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Comment on No, the UK’s Online Safety Act Doesn’t Make Children Safer Online

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What’s an area where something can be done maliciously or by accident? Car crashes? Workplace injury? Incorrect tax claims? Taking something from a shop? All of these are, to my understanding (and with decreasing confidence, but all have evidence - crime stats for the first, to, HMRC estimates and this Ipsos poll respectively) more likely to be accidental than malicious.

Is there a similar poll for political decisions and outcomes ?

Genuine question, that’s be super interesting, if so.

To me this is a general principle: human beings are social animals and have an instinct to be agreeable and cooperative, to live within socially-agreed rules, to tell the truth and not to fuck people over. Those who break the rules are the exception - otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense to have rules and to have society.

So my background assumption is that people are honest.

I think that’s where our difference in interpretation stems from , i think humans have the instinct for survival and reproduction, that agreement, cooperation and social interaction provided a better environment for survival is incidental.

Honesty is possible in a situation where survival isn’t on the line, in a life or death situation i think the person who would tell the truth knowing it will get them ( or more importantly, their family ) killed, is the outlier.

Outside of hyperbolous scenarios i think honesty is not the default in a situation where it doesn’t have a social/survival impact.

Such as a politician lying for fiscal/politician gain, knowing that there isn’t really any punishment for that.

because the nature of being in a society is that we point out and emphasise the times when people don’t abide by its rules; we have to use more robust methods to estimate its prevalence.

I also disagree with this, it’s a nice ideal and we should absolutely strive for this, but it’s just not how it works in practice, from my experience.

I think we disagree on what the rules are, it seems like you think calling out perceived injustices in fairness and corruption being met with punishment for the corrupt is what should happen.

In practice i think that only happens in the lower stakes, once you start pointing at people with wealth and power that rule quickly changes from “call it out and we’ll punish the offender” to “call it out and we’ll punish you for pointing it out and as a deterrent to others who might do the same”.

That’s not a society that honesty and inherent (relative) goodness as foundational concepts would produce.

Kickbacks to politicians in the UK are comparatively tiny though. Enough to motivate someone who’s already a grifter, but not enough to cause anyone but the extraordinarily stupid to be motivated by getting them.

That comparatively is carrying a lot of weight there and again i think we just disagree about this point in general.

You pushed back on this before but I genuinely think that the reason people think otherwise is because they just can’t believe that (for example) Tories actually believe that the country would work better by spending less on public services and benefits. The only remaining explanation is kickbacks by the direct beneficiaries of these policies. Even if your logic isn’t as formalised as that, I still think that on some level that is the feeling that makes you ready to believe that Tory politicians are so unlike the population at large - that is, massively more dishonest.

And again you are missing my point, that they believe or not it isn’t the issue.

I can say with full confidence i absolutely do not care if they believe it, or if they don’t, makes zero difference to me.

If a politician(or politicians) wants to run some shenanigans on PPE contracts, netting their friends x millions of pounds, it care not a whit if they believe in the general correctness of conservatism.

I will state it plainly, mark this as [POINT A] and point back to this, because it seems you are skipping this part entirely.

[POINT A]

If there is consistent historic precedent of a mismatch between stated intent and actual outcome by both the individual/institution and other related contexts then i will assume that behaviour will continue until proven otherwise.

It’s not “i don’t understand, so they must be corrupt” it’s “they have a history of being shady and incompetent, so I’m going to assume they will continue to be shady and incompetent”

Their belief is irrelevant, their later explanations of their intent is perhaps cause for minor adjustment.

Feel free to rephrase the same assumption again, i will point back to this explanation.

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FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Is there a similar poll for political decisions and outcomes ?

Not that I know of. That’s why I’m transferring by analogy from other walks of life.

Outside of hyperbolous scenarios i think honesty is not the default in a situation where it doesn’t have a social/survival impact.

All the research I am aware of - including what I referenced in the previous comment, is that people are honest by default, except for a few people who lie a lot. Boris Johnson is a serial liar and clearly falls into that camp.

If honesty were not the default, why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught?

The evolutionary argument goes like this: social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest.

In practice i think that only happens in the lower stakes, once you start pointing at people with wealth and power that rule quickly changes from “call it out and we’ll punish the offender” to “call it out and we’ll punish you for pointing it out and as a deterrent to others who might do the same”.

Powerful grifters try to protect themselves yes, but who got punished for pointing out that Boris is a serial liar? Have you read what the current government has said about the previous one? :P

As a society we generally hate that kind of behaviour. Society as a whole does not protect wealth and power; wealth and power forms its own group which tries to protect itself.

I can say with full confidence i absolutely do not care if they believe it, or if they don’t, makes zero difference to me.

If a politician(or politicians) wants to run some shenanigans on PPE contracts, netting their friends x millions of pounds, it care not a whit if they believe in the general correctness of conservatism.

You should care because it entirely colours how you interact with political life. “Shady behaviour” is about intent as well as outcome, and we are talking in this thread about shady behaviour, and hence about intent.

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- Senal@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  All the research I am aware of - including what I referenced in the previous comment, is that people are honest by default, except for a few people who lie a lot. Boris Johnson is a serial liar and clearly falls into that camp.
  
  I believe that you believe that, but a couple of surveys are not a sufficient argument about the fundamental good of all humanity.
  
  If honesty were not the default, why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught?
  
  I think this is just a lack of imagination.
  
  i will go through your scenarios and provide an answer but i don’t think it’s going to achieve anything, we just fundamentally disagree on this.
  
  why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often?
  
  You shouldn’t.
  
  Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught?
  
  A lot of assumptions and leaps here.
  
  Firstly crime implies actual law, which is different in different places, so let’s assume for now we are talking about the current laws in the uk.
  
  Criminals implies someone who has been caught and prosecuted for breaking a law, I’m going with that assumption because “everyone who has ever broken a law” is a ridiculous interpretation.
  
  So to encompass the assumptions:
  
  Why are such a small proportion of people who have been caught and prosecuted for breaking the law in the uk, when someone smart and caution has a very low chance of being caught?
  
  I hope you can see how nonsensical that question is.
  
  The evolutionary argument goes like this: social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest.
  
  That’s a nicely worded very bias interpretation.
  
  social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours.
  
  This is fine.
  
  This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together.
  
  That’s a jump, working well together might not be the desirable trait in this instance.
  
  But let’s assume it is for now.
  
  A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group.
  
  Reductive and assumptive, you’re also conflating selfishness with betrayal, they you can have on without the other, depending on perceived definitions of course.
  
  But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest.
  
  Additional reduction and a further unsupported jump, individuals are more than just a single trait, selfishness might be desirable in certain scenarios or it might be a part of an individual who’s other trait make up for it in a tribal context.
  
  The process of seeking and attention might be a preferential selection trait that benefits the group.
  
  Powerful grifters try to protect themselves yes, but who got punished for pointing out that Boris is a serial liar?
  
  Everyone who has been negatively impacted by the policies enacted and consequences of everything that was achieved on the back of those lies.
  
  Because being ignored is still a punishment if there are negative consequences.
  
  But let’s pick a more active punishment, protesting.
  
  Protest in a way we don’t like or about a su, it’s now illegal to protest unless we give permission.
  
  That’s reductive, but indicative of what happened in broad strokes.
  
  Have you read what the current government has said about the previous one? :P
  
  I’d imagine something along the line of what the previous government said about the one before ?
  
  As a society we generally hate that kind of behaviour. Society as a whole does not protect wealth and power; wealth and power forms its own group which tries to protect itself.
  
  Depend on how you define society as a whole.
  
  By population, i agree.
  
  By actual power to enact change(without extreme measures), less so
  
  Convenient that you don’t include the wealth and power as part of society, like it some other separate thing.
  
  You should care because it entirely colours how you interact with political life. “Shady behaviour” is about intent as well as outcome, and we are talking in this thread about shady behaviour, and hence about intent.
  
  See [POINT A]
  
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