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Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox web browser and other open source projects, has announced its Mozilla Information Trust Initiative. This initiative involves Mozilla "developing products, research, and communities to battle information pollution and so-called 'fake news' online."
Although the announcement from Mozilla claims that the "spread of misinformation violates nearly every tenet of the Mozilla Manifesto", this initiative does raise some concerning questions. Should a web browser vendor be actively patrolling content on the web? Is such patrolling of content harmful to a truly open web? Is this merely the first step toward web browsers censoring or controlling the dissemination of information available on the web? Would the resources expended on this initiative be better spent improving the performance and efficiency of Firefox?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:25AM (3 children)
I'm so glad that I've never donated any money to Mozilla. This is the sort of activity I would never want to financially support in any way. Seeing how they've ruined Firefox's user experience for me lately is bad enough. But this initiative is just too much for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:05PM (2 children)
100% depends on how they go about it. I read the article, it is very light on details so it is impossible to say at this point. However, they do bring up that technological solutions won't fix the problem so they're working on educational initiatives and resources. As long as they don't put censorship by default into the browser then this is a good thing, not bad. Parental controls have been around forever, no one complains about the censorship those apply because they are optional.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:07PM (1 child)
This sounds like it could be Step 1 of such a plan. You can't integrate something like this into Firefox until it exists. But once it does exist then it's easy to integrate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:12PM
We are always one step away from fascism. There are a lot of things that worry me more than this move, Mozilla is not a monopoly by any means, if you want to worry about dystopuan information control than look no further than everyone's favorite browser from their favorite government proxy.
(Score: 4, Troll) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:26AM (14 children)
This is a demonstration of the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence. The more an organization is infected with Social Justice Warriors the more the resources of the organization shift to Social Justice to the exclusion of whatever original purpose the organization had. Eventually the goals of the organization formally change. We now see this terminal stage in Moz Corp. They aren't very interested in building a better browser since that doesn't advance the cause of Social Justice.
No, they will not change course, no they can't be saved. History records no organization that recovered from an infection of SJWs.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:39AM
How much longer will Mozilla survive? I recall them signing a 5 year search deal with Yahoo at the end of 2014. So they've only got a couple more years left on that. Is Yahoo in a position to continue that deal? I'm not sure, but I'd be skeptical, especially with Firefox's share of the market down into the low single digits now. Will Google sign another deal with them? I doubt that that would happen. So I'm skeptical that they'll have a source of funding by early 2020. None of their other projects have made much of a splash. Firefox OS and Persona went nowhere. Rust and Servo seem to have stalled. Thunderbird and SeaMonkey are slowly dying off. Bugzilla is pretty much dead. Things aren't looking good for Firefox, especially with the WebExtensions stuff that's coming up. At this point I'm feeling very uneasy about Mozilla's future. I don't think that this initiative will help out at all, too!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:45AM (1 child)
I think that this is even worse than the "moz://a" branding idiocy. I didn't think we'd see anything dumber than that, but I think this might just be something dumber!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @12:32PM
Then you clearly didn't see the alternative logos that were suggested at the time.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:09AM (2 children)
[The Encryption! It does nothing!] Begin report to Central Hive Mind, Social Justice Warrior Special jmorris Elite Monitoring Team. He's on to us! Repeat!! We have been detected! jmorris can see us, in normal light wavelengths, and has uncovered teh Mozilla Operation! Evasive Maneuver Pattern Janeway Delta!! *^$%
Second in command, here. Leader has been given a sedative. Please disregard his report, as it is obviously incorrect. jmorris could not possibly have detected us, because we do not exist, and there is no such thing as a SJW, they only exist in the minds of nearly insane right-wing nut-job crack-pots, like jmorris. We will continue to monitor the subject. Lt. Francis, SJWSjEMT, [Encryption not required, since we do not exist.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:12AM (1 child)
Huh???
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:14AM
[ n\\\ f\crption ztemmp on agaaaaaain] Second in command, still in command, Special Social Justice Warrior Surveillance Squad, reporting to Big Giant Head. We found another one. Start tracking this AC by his IP address, the MAC address of his modem, or other internet device, or from Microsoft's generous and expansive database of ACs who post on SoylentNews. His naivete does make him a potential target for Radicalization. Soon he could believe that being a racist, sexist, homophobic ass is actually how either Moses/Jesus/or Mohammed wants him to live his live. But really, this is only because his response to jmorris being tagged, is "huh?" What kind of idiot responds to the SJW Special Squad monitoring jmorris with "Huh?"? I feel his mind going. "Daisy, daisy, tell me your feelings true. I'm half crazy, sniffing the jmorris glue!" These are the ones we have to watch out for, the young, the naive, the disenfranchised, the mighty buzzards. Further reports will be made once the commanding officer regains consciousness. Lt. Francis saying: don't touch my stuff, or I will kill you. [ntp////: overtime iuptime code rejected, insecure]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:47PM (7 children)
The more an organization is infected with Social Justice Warriors
Why are you against Justice?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)
Cause then he would have to get along with trannies, non-white people, and all sorts of "deplorables" that remind him of his "personal demons".
(Score: 2) by chromas on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:06PM
Wait but Deplorables are all non-minority wypipo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @09:43PM (4 children)
Justice != Social Justice, they are almost antonyms in fact. When you are Rewarded and punished for what you do or do not you are receiving justice, Social Justice is rewarding and punishing you based on what you based on the unchangeable things that you ARE.
I'd like to recommend you read Dr. Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice (no link, no endorsement of one retailer over another. Pick your preferred vendor and format. And can I put in a plug here for checking your public library for a copy? K, PSA done.) It is a short read and you won't be confused anymore about these issues afterward.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:07PM
And I recommend you Dr. Adolf's Mein Kampf. It's the favorite of RWNJs everywhere.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:26PM (2 children)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] gives a good explanation. Social justice is not punishing someone because of what they have no control of. Saying "social justice" is the exact opposite is like calling homosexuals "gay"; half have attempted suicide and that sure doesn't sound very happy and carefree to me.
When you use a word like "social justice" make sure it means what you think it means.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday August 14 2017, @12:40AM (1 child)
The Three Laws of SJW:
1. SJWs Always Lie
2. SJWs Always Double Down
3. SJWs Always Project
Wikipedia is a totally converged institution so you are reading what the SJWs proclaim their external definition of the term to be. But they always lie so ignore what they say and look at what they do. What they do is identity politics, affirmative action, bigotry based on race, gender, national origin, religion, politics, etc. They want to reward / punish based on what you are, agreeing with them gets you some points but rapidly decreasing of late.
And even the propaganda at Wikipedia gives a lotof hints as to the politics it is associated with. Bentham is the proto Prog Burke faced off against, Rawls is a Communist. The U.N. is a Parliament of Tyrants, mostly of the Communist bent. The Methodist Church was part of the "Social Gospel" movement which was clearly a Communist front and I don't think I'm saying anything controversial if I say the Catholic Church has fallen when they elect a Red Pope. The See Also section is a rogues gallery of bad ideas and institutions.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @02:10PM
Wikipedia gives the same definition as Google. And with #1, are you suggesting that out Liar in Chief is a SJW?? It looks to me that you're talking about the alt-righ, not the SJWs.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:29AM (8 children)
Not sure this is completely related, but I've often thought it would be interesting to build a bayesian classifier into a browser plugin that lets me select objectionable text and mark it as offensive, then the plugin would learn over time and gray out such text. What each user chooses as offensive would differ widely, but for me I'd like to gray out crap/hateful comments so I can spend more time on thoughtful comments. Obviously this could lead to a sort of "filter bubble" if not used properly, so it would be important not to consider well thought out alternative points of view as objectionable. Just to help filter out the web's gutter content.
As far as detecting what is true and what isn't, I'm not sure that's a solvable problem. Even relying on crowd sourcing will lead to floods of people with an agenda thwarting the ideas of others. Machines aren't smart enough to know what's true/false, either (despite claims to the contrary, I have yet to be convinced that they can).
A good start would be holding journalists to a higher standard with their investigations and fact verification.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:39AM (5 children)
Filter bubble? You mean echo chamber right? Where you seldom is heard a discouraging word, and your screen is all cloudy each day.
The best filter you can find is a skeptical mind. Train that to spot bullshit and it serves you for the rest of your life.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @03:52PM (4 children)
You're right, but my mind is not helped by reading any post that ever contains racial slurs, and I'm sure I could come up with some other phrases that are 99.9% accurate about the commenter being a bigoted piece of crap. You can call it an echo chamber if you want, but the upshot is that I'll only read opinions from people who aren't a human wasteland. If anything I might be friendlier to other opinions if I don't see them constantly paired with hate and bigotry.
As long as I can control the filters I would appreciate such tech.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:45PM (3 children)
Says the guy posting AC so that the hate he spews never sticks to him....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:10PM
Different AC here. The name "frojack" on a comment is just as meaningless to me as the name "Anonymous Coward" is. As far as I'm concerned, they're effectively the same. I don't care what you said in the past. It's what you're saying now that matters. And it's making you look like a fool!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:13PM (1 child)
Lol, you call my post hateful? You're a moron, there is a real insult. Since you're such a conservative blow hard all the time I presume you're reacting as if I would only censor conservatives. Not true at all, there are plenty of hateful bigoted liberals who have zero clue they are what they hate, and those would get filtered out just the same.
As for posting AC, gimme a break. I switched to AC so I could get a better clue about what my comments are actually worth. No username politics, no assumed agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:11PM
Not having a name tag confuses authoritarians, they don't know whether you're a friend or a foe. To them the author is the message.
http://theauthoritarians.org/ [theauthoritarians.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:43AM (1 child)
If you limit your exposure to information like that, well, you might as well just not bother reading anything at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:19AM
Some Soylentils have already taken this step. You can tell 'cause their writing and spelling and grammaring ain't too hot.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:31AM (9 children)
I wonder how they would have handled the reporting of the Brendan Eich incident a few years ago. Would any article pointing out that it's wrong for somebody to lose their job just because of their beliefs have been classified as "misinformation" just because it didn't toe the Mozilla line?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:26AM (8 children)
The issue with Eich wasn't the political view ITSELF, it was the fact that he had providing funding on such a level that it was legally a matter of public record.
It would be akin to a Catholic Priest putting 2k or 10k or whatever down for pro-abortion legislation. Would he still have a job with the Church? Same deal with Mozilla and its Pro-Liberal inclusive LGBT stance. Having him as a president with that publicly available background tarnished the social image they were going for. People pretend like conservatives have never done this to liberals in a similiar position.
Having said that: I believe, much like people haven't been doing with social networking, that people need to keep in mind the social consequences when financially supporting those views in a manner that is required to be public record. At that point the cat is out of the bag and whether you are a liberal or a conservative or a moderate you *WILL* be villified by whichever sides vehemently disagree with you. And whatever anyone wants to say, there are plenty of places where your views might get you killed, whether you're white or black, liberal or conservative, or even in some cases of indeterminate ethnicity or moderate politics.
America isn't all that and your side is no more justified than the other. Deal with it.
Last thing: Fucking up royally has been Mozilla's thing since they were still Netscape pre-AOL. While all these social initiatives are dumb, don't forget about the technical decisions people financially supports that let them reach this point: Abandoning the original C browser/build environment to replace the entire UI with Javascript. The 3-5 years it took them to make said browser run fast enough to be usable on a medium to low end computer. The abandonment of Mozilla Suite for Phoenix(eventually Firefox, which if I remember correctly was native GTK without the XUL toolchain until they usurped it from its original developer when it became a Mozilla project... Hint: It wasn't originally a Mozilla project.) Then after sort of 'righting the ship' between 0.5 and the 3 series, the clusterfuck of changes made after Firefox 3.5-3.6 which was when Firefox finally reached feature parity with other browsers, had massive adoption over IE6 which wasn't standards conformant, and had a UI that was fast, responsive, generally well liked among users, and similiar enough to older Netscape suite browsers/IE that anyone could use it. This mess has been a long time coming and the other way it will be resolved is to let the Mozilla Foundation die and have it replaced with new non-profits supporting forks, which based on the past 15 years, isn't going to happen, leaving us with kde's webkit fork, blink or whatever the replacement chrome engine is, and edge if you're on windows. Yay for the open source movement failing to innovate! Or fork.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:18AM (5 children)
So there an opening for a new browser built on the original C browser/build environment using GTK?
Oh and the feature fix list is long by now.
The $$ questions is how to fund it or who will sponsor..
(Score: 2) by chromas on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:18PM (4 children)
It's so old now, you're probably better off starting from scratch. I doubt ol' Phoenix could handle the 1.21 jiggabytes of javascript every page imports now. But it sure would be nice.
Unfortunately, 100% of all modern browsers that aren't Firefox or IE are all Chromium forks. Boo. When Opera dumped its code to make a Chromium fork, some of the devs left to make their own Chromium fork (Vivaldi). When Brendan Eich left Mozilla, he started up his own...Chromium fork (Brave). Boo.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:53PM (3 children)
So which open source (Unix) browser is the best now in your opinion?
What would be the best starting point for a new browsing project that aims to beat the others? should it use C? C++? JS? Objective-C/Swift/C#? what rendering engine or make a new one?
One approach would be to simply strip a lot of webmonkey stuff such that the complexity and resource requirements are reduced. I tested this using a greasemonkey like proxy. It works very well.
I'll sure would like to see a more sane program language than Javaterror.
Not sure if CSS and other slap on are good or bad as a concept.
The browser could sure use a "Browser process XX uses jiggabytes of memory - want to KILL it like yesterday NOW?" ;)
(Score: 2) by chromas on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:02AM (2 children)
Emacs. :D
Also, it'd be cool to get more people onto Pale Moon development. It's effectively a fork of Firefox without the ui and extension shenanigans, but I think it's got very few people behind it at the moment.
It would also be nice if people would quit trying to turn web browsers into operating systems.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:12AM (1 child)
Web pages with some runnable code are good for when say you want to have a page where you can input some parameters and have the formula output without consulting the server of the page. Faster response and less load. Same goes for say vector browsing of mapping applications etc. Or realtime display of cameras or control loop setups.
Thus code has it uses. I can see that. The problem is moron webmonkeys have gotten in a position to make decisions they are neither qualified for and have perverted incentives to fuckup.
And javascript sucks as a language. I'm less sure how much javacode sucks. It can be used to say build a interactive vector map browser. A lot less messy than building something that has to be installed on the client computer.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:39AM
Sure, well there's no law saying the script language has to be javascript—in fact, there's a parameter just for specifying the type—it's just that most browsers only support js. You don't even need to have the server return html.
Imagine clicking a gmail shortcut and getting a qml file that represents a Qt application which appears on the desktop like any other program (but you can see the source because it's not compiled). Then it could use javscript or python or whatever to handle events and stuff. Or even a compiled language if you want something good. No reason it couldn't be done, other than using a web browser as an SDK is cool while using an SDK as an SDK is lame and oldschool and $other_buzzword.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:05PM (1 child)
Would he have lost his job had he donated to, say, some pro-gay-marriage cause instead? Probably not. He probably would have been lauded and celebrated by lefties.
But in reality he donated to a cause that these crazed lefties disagree with, so they rabidly attacked him because he held the "wrong" opinion.
He was a victim of lefty intolerance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @03:58PM
At least he didn't end up hanging from a tree... Look to your own problems first, stop racial violence and then you can get on your high horse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:47AM (7 children)
I predict a fork:
1. Firefox, Black Lives Matter edition
2. SiegHeilFox
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:55AM (6 children)
I cringe at the thought of how they would have classified the initial Michael Brown Incident news reports!
Many of the early reports painted Brown as the victim, and the police officer as the aggressor.
Although intelligent people knew the initial reporting was questionable right away, it eventually became undeniable to everyone else once the store video footage of him was released, along with the rest of the grand jury findings.
It was obvious that Brown was the aggressor, and that he attacked not only the store clerk, but also the police officer. The police officer clearly acted in self defense.
Would Mozilla classify the initial reports that portrayed Brown as the "victim" as being "fake news"?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:14AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:50AM (2 children)
Not flamebait, racist dog-whistle flamebait. Go home, whitey! You forgot to say "thug". (And, this is why we cannot have white supremacy, white folks just be dumb racists!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:01PM
The Michael Brown Incident was not about race. If he were white and the police officer who was attacked was black, it would still have been justifiable self defense on the part of the police officer. That goes for any other combination of races you can think of.
And, yes, he should have been called a "thug", based on his repeated, unjustifiably violent behavior. That label would also apply regardless of his race.
You're trying to make this into a matter of race, when race is totally irrelevant to it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:26PM
Eat a big black cock, and you'll feel better. Yo mama eating a big white cock right now, because she already feels good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:09AM (1 child)
Not like racists?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:56AM
This poster is going for fork #2: SeigHeilFox!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:49AM (8 children)
I've used Firefox for a long time, but after learning about this I don't want to use Firefox any more. Other Firefox users should feel the same, I expect.
What browser should we switch to?
Chromium?
Vivaldi?
Brave?
Pale Moon didn't support macOS when I last checked, so it's not an option for a lot of us.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:34AM (6 children)
Personally, I primarily use Slimjet [slimjet.com] these days. It's a fork of Chromium, with some modifications including better built-in tracking protection [slimjet.com].
Now, it's not perfect. It's not open source for one. But it's the best I've been able to find for every day use.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:40AM (5 children)
Being closed source is a deal breaker for me, unfortunately. It's also why I won't use Vivaldi or Opera.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:24AM (4 children)
Vivaldi is closed source?
It's built on top of chromium which is all open source.
Even the the add on layer is viewable Java.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:17AM (2 children)
Silently adding this to my list of things that frojack doesn't know. Could come in handy some day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:28PM (1 child)
Be silent then, bitch!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:02PM
Wakakakakakakka
Look at this tough guy, bitch don't make me call your mom and get your juicebox privileges revoked!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:25PM
I don't give a fuck if Vivaldi uses open source software. I require the entire thing to be open source. I want to be able to inspect every single line of code that might execute on my system. I want to be able to compile a full build of the browser myself. If I can't do any of that, then I don't give a fuck what product we're talking about, it's not open source.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:26AM
Demands:
* Open source (preferably free)
* Works on Unix
And due to the ever creepier subversion attempts by state actors and what not. Source code or no trust at all.
Mozilla needs a serious fork() so they can feel all that free market cosyness.. Because the leaches won't leave voluntarily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:57AM (3 children)
As the Russia/Trump apologists & bots seem riled up...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:04AM (2 children)
I identify as a socialist, and I supported Bernie, but even I can't agree with what Mozilla is doing here. This transcends politics. It's just creepy, in my opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @12:42PM (1 child)
Is it more or less creepy than Google (vendor of the main competition to Firefox) doing the same thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:23PM
Mozilla should strive to be the best, not just slightly better than the worst.
(Score: 4, Touché) by coolgopher on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:22AM (1 child)
Mozilla and trust. In the same sentence. Trust Mozilla. Yeah... no. It's been downhill since early/mid firefox days as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I'm still using firefox, but only through inertia, and it's likely to change any month now when they scrap plugin compatibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @10:23AM
A thousand times THIS
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:58AM (1 child)
Hey mozilla if you are reading this. Drop that shit off in the bin next to your desk. No, really, stop. Go make a kick ass web browser. Be at the forefront of making the web awesome. Policing the internet will go about as well as your phone initiative and will end up the same. You are wasting your time on it. Whoever came up with this silly idea should be made to lick envelopes for fund raising until they quit. As it has NOTHING to do with your browser. You have lost focus. You will waste money and time on it. You can not control the internet. You can merely make it better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @09:10PM
why can't you fucking idiots just make a browser? you think you have so much money you can start all these dumb ass initiatives? the list of shit that is stuck in "development" is so long it's not funny. you don't have time for this asinine shit!
(Score: 1) by crafoo on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:16PM (9 children)
It's quite strange that a group of software developers building an information-viewing application think they should be engaging activity to filter information. Calling ideas they disagree with "information pollution" doesn't help. We do not need software "mommies and dadies" categorizing, filtering, and endorsing ideas for us. Adults are fully equipped to do this for themselves: critical thinking skills, understanding of statistics, math, and science.
Incidentally, yes, someone without these mental skills is not an adult. Our university campuses are indeed churning out mentally retarded children by the millions.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:52PM (7 children)
I see you've been uninfected by Facebook. Some of the unbelievable shit people fall for, like "on [date] Mars will appear larger than the moon, or on April 20 the moon will turn green. Most people are REALLY gullible.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @08:03PM (6 children)
You have seen the base problem, now face the implications. If so many people will fall for such easy things, imagine how easy it was for the The Party to spin out The Narrative, carefully interlocked across platforms; news, entertainment, pop culture, education, etc. Doesn't it make you feel like you are in safe hands? For no matter how much effort you put into being informed and voting wisely based on that effort, your voice is going to be drowned out by those same "marching morons" from Facebook; Facebook just lets YOU see. Mozilla, along with the rest of the SJWs are only mad that others have butted into their efforts at herding the morons and most important that they are being herded to different political ends.
Universal franchise democracy is the root of almost every problem we are facing in the world now. Yet almost everyone has a faith in it that exceeds any level of religiosity outside the Islamic world... who believes democracy is wicked. Even a stopped clock and all that?
One King / Dictator or even ruling committee was proven defective and deadly in the 20th Century, looks like the 21st is shaping up as the one where we finally run the Democracy experiment to destruction enough times we finally admit that everyone voting only gives different failure modes, usually leading right back to Socialism and a Dictator. The American Founding Fathers designed us a Constitutional Republic in the belief it had sufficient design safeguards to prevent a collapse into the universal franchise democracy they could see was fatal from both their history books and the live example playing out in France. It failed to escape the cycle of history.
We need to be thinking of alternatives because it is clear America as it exists can't blunder along much longer without a major collapse. Rotating back to a dictator would be lame now that we finally understand the cyclic nature of history, and we understand the root causes [anonymousconservative.com] that drive it, we should be able to reason ourselves off this treadmill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @08:42PM (1 child)
It is strange to see crazies like yourself actually believe your opinions reflect the majority. Keep that head in the sand jmo!! Not to mention the conservative agenda is way more guilty of your accusations, but being a partisan hack you can't see/admit that.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @09:33PM
Reading is fundamental.
I wrote a post explicitly denouncing running things based on the opinions of the majority. Denouncing the concept of Democracy itself in no uncertain terms. Wow. Just wow.
And if you read my posting history you will know my equal disdain for Conservatism. It can't win because winning is explicitly forbidden by Conservative doctrine. Read Kirk's The Conservative Mind and it is laid bare, from Burke to Reagan, Conservative thought holds that having a goal is not Conservative, only reacting against Progressivism to retard its march is proper. The Alt-Right is the only Right that fights. It is the only Right that can win because it is the only one that WANTS to win, the only one that is even trying to define a goal to fight FOR.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:00AM
What do you think about the Switzerland Federal Constitution with the options for voting directly on specific issues?
The failure mode of current system seems to be partly rooted in lack of education of power issues and subversive media.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:23AM (2 children)
I think democracy *could* work. But not in its current form, that is evident around the world by now. The key to making democracy work is education. Real education - critical thinking on top of a broad knowledgebase, rooted in practical experience and observation. Only when people can see our career politicians and their parties for what they really are, can democracy again become to be for the people, by the people. Of course, having at least one side of politics constantly undermining education funding seriously acts against that ideal, and the reasoning is obvious.
Short term progression after indirect democracy? I'd be willing to attempt random appointment from the full citizen base. You know, like jury duty. In all their ignorance (including mine), I'm pretty confident they would not do a worse job *for the country*.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:30AM (1 child)
Universal franchise democracy (i.e. everyone votes) could only work at Lake Wobegone, where all the kids are above average. The problem really is that bad. Almost by definition most people in society are going to be "Have Nots" while only a few will be "Haves" so unless you can think out the long term problems and have the time preference to postpone gratification of desires, the idea of voting to seize and redisribute wealth is going to be a winner. Socialism makes sense, as it is the enlightened self interested move, from a game theory perspective unless you are capable of thinking long term and postponing gratification to an extent not typically seen. Most people are, by definition, on or close enough to the middle to not matter for this discussion, the left side of the Bell Curve and inability to think long term, desire for instant gratification and other negative traits will cluster on the left side, as those traits are generally what relegate one to the "Have Not" status.
If you use a population of humans as they actually exist, you will fail with democracy. Even if you buy the worst of the "race realist" theories and build a "White Utopia" it fails, because it failed. America had already ceased to be a Constitutional Republic before blacks or any significant numbers of other "non-Europeans" were voting in numbers that mattered. Without the black / brown "coalition of the ascendant" base of the current Democratic Party they would be farther from their Final Solution but the Progressives achieved all of the preconditions for the final collapse to Socialism except universal healthcare around the turn of the 20th Century with a very monochrome voting population.
Unless you have a way to restrict the franchise to the right side of the Bell Curve without quickly failing into an Oligarchy, we are still looking for a government model that could work. "Could work" being defined for my purpose as "without an obvious defect and likely failure mode."
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday August 13 2017, @07:21AM
Aye, there be a reason why the call democracy the worst form of government, except for all the others.
I really wish I had a solution, but short of everyone being a lot smarter, more engaged and less self-serving, the most efficient and able-to-progress-humanity form of governance does seem to be the benevolent dictator. Ironically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:23PM
You say
yet how do you explain the Orange One in the White House? People just are incredibly stupid, however sad that fact may be.