h a l f b a k e r yGood ideas at the time.
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Though some meth might feel helpful just about now, this
is more of a basic discussion.
I've come to the conclusion, almost an epiphany, that
politics is not helped by observation. Sausage or meth
making allusions aside, the biderectional feedback loop is
obviously more hurtful than helpful.
Being
that government needs to react to real-time events,
pure isolation from either constituents or news flow does
not appear to be practical.
Since you cannot truly isolate politicians, this idea
proposes the following alternative: perhaps they do not
know they are politicians. Since quantum parallel universe
theory tells us that there is a universe where each one of
us is the President or at least a Congressman, we proceed
on that assumption, and decohere, at some convenient
voting point, on a set of government representatives
which surely does exist in some universe somewhere. No
one knows in advance who they might be, but their vote IS
recorded for posterity, once the probability function has
collapsed.
We then record such vote, and move on.
With the imminent introduction of Lockheed Martin's
fusion reactor, perhaps for version 2.0 we can actually let
people move into a universe of their liking.
[link]
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We cannot observe the operation of government itself, but
only the operation of government as influenced by our
method of observation. |
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// We cannot observe the operation of government itself, but only the operation of government as influenced by our method of observation. // Yes, when a government operates without observation, it normally becomes corrupt. (Well actually there's no way to know that. Maybe it just becomes corrupt as soon as you start observing after a long period with no observation.) |
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It has been scientifically proven that the Heisenberg
principle of uncertainty, is definitely wrong. |
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Light is simply in a third state changing to particle or
wave according to the observation method and as
doing so, due to influence of the method itself. |
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Yes, but it's such a pretty principle; can't we keep it
anyway? |
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[scad], personally I believe that the method of observation
(CNN, for instance) has some what to do with the
corruption. |
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And I thought the corruption of government was a universal constant. C sub g, we'll call it. |
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The practical fusion reactor has been two years off, for about seventy years, no? |
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That's a pretty messianic level of delayed arrival. |
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Hmm I was expecting something about the makeup of the
cabinet - i.e. You can know that there is someone who
is very
definitely the Minister for Defence, but you can't
know
who they are. Or, you can know the name of a
politician,
but knowing that precludes you from knowing what their
position in government is. I don't know how you'd do
that in practice, but there's something about it
that's
both satisfyingly real, and sinister at the same time. |
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Indeed, WcW, one would only hope Lockheed Martin
would not make such an assertion lightly. |
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Rather than complicate this with physics, we can create a political system whereby the politicians are indeed unaware that they are running things. Casually mention to the electorate (including, if you must, the political class) that from now on governance decisions will be taken by one of a variable number of stylite or cave-bound hermits who are (a) divorced entirely from day to day life (including of the political) are (b) encouraged to engage in fasting, mortification of the flesh and other quasi-trancendental activities to allow them to commune more directly with their core selves. Each decision will be taken by a different monk, with the ordering of questioning being randomized by some to be determined mechanism so as to avoid monk-gaming by lobbyist types and other untrusworthies. At the same time as the policy decision is asked of monk A, all other monks are asked a vaguely koany question, so that they aren't left out. Monkhood is open to all but government questionising permitted only after 2 years on the pillar. |
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^^^ translation: put the justiciary in charge. |
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Stephenson uses monks in Anathem -- more as a way
to encourage long term thinking than necessarily
dealing with corruption. |
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I should probably read some science fiction, as I keep
repeating ideas that crop up in it (but what fun is
there in reading things that run simpatico with your
usual thought patterns?). Still, monkly interference
in politics is not itself a new idea (e.g. Père Joseph)
so I needn't feel bad about being behind NS and PJ. |
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//The Heisenberg Political Principle// There's a bit
of a paradox here. It is known with certainty that,
even when you're not watching them, they're up to
no good. |
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Hmm, an interesting conundrum, but since new
information is not communicated, neither causality
nor relativity appear to be violated. |
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//It has been scientifically proven that the
Heisenberg principle of uncertainty, is definitely
wrong.// |
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When/where? I don't find any evidence this is true. |
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That's because you can't disprove something that isn't fact.
It's not the Heisenberg Uncertainty Law. It's not even a
theory. It's really more of a suggestion. |
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People like to rip on Heisenberg. I guess it's fashionable to
pretend you're smarter than somebody who was smarter
than you. Personally I think the guy contributed more to
the world than we'll ever know simply by convincing all of
Nazi Germany's physicists to feign incompetence when
Hitler told them to build an atomic bomb. |
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