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RE: What does a truly decentralized government look like?
It is easy to say something is not possible before it is attempted. :) Experimentation is key. Many things thought impossible are no longer remotely considered impossible today. I suspect the same will continue into the future. In general stating absolutes tends to be a dangerous proposition, unless your goal is to be wrong. There is a difference between saying something highly improbable and saying something impossible. To know the absolutes on impossibility and possibility you'd need to believe in some omniscient Godlike being, but you would need to take it further than that. You would also need to assume that you are that being since you deal in absolutes. ;)
that's the main issue with political systems. you can't experiment with them. Theoretically speaking, neither democracy nor communism are bad ideas but they failed to consider the human nature.
Can't. Another absolute? This time I will ask you plainly. Are you a God? Do you know everything that is possible, and is not possible? Do you know everything that can and cannot be done? If so, I'd like to know how you come to that conclusion. IMPOSSIBLE, and CAN'T are very dangerous words to be throwing around unless you are knowledgeable on all things. I'll assume your answer to my questions is NO. So therefore, you don't know what CAN be done or what might be POSSIBLE. You like me and the rest of us are limited by the things you have knowledge of. We all are limited by such things. No one individual gets to dictate what IS and IS NOT possible. That was kind of the point of decentralizing things and crowd sourcing them, as together we all know a lot more about things than any one individual among us can know. Some may think they KNOW IT ALL but show me that person and I'll give you a jester costume for them to wear. The fool is the person who claims to know it all. ;)
Everything is impossible until it is done. Only Siths deal in absolutes.
Experiment away! The future looks BRIGHT!
I think you should calm down and I would suggest you not to read my mind. I never said decentralization is a bad idea or that I am God. I am simply stating my OPINION based on discussion with other knowledgeable people and my personal studies and research. If anything please provide evidence against my "silly" opinion, instead of twisting my words and going off the topic. Thank you
@thebluepanda, I was reading the post and than this discussion, what @dwinblood want's to say is, a handhold device with out a cord that would enable you to communicate with a person on the other side of the planet in real time was "impossible" in the 80's. Yet we have phones today, to simplify even more, he reffers to your use of words like "can't" or "impossible", that's what "bugs" @dwinblood, as he explains it:
So, @dwinblood is attempting here to teach you not to "toss around" these words like that, especially in a intellectual discussion.
IMHO @dwinblood may have reacted a bit too "aggressively" on this what you may have interpreted as an "attack" on you, but it's not and In the end all he wanted is to teach you something.
@minion I like free education, I have no problem about that. but I would prefer an answer to the issue that I mentioned in my first comment, instead the discussion turned into a lesson of how I should discuss intellectually :)
I did not read your mind, or I would not have asked you a question. I did say I assumed your answer would be NO. I have no problem with you saying something is highly improbable. That was my point. You are saying CAN'T and IMPOSSIBLE and I don't see how you can be in a position to know what IS NOT POSSIBLE. If you are then I'd like to know how to do that too. :) I'm pretty calm. You didn't state it was an opinion either. You simply stated it was first IMPOSSIBLE and then said CAN'T. If you had said in your opinion, or even said you didn't think it was likely, or highly improbable, any of those types of things that leave room for you being wrong... I wouldn't have had anything to say. In saying such things you could be right. I don't know how probable it is. Yet IMPOSSIBLE and CAN'T are typically not true. ;) As an opinion though... sure. If you like closing doors on possibility that is totally your right. I also did not TWIST a single word. I described them accurately and am trying to get you to think about what you are saying. I don't actually think you know what is IMPOSSIBLE just as I don't know either. Yet, you like many people casually use absolutes when they are not casual words. They have very distinct meanings. So if you didn't mean what they actually mean then it was you that was twisting the meanings of the words in your own head and EXPECTING us to read your mind and know what you meant. I don't read minds. :) If you know how to do that though, that'd be cool to know as well. (again... I am calm. Just trying to get you to realize the flaw in your statement)
Now not talking about the other words. Whenever a new political system is attempted for the first time, that is essentially an experiment. Anything new we try could be viewed as an experiment. We hopefully learn from failures as well as successes. Political systems seem to be one of the places when it fails they try to keep forcing it anyway.
now it's my turn to pick on your words :P decentralization as a political system is an idea, a concept, a system. You don't experiment with ideas, you implement them :)
Sure and the hypothesis is that a political system will work. Anytime you try something knew you are working on a hypothesis that what you are about to attempt could be the solution to a problem. ;)
Physics is an idea. Newtonia physics is an idea. Relativity is an idea. Quantum physics is an idea. Engineering is an idea. All ideas do start as a hypothesis. You are correct that an experiment is performed to either prove, or disprove a hypothesis. Which is what should be done. It should be attempted and proven it will not work before simply saying it won't work. :)
It is better to find the road that leads to Rome before you get there.