Hello Mark.
The piece below my sig was a pull from this http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410-education.html which I didnt attribute to Chomsky because its mostly him quoting Jefferson. I put that in there because David Gerard's circular logic reminded me of it: even those "who identify with the people" will also hold the reservation that they may be "not always the most wise."
We can argue the oughts and ought-nots of governance till the cows come home blue in the face. That's not what the point of that little exchange was. The point (my point anyway) was that within David's overall conceptual deference to WINAD and referencing "polls are evil", was an irritating muddling of "polls," which I agree are evil) and "voting," which I actually distinguish from polling. (Hey - different words, different meaning... wow). [[m:PAE]] is at best a pun with a point, like [[m:ASD]] or most other Wikipediology (burp!) on meta. Or here for that matter.
Calling polls evil is one thing. But calling voting evil is like calling Democracy "evil," and I dont think anyone really wants to do that (except Tories and other non-democrats maybe), if only because it raises that irritating contradiction in logic that I had to call David on. When he clears up (in his thinking and on any wikiable references) the difference between polls and voting (im sure he can pull up an answers.com article on it), then we can make talk intelligently about 1) the uselessness of polls and 2) the usefulness of voting. At least conceptually.
-Stevertigo
--- Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Steve,
Jefferson distinguished in his later years between what he called "aristocrats" and "democrats." The aristocrats are
Wikipedia is not the real world. Wikipedia is a website; a particularly extensive and community-driven website, but still a website. Your rights have not been violated simply because Jimbo (or the WMF, or the ArbCom, or the Cabal) fails to consult you every time they make a change.
<snip - good for Jefferson />
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
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