Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to I hate to say it but

Any of them could
Robert — (archived)

It's funny how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that this hypothetical debate ought to be a two-way debate. Maybe it's the use of the word "debate". In any case, Gore's vision of an idealized political marketplace of ideas would be intrinsiically decentralized, so that any number could play. Even bitter old Miller...he was always bitter, just turned from bitter Liberal to bitter Conservative. A truly multi-way medium might negate his advantages, which derive from being on TV and broadcasting, even if he does confront people one on one or a handful on the tube. Quite a bit of artifice in those conversations. How would Miller do in a forum like this, dependent only on his naked intellect? Hard to smirk cynically into the camera, SDAI-Tech1's winking blinkie thingie notwithstanding.

Gore's vision is somehat conservative, in that he uses as a model an idyllic pre-TV America in which the printing press was the medium in which "intellectual Darwinism" played out. In that model, the results were tallied at the end of the process on election day.

TV took over the platform for cheap reasons--flickering light that your eye's automatically attracted to, visceral sounds, manufactured camraderie through the laugh track, sexual symbolism...every once and a while something meaningful, but mostly a vast wasteland.

Bet we could come up with a better platform in the early 21st based on the Net. I'd translate Gore's idyllic model into somethink like a network of discussion communities just like the Zone. Not surprising that I would think that, of course, but this type of place objectively possesses the right kind of properties: Based on the written word, paced faster than cranking out broadsheets on an 18th century printing press, but slow enough to not steamroller thought. Allows multi-way discussion with little barrier to participation. The hierarchical model could be extended to allow the best ideas to bubble up through a network of communities, for ever-broader visibility. Or something like that. I'm admittedly a bit single-minded on the subject of online communities.

Down to Earth...Buckley, Buchanan, Paul are all definitely from the Libertarian branch of the Conservative cactus. I have to confess that I find Ron Paul kind of entertaining. When you have no chance in hell and are just running to get a platform to espouse your philosophy, you can afford to be absolutely and completely honest about your beliefs. I admire that in a Presidential candidate. Never seen it in a President--obviously not what the system filters for.

And then there's "the conservative that I'd love to see" Lieberman. I predict that someday his last name will become a verb. And it won't be a happy verb.

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