Compiling a list of the official misinformation from press & state.
- Flu is more serious
- Travel bans are overreacting
- Only Wuhan visitors at risk
- Avoiding handshakes is paranoid
- Virus is contained
- Tests are available
- Masks don't help
What else?
The reason this is important is:
- people who made these mistakes haven't retracted
- indeed, many have pretended they didn't happen
- and are now pushing for censorship of "misinformation"
But without social media, seems clear the US would have been even slower to act.
Official misinformation appears to be international, across Western countries at least. Would appreciate more examples from Spain, Italy, etc before they get memory holed.
We need to document this because the folks that failed are now pushing censorship.
Here is another example. Of course, NYC cases & deaths are now going vertical.
A number of journalists and public health officials across the West were all singing from the same hymnal in February: it’s just a scare, let’s have a parade.
In a 51% democracy you just barely pass the bar, and then assume all will do as you say. They won't.
The ideal is actually a ~100% democracy. An opt-in society, where everyone has chosen to be there. And can leave.
Set aside the question of whether ~100% democracy is practical for a second. (The ~ indicates that 100% is an asymptotic goal, even if not fully achieved.)
Once you agree it is desirable — and morally superior if feasible — then you start thinking about whether we can build it.
The fundamental concept is that democracy is about the *consent of the governed*.
If you have only 51% support, you have the absolute minimum necessary level of consent.
That is, I agree it's not exit *only*. You can't run forever.
But exit can get you to a high ground. You can beat a tactical retreat, to a place where you can speak and act freely, demonstrate a better system, and thereby reform the old.
Thesis: the assembly line trained people for the top-down mass politics of the 1900s.
Today's workplace is network-based. With the crucial exception of China, which still builds things, any viable political ideology will scale up what people are doing on their devices.
Put another way: you don't get communism, fascism, or mid-century democratic capitalism without mass production. Top-down politics pantomimed the assembly line. Centralized states told the masses what to do.
This detailed post by a retired colonel reviews everything from ground forces to air defenses, and concludes that the US military is overmatched against a peer like Russia — especially in its backyard. smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl…
All the observable parts of the American state are failing. That may include the military, and in more places than Afghanistan. And that means updating our mental models.
Autonomous DAO — a group that interacts with a truly self-running smart contract with no admin keys and no CEO
Bureaucratic DAO — a mess of politics
CEO DAO — a single clear leader
Yes, I’m well aware that the A in DAO in theory already stands for “autonomous”, but today’s DAOs mostly aren’t autonomous — so the distinction is worth making.
A non-obvious point is that a single decision maker in a CEO DAO may protect user rights more reliably than the groupthink of a bureaucrat DAO.
No decision makers (autonomous) or one decision maker (CEO) can both be better than a group of decisionmakers (bureaucratic).