom of the community
Bottom? This is par for the course.
It would stop being science very very quickly, and just be “hey girl, heard you want your son to attend the “control group” school”.
From that one sentence a horrifying distopian sci fi unfolded in my brain.
What democracy has to do with science?
What does that even mean? Do you mean the methodology? Its not meant for decision making, its made to determine the nature of things.
- It’s* not meant for
- it’s* made to
Should we replace bees with mathematics? Those two aren’t exactly valid substitutes for each other.
Really we should just replace mathematics with bees. I can’t think of a problem that can’t be solved with more bees.
Honey’s nice
I’m thinking Snoop Dogg - Drop It Lik It’s Hot
But everytime he says “pop/drop it like it’s hot” it should instead be “add a swarm of bees”How would you be able to tell there are more bees without mathematics?
Easy, more bees
Absolutely
You add some, then you know for sure.
I would much rather this than OP’s proposal.
Ooh look the monkeys like that one.
Think of them as 2 methods for determining policy. Sorry for the confusion.
Science has no goal. It cannot determine policy. It can tell you how certain policies may affect certain metrics, but it matters who decides what metrics matter ie. do we care if people have food, or if line go up.
Assume that we’ve got self-evident goals. Maximization of health, happiness, security…
Self evident to whom? We are ruled by ghouls who care more about profit than people’s lives. Shouldn’t it be “self-evident” to Biden that committing genocide is bad? Shouldn’t it be “self-evident” that corporations shouldn’t be getting away after poisoning millions of people? Shouldn’t it be “self evident” that if people work all day their wages should be enough to allow them to live decently?
These things may obviously be good, but it won’t be done until we have a system that puts people over profit.
Jeez, soapbox much?
Yes, I think that a sane, self-aware, scientifically-rigorous system would choose public health over that bad stuff you mentioned.
Like The Federation in Star Trek.
Star Trek has an economic system, it’s not run “on science.” Star Trek is functionally fully automated luxury communism. Under capitalism we have the technology to have no scarcity, but that’s not profitable, so capitalists create scarcity by destroying excess product and not giving it to those in need. In Star Trek they have a duplicator thing so no one is in need and no one can make a profit. It is a communist utopia. If you want to see a rational society that implements policy for scientifically planned good look at China. Their ultimate goal is communism, but today for now their achievements include lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty, heavily subsidizing green technology allowing it to be cheap and accessible, and lifting people’s living standards so that the life expectancy is higher the wealthy western countries.
But does it have a voting system?
Because I don’t recall seeing any voting booths in the Enterprise.
Think of them as 2 methods for determining policy
They’re not though.
Democracy is a strategy some states use to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. Science is a method for producing knowledge.
Policy is determined by the financial interests of our elites, our global imperial interests, and the form of our bureaucratic institutions.
Democracy, science and policy are three very distinct domains.
They’re also spelled differently, aha!
@spiderwort could you give me some concrete examples. I can see it with a few things but not others. How does science determine:
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abortion laws
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your nation’s stance on Israel
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marriage’s effect on taxes
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individual custody disputes
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animal cruelty laws
Observe, model, propose policies… run simulations even
Plain ol science
I’m trying to keep an open mind here but so far, you’re being too vague to be persuasive.
Observe what exactly?
Model what?
Propose what kind of policies based on what assumptions and which goals?
Obviously I know what science is. I just don’t see how it applies here.
Observe what exactly? If you’re designing an experiment you know what results you’re interested in and what implications the research has.
Seriously, pick one thing from my list above and talk me through how you would use pure science to formulate policy?
-
So like philosopher kings?
I was thinking straight up science.
Given these observations, and this bit of sound reasoning, we concluse that these policies should be implemented.
No voting required.
You forget a piece: “Given these observations, these objectives, and this bit of sound reasoning, …”
Without objectives, no amount of reasoning will tell you what to do. Who sets the objectives?
Science has brought us some rather advanced artificial intelligence that can do many amazing things.
It can model extremely complex protein chains, yet can’t even render a hand properly and doesn’t even comprehend how people consume nutrients.
You really wanna leave all the decisions up to science and technology?
Well that’s the question.
Voting means lots of dummies, a sea of propaganda… Bad stuff there too.
While I can agree that dummies shouldn’t be allowed to vote, how would/could/should we go about designing a proper voter verification program that more or less eliminates the actual dummies/sheeple?
But I don’t think taking the voter factor completely out of the equation in favor of pure raw science is the answer either.
If you leave everything to science, then science would say the world is overpopulated and we should eliminate half or more of the population…
I read a short story where they took a humane approach to population reduction.
An engineered disease. A short fever and then your uterus stops working. 95% effective.
Rioting. All scientists hung. But the world was better.
You must be really fun at parties…
/s
Ah yes, forced sterilization. Very humane.
That’s called fascism. You read a fascist fan-fic. I guarantee the people who were forcefully sterilized wouldn’t agree that the world was better.
It’s called science fiction you gibbering philistine.
No. The problem with science is that in part it relies on trial and error. That could get messy on a societal level. We should utilize observation with scientific methods to inform our decisions. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t do that currently and scientific data results can also be manipulated to fulfill an agenda.
Democracy could be said to work on trial an error too, just with human factors thrown into the mix?
A very good point.
We have good models that offer up good decisions, so why put it to the vote?
Base our policy on tested models. Audit our reasoning thoroughly. Be rational.
Vs consult the masses, 99% of whom don’t even understand the question.
Seems like a no brainer
What models are you suggesting we use that are making these good decisions?
You’re using a lot of very general language throughout this thread. We need some elaboration. Otherwise it’s just “we should be logical and stuff.”
Well in your scenario who will implement this? Furthermore, what is the goal that you’re trying to engineer with a science based government? Is it personal happiness, population numbers, the production of capital, or to indoctrinate the masses to serve the state? Are you going to justify the use of eugenics? What happens when goals conflict or individuals don’t want to participate in experiments? What if the science you’re implementing has different philosophies or different schools of thought? How do you determine what is the optimal method?
Elaborate?
Two methods for determining policy.
We vote.
We do science.
Should we switch to the latter?
How about the current system where we vote and do science?
99% of the voters wouldn’t know science if it bit them on the butt
You make a good case for your own argument.
Well somebody’s got to.
I mean, trying to prove your own theory by being the perfect case study seems a little extreme…
Sounds like a wildly unscientific statement, considering e.g ~10% of the US population works in STEM.
That doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, strangely enough.
Or, maybe we already do 100% science. It’s just that the agenda isn’t precisely popular. And the voting is just for show.
Science is an empirical method of finding fact.
Government is a philosophical method of seeking truth.
You are being pretty incoherent.
How does science determine the order initiatives are addressed?
Well first we would change beans into peas.
The rest is trivial.
Under representative democracy, policies are not defined by voting. Representatives are voted in, to make the decision. They supposed to make decisions based on facts (including scientific facts) and interests of the constituents. In order to do that, institutions are created, such is bureaucracy, executive branch, committees, etc., those will employ scientists as needed. But a policy can not be made just by scientists. Climatologists can not make policy about climate change, for example, because those should rely on many aspects, including economics, security, international relationships and even internal politics (different states have different needs).
I think a better term to use would be “fact-based policy.” I believe that even if we intended to rework politics to be more scientific, it would just lead to all the same manipulations and twisting of facts that current politics involves. Don’t like a particular scientific consensus because it interferes with your goals? Hire a bunch of “think-tanks” to publish contradictory papers. Hah, guess what, that’s where we already are.
Did you see the movie, Divergent?
I don’t think I did. Good and relevant?
Yes it is. Dystopian society divided into classes, erudite, dauntless, abnegation, candor, amity.
You had me at dystopian
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https://www.piped.video/watch?v=dTRKCXC0JFg
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c/iamverysmart c/iamaclosetfascist
He’s barely in the closet:
https://lemm.ee/comment/11377393
I read a short story where they took a humane approach to population reduction.
An engineered disease. A short fever and then your uterus stops working. 95% effective.
Rioting. All scientists hung. But the world was better.
You remind me of a religious fundamentalist encountering his first plate of spaghetti.
Cause advocating genocide through forced sterilization is somehow laudable?
I should mention many Utopian Socialists wanted scientists to rule society, but their dreams failed and were coopted. They didn’t understand the class character of the state.
Well you’d just have to convince the upper class that science is their friend. Which is arguably what we have.
Science is their friend. Companies pay people to make studies that make their dangerous products look good. Think tanks run studies to figure out how to keep the economy growing at the expense of working people.
Science tells us how to achieve objectives, democracy what our objectives should be. (obviously this doesn’t always work perfectly in practice).
OP’s just ignoring every comment that points this out.
It’s a dumb point. Basically fanfic/dogmatism processed through a child’s brain. I’d really rather spend my attention on something better
It’s amazing how small the 99% is. Narrow and shallow. I am re-astonished every time I come here. It’s like the zombie apocalypse happened and nobody noticed.
Would you like to explain how choosing an objective is fanfic/dogmatism? This is what everyone cares about. You’re not going to convince anyone to change to a different system by ignoring the thing they want.
