10 Comments

Nice article with well-chosen examples.

I read you as arguing that we should always be keeping the consequences of a virtue/heuristic in mind (does democracy actually lead to better outcomes?) rather than selecting for the virtue itself. Is that about right?

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Good stuff - I always smile when I see your posts arrive in my inbox. They may not be numerous, but they always spark thoughts, reactions, provocation, internal debate. Thank you.

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All things in moderation, including moderation.

Re Congressional transparency: one could also still have transparency by just having published transcripts. A lot of the congressional grandstanding plays well on TV but would just fall flat in print.

Canadian parliament is televised, and the manipulation of proceedings for the television cameras is sort-of funny given that nobody's really watching. Despite that, all the parties make sure to manipulate the seating and who speaks for the camera shots (if attendance is poor, somehow the camera never shows it).

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Good read, although I think you could've compressed sections 2 and 3 into a paragraph or two and mostly just linked to other blog posts on super stimuli, given how much has already been written about them.

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As an entirely separate note re your pricing: are you sure this essay is worth $20 to read? Because that's effectively what it would cost.

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