Brexit: What Is Democracy? | Philosophy Tube

[Music] in 2016 the UK voted to leave the European Union by a narrow margin at time of recording if we don't reach a deal with the EU or do something to stop brexit which could be a second referendum or a general election or just cancel the whole thing then we will crash out with no deal on the 29th of March at 11:00 p.m. today's date of recording is the 27th of February and I believe at the moment the plan is to turn off all the lights in the country and pretend that we're not in the week before the breaks our referendum somebody here on YouTube made a video about it it was just a small little channel presented by some spotty twink with a terrible haircut the brexit campaign likes to talk about sovereignty the idea is that by leaving the EU Britain will have more of it but what is sovereignty I wonder whatever happened to that sweet little boy in that video though the youtuber in question was a little bit unfair to the brexit ears they talked about sovereignty which was a pretty major issue in the run-up to the referendum but they only talked about it in reference to immigration and some of the commenters pointed out that there's actually a little bit more to it than that the desire for more sovereignty needn't be such a terrible thing obviously if it's just code for imprisoning immigrants without trial then something's gone wrong but the desire to have more control over society could be seen as an attempt to extend the spirit of democracy whilst I was criticizing I'd also say that aesthetically this video it's just terrible no costumes no makeup no colored lights you could get away with anything in early 2016 brexit is a useful opportunity to step back and think about democracy although the ancient Greeks are often credited with inventing it they may not actually there is an equally old and venerable history of questioning it so why is democracy a good thing [Music] Plato didn't think so the ancient Greek philosopher famously thought that the ideal society would be run by philosophers oh really Plato you think everything would be great if people just listen to you all the time you'll be starting a youtube channel next it's easy to write him off as being biased but his reasoning was that the exercise of power requires a degree of moral expertise which in his opinion could be taught he thought that the rulers of society should be trained from birth to do the job whereas a democracy favors not necessarily those who are good at governing just those who are good at winning elections Plato was bouncing off this question of what makes a good leader we acknowledge that people can be good or bad leaders in other domains where we don't have elections like business or sports and we acknowledge that you can actually train people to be better leaders you can go on a course and learn how to do it so he's coming at this from a position of saying look maybe an election isn't the cleverest way of finding out who should lead a country unless the only qualification for being the leader of a country that matters is winning an election which is definitely a road you could go down the philosopher John Stuart Mill thought the proper function of a representative government is not to actually lead the nation it's not to be the experts on how to solve everybody's problems it's to invest the experts with the moral authority to act to keep the keys to power on behalf of the people on that understanding moral expertise and training could certainly be helpful but the most important thing is that you win an election so long as that election represents the people's will and we will come back to that in addition we in the 21st century might be a little bit more skeptical about whether educating somebody to be a ruler could ever be fair or unbiased because who gets to decide what the future rulers will be taught is going to hold the real power information is never just neutral because somebody has to arrange it just like I'm not really capable of educating people about brexit in an unbiased way arguably nobody is the information that I put out there comes through one frame and if it gels with yours then great but you might be approaching this whole thing from a completely different [Music] [Music] [Music] in 2016 Paramount Pictures released arrival a science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve based on the short novel story of your life by Ted Chiang 12 alien ships arrive at various locations around Earth they don't attack or make demands they just open the doors and wait for humanity to introduce themselves the problem is nobody can understand the alien language so teams of scientists around the world start trying to communicate with them in a coordinated international effort amy adams plays a linguist called dr. louise banks jeremy renner plays an astrophysicist named Ian Donnelly and Forest Whitaker is the army colonel who recruits them into the American team this isn't going to be a review of the film per se but if you haven't seen it it is pretty good and I'm gonna spoil the ending one of the themes of arrival is communication between different worldviews or frameworks and the possibility of multiple interpretations of the same thing depending on the framework from which somebody is operating we get a great illustration of this in the first 12 minutes and a nice character establishing moment for Louise when Colonel Weber first turns up at her office to ask for her help I'm Colonel GT well we never finally met but two years ago you did some Farsi translation for Army Intelligence made quick work of those inserting videos you made quick work with those insurgents just in case you missed the fact that Louise is approaching things through a different framework than the other characters the film shows us again when we meet Donnelly how did they get here they keep a lot faster than my travel a list of questions that go over starting with a series of just a handshake binary sequence how about we just talk to them before we start throwing math problems at them the US Army builds a temporary military base near where one of the alien ships is parked over rural Montana when Louise first arrived she learns that some people find encountering the aliens such a shock to how they view the world that they become physically and mentally ill nevertheless she and Donnelly begin trying to teach the aliens just enough English to ask the all-important question why are you here just for fun contrast arrival with a 1997 film contact starring Jodie Foster which is also about trying to communicate with aliens and the different frameworks through which people approach the task there it's more about a religious framing versus scientific one and contacts most famous line at the end of the film expresses the idea that maybe there's room for both so beer Mill actually had quite a complex relationship with democracy on the one hand he was a liberal and an early supporter of women's suffrage he was a utilitarian somebody who thinks that the best course of action is one that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people utilitarianism is an ethical system rather than an explicitly political one but it greatly informed his political work he supported women's suffrage because by extending the right to vote we hopefully make sure that everybody's interests get represented and nobody gets overlooked and that should fingers crossed maximize happiness on the other hand though Mill didn't think that democracy should be extended to barbarous races and naturally he was the one who got to separate the barbarians from the civilized folk so he didn't think that Indians should be allowed to democratically run India for instance until Britain had taught them how to run India properly and again it was the British who were going to make the call about what it is to run a country properly Mill thought that democracy was the best way of ensuring that everybody's interests get a fair shake and one possible response to that which his own attitude towards India karna shows is that it depends on how you do it Mill himself acknowledges that you can have a bad system where not everybody can actually vote and you can still call it democracy ancient Athens birthplace of democracy only men were allowed to vote moreover the ancient Athenians discovered that involving the people in civil proceedings is pretty expensive and one of the major sources of that cash was the Athenian Empire ie all the people outside of Athens who very much had an interest in a stake in what went on there and which way the votes went but who weren't allowed to participate they didn't call it the Athenian Empire though they called it the Delian League which was clever of them you generally don't want to call yourself the Empire openly it's pretty bad optics the Americans don't and their Empire is doing pretty well at the moment sir when we in Britain talk about our democracy inheriting a lot from the ancient Greeks we might be more right than we realize rather like ancient Athens we call what we've got a democracy but let's just pull on that thread Lord Cromer described Britain as a democracy in 1908 despite the fact that half the population couldn't vote because they were women he also praised democracy whilst being the unelected military dictator of Egypt there are still about 90 3000 adult British citizens in the UK today who are not allowed to vote for comparison that's slightly bigger than the average MPs constituency and those people are called prisoners not to mention the several million folks who live here work here fall in love here and whose interests are very much here but who aren't allowed to vote here cuz they are alien when banks and Donnelly enter the spaceship they make contact with two aliens who they nicknamed Abbott and Costello after a pair of comedians whose most famous sketch is specifically about miscommunication and misunderstanding the humans decide to call the alien species hepta pods meaning 7 feet there's some drama around framing when Louise learns that the Chinese team of scientists are using a game of Mahjong to communicate with their hepta pods which could lead them to interpret all the answers they get as being within an aggressive competitive win or lose framing through conversations with Abbott and Costello the team learns that the written version of the alien language is SEM aasaiya graphic it conveys meaning but it does not represent sound like emojis the language is also nonlinear it doesn't have a forwards or backwards Luiz brings up the sapir-whorf hypothesis the idea that the language you use determines how you think determines your framing the strong version is that language determines your framing the weak version is that language influences it this raises the possibility that the hepta pods might perceive even fundamental things like time very differently to humans but Colonel Weber is concerned that the effort to communicate with the aliens is taking so long and that his superiors are starting to worry there might be a threat Luiz tries to explain that they have to take it slow because even small miscommunications at the early stages can lead to big problems later on by saying that when European colonizers first tried to ask Australian Aborigines what the name of the animal is it hops around and carries its young in a pouch the Aborigines said kangaroo and only later did the colonizers discover that kangaroo means I don't understand Colonel Weber takes the point but reminds her what happened next I remember what happened in the aberrations a more advanced race nearly wiped them out again reframing the effort to communicate within the context of competition and aggression Louise then confesses to Donnelly that the story about kangaroo is made up but it proves a point so some people's interests don't get represented even in democracies and another potential problem is turnout the turnout for the brexit referendum was 72% remember that 72% of people who are allowed to vote which may not be the same thing as the number people who should be allowed to vote but regardless there are about 66 million people in the UK and about 47 million registered voters so 47 over 66 that's about 70 1.2 percent of the population who are legally allowed to vote the tenor for the race of referendum was 72% so that's I'm cheating here because I have answers written down 50 1.3 percent of the population who actually voted in the referendum 51.9% of that voted leave which is 51 point three times north point five twenty six point six percent of the population who actually voted leave just to cover the bases remain got forty eight point one percent of the vote so that's 51 four three times more point five eight one which is like twenty four point seven yes twenty four point seven percent of the population who voted remained so roughly twenty six point six percent of people in the UK get to decide what happens to all the rest this is an especially acute problem for the people of Scotland and Northern Ireland Scotland voted remain majority in every single council but because Scotland is still part of the UK at time of recording they're being dragged along into brexit as well did a Northern Ireland who were about 56% remain is that a bad thing Canada you frame it like mill you think that what's good about democracy is that everybody's interests to get a fair shake well there was a choice just cuz it didn't go away doesn't mean the process wasn't fair could there have been more options though we'll come back to that what this does show us is that democracy isn't necessarily about a majority rule or popularity in fact it's consistent with a minority of people getting what they voted for and by the way this would still be true had the brexit referendum gone the other way but I remember Turner fabrics it was pretty high if you run the mass on something like the American 2016 election you'll find that Donald Trump's victory represents at best the fulfillment of the wishes of a pretty small minority of Americans who get to decide what happens to all the rest not to mention all the people outside of America who very much have an interest in a stake in what goes on there but who don't get to vote because they too are seen as alien and since we've been doing all that maths it's a good time to bring up a point by scholar stacey cliff it's implicant who says that to the extent that democracy as we know it requires a certain level of cognitive ability because you got to know a lot of stuff and understand a lot of stuff in order to participate it excludes at least some people with intellectual disabilities who nevertheless are able to and deserve to exercise a degree of control over their lives which is to say mill there are some interests that democracy structurally does not allow to be represented even if everybody can legally vote throughout arrival the public are presented in a very interesting way because they're basically not in it most of the film takes place on the top secret base except indirectly through news reports we hardly ever see anybody who might be called the public when the hepta pods first arrived we learned that people are panic buying food petrol medicine and that there are riots and looting we see a handful of Louise's students and we hear her talking to her mother on a phone who is apparently scared and watches too much TV news please don't bother with China to tell you those people are idiots we hear a soldier's wife briefly on the phone who is also scared and doesn't know what's going on and we see an Alex Jones style talk-show host say that America should give the aliens a show of force this later inspires some of the soldiers on the base to go rogue and try to kill a Hebda pods and Louise and Donnelly by planting a bomb but in terms of the public that's about it throughout the film the public are overwhelmingly portrayed as violent ignorant and criminal despite the fact that the hepta pods arrival is something that very obviously concerns every human being on earth the public are never shown to have any kind of control over the interactions with them or any ability to hold the representatives of their species accountable a person is smart people are dumb panicky dangerous animals and you know it the portrayal of the public throughout the film is in strong contrast to the military authorities who are well-intentioned and competent albeit working within the wrong framework for the situation with the exception of the rogue soldiers and even they aren't presented as evil just misguided contrast also the scientific authorities chiefly banks and donnelly whose morals and intentions are pure and who just need to be allowed to get on with their work throughout the film communication with the hepta pods is portrayed mainly as a technical problem that just needs the right expertise and time and a scientific approach to solve rather than an inherently moral and political issue that needs to be handled in a way that respects the agency and frameworks of everybody who has an interest in it I think the people in this country have had enough of experts with organization from acronym saying we've seen that democracy as it's actually practiced isn't always as inclusive or majoritarian as we might think some people say that we should have a second referendum on brexit which I'm not necessarily opposed to but it wouldn't fix any of the more fundamental issues with democracy that we've learned about when it comes to turnout though there could be something we could do about it Australia and Belgium and much of South America have compulsory voting so turnout is always like 90-yard percent of our really compulsory voting the of a misnomer as long as you still have a secret ballot you can't just walk in the booth and walk out again or put about paper in but just leave it blank compulsory voting just means that you have to turn up at the polls on Election Day the reason that increases turnout so much is because most people get there and they go while I'm here anyway I might as well do a democracy in his paper unequal participation political scientist Aaron Lynch part says that in low turnout scenarios it's kind of like the people who do vote get to vote twice because everybody who doesn't vote isn't represented in the system at all like with the bracer referendum twenty six point six percent of the population voted leave twenty four point seven voted remain but still leaves forty eight point seven percent of people unaccounted for because leave just clinched it it's kind of like all of that remaining bunch of people voted leave as well because it's winner-takes-all and the same would be true had the result gone the other way as well but in a compulsory voting scenario the winners presumably more accurately represent the will of the people because you get a bigger sample size and find out what the majority really think proponents of compulsory voting also say that it might cut down on voter intimidation scaring people away from the polls is a little bit redundant when everybody has to vote anyway it might also change the impact of money in politics you don't have to spend campaign funds encouraging people to Pokemon go to the polls anymore there get a Pokemon go anyway so you can focus on communicating Pokemon good Pokemon governmental policy in addition one of the buggers about low turnout is that it tends to be wealthier more educated people who do reliably vote so their interest to get disproportionately represented also since wealth is often unequally distributed by race you can end up with a pretty narrow swathe of people who get catered to by electoral politics that's why more conservative parties tend to benefit in lower turnout elections this isn't just something that lefties like me worry about either Mill who was concerned about it to leech part actually thinks that compulsory voting is morally required for democracy on the flip side though some say that compulsory voting would be a big restriction on people's freedom even if the penalty was only something like a small fine philosopher Annabel levar says that even if voting was in everybody's interests that doesn't necessarily mean we'd be justified in forcing people into it we all agree the easing your vegetables is good for you but I don't think we'd be very pleased if the government started introducing fines for those who didn't get their five a day also compulsory voting might not just towards thinking that voting is the be-all and end-all of democracy when in fact other stuff like protests and writing letters and even riots can be important features of a healthy democracy we presumably wouldn't want to make protesting compulsory the voluntary participation scan on a point there so why would we extend that to voting after all some people have good reasons why they don't want to vote grand chief Michael Mitchell of Accra sassanid Council wrote in 1989 that Aquos actually people don't vote in Canadian elections cuz they ain't Canadian they never surrendered their lands and we're never conquered so as far as they're concerned ain't no such thing as Canada Sun go do Canada over there just because you look like the guy who presents philosophy tube doesn't mean you can get away with being a colonizer just in so if we go down the compulsory voting road we'd probably want to include some means by which people can conscientiously object and let's be careful about what we do with that data the last thing we want is the local anarchist group all registering as conscientious objectors to the election and then of the next meeting suddenly there's all these new members who are like hey my name's Robert not a cop with any of you radical comrades like to do some crimes maybe does anyone want to have a six-year relationship and two kids before I tell you I'm actually an undercover cop so I need to spy on you because apparently that's the thing that we do now that is a real thing that happens oh yeah six years and two kids and then there's like I have actually another common sense behind you that happened multiple times yeah yeah that's up in there I have to admit I'm really not sure which way to go on compulsory voting in the spirit of democracy let me know what you think in the comments and in the spirit of compulsory democracy you have to let me know if the Chinese military starts to get very worried about the possibility of the aliens attacking and Colonel Weber decides the time has come to ask the big question when Louisan Donnelly finally inquire what Abbott and Costello purposes on earth they appear to say offer weapon but Louise isn't sure whether she's properly taught them the difference between a weapon and a tool when the Chinese team asked there have two pods the same question they interpret the answer they get as use weapon which leads China to pull out of the joint operation declare war on the aliens and cease all communication with the other science teams the US also pulls out the rogue soldiers decide their moment has come and set off the bomb but not before the hefty pods give Louise a final message so democracy has some drawbacks and the response of some philosophers has been to just try and do more of it give more people the votes and more people can be included but some have gone the other way and said that if exclusion is the name of the game as it kind of looks like it is through some frameworks then why not embrace it marks and other thinkers put forward the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat which they didn't name very well Carl baby we need to have a talk about branding dictatorship here doesn't necessarily mean one person making all the decisions what he means is a system of government that ideally is democratic but excludes those whose economic interests are opposed to the majority of people kind of like how now in my country prisoners aren't allowed to vote we have a dictatorship of non criminals if you like and the idea is that the interests of criminals are so fundamentally opposed to everybody else's that we simply shouldn't take them into account your mileage may vary and whether or not you think that's correct but that's the idea the dictatorship of the proletariat is where we say okay if you're a CEO business owner landlord big time millionaire capitalist your interests are so fundamentally opposed to everybody else's because through the Marxist framework you can only be those things by exploiting other people that from now on millionaires can't vote can't hold office can't donate to political parties can't participate in politics the government is supposed to be here to help people and clearly you're doing all right for yourself mate so how about you just sit down through a liberal framework that might look very scary because oh my god we're taking people's votes away that doesn't sound good think of all the struggles people had to go to get the vote in the first place what about this black woman who worked really hard and now she's a millionaire you're taking her vote away that really doesn't sound good and yeah that could look very scary the response from the Marxist framework might be though that unlike historical situations where people were denied the vote because of their race or their sex you can't give up being black but you can pretty easily give up being a millionaire and then you can vote again speaking of radical critiques what if we look at democracy through an anarchist frame remember mill said that the proper function of a representative body is to dole out the authority to govern well an anarchist might say that you can't actually trade away the authority to govern yourself any more than you can rightly sell yourself into slavery in so doing you de stablish a hierarchy whether consensual or not and anarchists aren't fond of social hierarchy moreover what if you vote for something on Election Day and then two years down the line when it actually starts happening you've changed your mind or what if you vote for somebody and then they do something different than what they said they would do why should your vote of two years ago count as morally authoritative now if your interests in your will have changed that's kind of one of the arguments behind some people wanting a second referendum on brexit and it's that kind of problem that representative democracy might have trouble dealing with so some anarchists might say even if we extend the right to vote massively it still wouldn't be a good system two hours ago we pulled this audio off a secure Channel in Russia someone on the science team there was broadcasting wine flex it means flex it the campaign was fought the vote was held turnout was high and the public gave their verdict the country voted to leave the European Union and it is the duty of the government and Parliament to make sure we do just that there are a lot of ways you can interpret what if I don't need an interpreter to know what this means and I'm telling you that no one else cares they might also say that the one-person one-vote system can't take into account the subjective strengths of people's preferences if there's an issue that I really care about because it's life and death for me and the votes of two people who don't really know anything about it and don't really care could outweigh mine and is that pher maybe the people of Ireland both north and the Republic could have some sympathy with that criticism following the brexit vote because there's places in the UK where you can just walk down the road and you're in the EU no borders no passports nothing and that's not an oversight that's deliberate so that we can have peace in Ireland so how are we going to secure a border with the EU without building military checkpoints across Ireland and without having one set of rules for Northern Ireland and another set of rules for Britain the people who live near the border have a lot more skin in the game than those of us who live away from it but our votes count for the same if anyone does know how to solve that problem with the Irish border please write your answer on a postcard and send it to Theresa May at 10 Downing Street London probably best to get a first-class stamp in addition it's anarchists he points out that whilst we may live in what we call democracy most of our lives are pretty undemocratic if you work for a private company you don't get to vote on what it does even though you definitely have an interest in it you don't get to vote on what your landlord does with their property even though you definitely have an interest in that so never mind all this extending the vote stuff what if we extend the principle of governance by consent what if we take back the country but like really really take it back China gives the aliens 24 hours to leave their airspace or be destroyed the International project appears to be falling apart and several countries about to go to war as Louise and Donnelly discover that the final message is one of only 12 pieces of a larger message with the other 11 pieces presumably given to the other science teams around the world they advise the American military to share their fraction with the other teams saying that it's a nonzero-sum game the term from game theory meaning a situation in which the wins and losses of all participants in the game do not add to zero ie a situation in which everybody stands to gain but the military refused convinced that the aliens will retaliate against the bombing and the Chinese aggression and that nothing can now be done to stop the imminent war apparently people are becoming less fond of democracy a study by the anti-racist advocacy group hope not hate claims that the British public are losing faith in democratic institutions as a result of the government's handling a brexit the Washington Post expressed similar opinions following the 2016 American election using words like cynical and distrustful to describe the apparently blossoming anti-democratic feelings of the American people supposedly we're becoming more divided and polarized like this whole thing is affecting our characters Mill thought that democracy could promote good character by encouraging people to take an interest in how the country is run and cultivate the intelligence required to participate we might call these epistemic virtues I first I make is the philosophy jargon word for to do with knowledge and knowing the flip side of that though is that a lack of democracy could promote bad characters and epistemic vices it is a great discouragement to an individual and is still greater one to a class to be left out of the Constitution to be reduced to plead from outside the door to the arbiters of their destiny not taken into consultation within we might want to reply to mill that people's characters are affected by a lot more than just the political system they live under but this idea of democracy relating to epistemic character is a theme that philosopher Jose Medina picks up on in his book epistemic resistance Medina wants us all to become a little bit more aware of how we construct the frames through which we see the world for instance I've talked on the show before about how a lot of professional philosophy tends to be written by white people and that can affect the kind of stuff that gets written fsm ik resistance might involve challenging that if you immerse yourself into a foreign language that you can actually rewire your brain it's the theory that the language you speak determines how you thinking yeah if I tell you you see everything well some people might worry about societies becoming increasingly divided Medina might say no that's a feature not a bug of democracy it shows the democratic participation is widening at least epistemically if not in terms of the actual numbers of people voting because there more ideas in the public sphere than perhaps they were before more frameworks from which to choose the philosopher Antonio Gramsci coined the term cultural hegemony to describe the dominant value system of a society through which its members view almost everything and arguably one of the most useful and terrifying things about democracy is that it contains within it both the possibility for unjust hegemony to form and the seeds of epistemic resistance against it it constantly invites us to consider radically different ways of looking at things and poses the question of just how willing we are to live alongside those who hold them the flip side of that is though what do we do when people form their frameworks based on bad info there was a lot of misinformation around the time of the brexit referendum in fairness some on both sides the most notorious lie was the leave campaign saying that by Brexton we were gonna get 350 million extra a week for the NHS that number turned out to just be pulled out of somebody's ass somewhere they also said that Turkey was about to join the EU and so immigration would go up which turned out to be false the remain campaign might have overestimated the number of manufacturing jobs that were gonna lose the leaf campaign actually committed electoral fraud and were fined for it because they use the Canadian firm aggregate IQ to push lies in facebook ads in the crucial days before the election and then they didn't declare it some people say that makes the whole referendum a bust and that we should have a do-over but if I form my worldview based on dodgy information that I get because my personal data is harvested from my Facebook page without my consent and used to send me targeted political ads with lies in them does that make my vote invalid are we gonna say like Plato that there's a good and a bad way to make decisions for the nation or are we gonna say that it doesn't really matter whether your will has been led astray as long as your vote represents your will you have a right to be wrong I voted remain because I wasn't really sure what the EU did and I was like I kind of don't want to mess with it I don't know so let's just kind of not touch it and you might say that's a terrible reason to vote and you could well be right there but do my reasons actually matter so long as my vote represents what I want and what if people make their democratic decisions not based on information at all but based on something else a lot of the brexit is you talk about us becoming a global power again seem to think that this is a chance for Britain to gain some status whatever the economic and political situation turned out to be and status can be maintained even in the face of disaster arguably even through disaster in their podcast how to survive the end of the world the brown sisters who are American so they sometimes have trouble convincing their fellow Americans that when the police kill somebody that's a bad thing it's harmful they say that a lot of the people they talk to seem stuck in this framework of when the police kill somebody that's okay almost like they're using a different definition of the word harm and they wonder whether that might have something to do with the fact that America was founded using slavery and genocide which is still not recognized as harmful by many of the people who continue to benefit from it Britain is a global power now at least in part because the British Empire brought a lot of wealth here and whatever you think of that history you surely got to admit that we are not commonly encouraged to examine the Empire through the eyes of those for whom it was a very bad thing a lot of us are used to thinking of our country as high status and of imagining status in a certain way by virtue of being British and Medina might say that can be an epistemic vice when it cuts us off from knowledge that we might otherwise find very useful desperate to avoid open conflict Louise sneaks aboard the alien ship and meets Costello face-to-face she asks again why they've come to earth when Costello says that they want to help humanity because in 3,000 years time they will need humanity's help Louise asks how the aliens can know the future and then discovers that learning hepta pod has rewired her brain and allowed her to perceive time as they do nonlinearly we as the audience discover that what we thought were flashbacks to her life with her daughter who died young of a congenital disease are actually flash-forwards louise is seeing her future knows that she will conceive a daughter with Donnelly who will die despite the inevitable loss of her child however she ultimately decides to go ahead anyway I wasn't the only youtuber to make a video just before the prexy referendum critic and online gamer h-bomb a guy made one - in which he said this we haven't had enough of experts we don't have any experts under a representative democratic system the majority of people haven't had to think about this stuff for a long time it stands to reason that they don't know enough to make these decisions in a way the greatest criticism of representative democracy that it shelters people from having to understand economics and politics because someone else is doing the thinking for them has come home to roost now even our leaders have no idea arguably Harry was channeling Plato there if Twitter has shown us anything it's that the people in charge of running stuff often don't have a clue what they're doing Michelle Obama has gone on record as saying this I have been it probably every powerful table that you can think of I've worked at nonprofits I've been at foundations I've worked in corporations served on corporate boards I've been at G summits I've sat in at the UN they're not that smart at the climax of the film Louise uses her knowledge of the future to make a phone call to the Chinese general Shang and tells him in war there are no victors only widows afraid that has special emotional significance then because those were the last words of his wife this inspires him to stand down and share his fraction of the message with the other teams which ultimately leads to peace not only between humans and hexapods but humans and other humans it's not scientific expertise or a military victory that saves the day in fact it's the antagonist of the film who stick only to one kind of knowledge and a competitive perspective ultimately it's a display of emotional vulnerability on the part of two people who feel trapped within their frameworks that enables everybody to break out through one frame the fragility of democracy and possibility of it going wrong this is a terrifying argument against it but if it's true that it effects our epicentre characters then by by realizing democracy's drawbacks we open up opportunities not just to make it better but to better ourselves as well as well [Music] [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 1,168,218

Rating: 4.9077573 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Brexit, Philosophy Tube, Oliver Thorn, Democracy, John Stuart Mill, Epistemology, Vote, Election, Referendum, Plato, Politics

Id: Vr-ZeToI4R8

Length: 42min 1sec (2521 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/laura_jane_great]

Good shit, as usual. Less "extremely online" type of humour, so it's probably a good one to share around a bit more widely and maybe garden-path your centrist or brexity friends

[u/TheCaptain09]

Everyone's here having great in depth discussion of politics and I'm just laughing my ass off at "pokemon good pokemon governmental policy"

[u/joeyoh9292]

At 12:37~, Olly erases a Heptopod word from the whiteboard in order to demonstrate the mathematics for how many people actually voted to Leave.

The word that he erases is "Humanity".

Arrival is potentially my favourite film of all time, and I almost invariably cry whenever I think about the latter stages of the film. Olly's work over the last couple years is also my favourite work that I've seen on YouTube, and this video was probably his best yet. Thanks Olly, you're amazing.

[u/NorrisOBE]

In regards to Olly talking about how prisoners couldn't vote in the UK, it reminds me of what really puzzles me about the whole Brexit vote and why I morally oppose Brexit:

European citizens living in the UK cannot vote in Brexit.

Which I think was bizarre. European citizens living in The UK play as much of roles in British society as the average Brit. European citizens pay UK taxes, hold UK jobs, participate in UK culture and in return Britain benefits a lot from Europeans living in The UK. Many Europeans living in The UK range from lower class to upper class positions just like the average Briton, and to say that they couldn't vote to protect their livelihood in the UK is bizarre. Let's not forget that Europeans in The UK have perspectives about living in The UK as Europeans that would've been helpful to decide if Britain would've stayed in The EU so by removing their right to vote in a referendum that could've protected their livelihood, you have a vote that lacks a "knowledge by experience" perspective that could've lead to a Remain or Leave result that wouldn't have been such a shitshow.

Does the EU have problems needed to be address? of course. Was it the right for the Brexit referendum to be held? Maybe. The question is: Who gets affected by it the hardest? And if so, should they also have the right to vote as well?

[u/randomfluffypup]

Oh god this went completely over my head. Maybe its my sleep deprived self, but could someone explain the link Olly was trying to make with Brexit and Arrival? And the sapir-whorf theory?

I feel like I'm seeing the contours of the idea but not really fully grasping it

edit: also Olly, if you're reading this and need some good ficion to read, please read Blindsight by Peter Watts. It's fucking amazing, and if you liked Arrival you probabbly would like Blindsight as well.

You know what, everybody read Blindsight. Everyone needs to read Blindsight. It's one of the most fascinating hard science fiction books I've read and the ideas it put forth still rattle in my brain, years after reading it.

[u/Villhermus]

Interesting, I'm brazilian, we have compulsory voting, still, this is the first time I heard good arguments for it, I'd say that, generally, people are opposed to it. One thing that happens a lot here is politicians flooding the floor with papers with their numbers, so people that don't know who to vote for just pick a paper off the floor and vote for them (they can just vote blank, but I guess some people don't), so the problem is just not about personal freedom.

EDIT: I didn't explain how this works, so here it is: We have electronic voting, the way to vote is to type the number of the desired candidate in the machine and then press confirm, typically, you bring a piece of paper with you with the number of your candidates so you can remember them (there's a list of the names and numbers at the polling places, but it can be gigantic), however, some people get a random flyer off the floor with some candidate's picture and number and then vote for them.

[u/master_dimentio]

Great vid as usual from Olly, only thing I would maybe disagree with is his framing of mandatory voting like eating vegetables. The way I see it, mandatory voting isn't something that should be viewed as good for the individual, but good for society as a whole by ensuring a fairer, "more democratic" decision. Looking at it that way I think it's better viewed like a tax maybe: sure, it may limit your own personal freedom, but you do still have a choice (pay the tax/vote or get punished) and its less about forcing you to help yourself and more about legally pushing you into contributing back to society.

Of course then you've the problem of if it voting actually materially benefits society. Like atleast with taxes we can see where they go and, even if we disagree with their allotment, you can point at something and say "this is what we got out of it". With mandatory voting, the only thing you can point to is that more representative democracy. I think a lot of people just sort of take that as a good thing at face value, since that's really the basic assertion of Liberal democracy, but like Olly was saying, that's just their framing, and maybe shouldn't be how we approach it.

[u/Fashion-Plate]

One of the best, most concise descriptions of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat I've ever heard. Great!

[u/FantasticMrFAB]

I really enjoyed arrival, we need more empathy driven films and less narratives based in competition and violence. Does anyone know if there will be some kind of crossover between Natalie and Olly? Their production is amazing in comparison with most YouTube channels. With their similar subject matter and love of the dramatics it would be out of this world.