Saturday 12 May 2012

Prejudice in People and Politics

It is perhaps a normal human trait to judge people based on their first impressions. It's a type of prejudice that maybe integral to politics.
Instead of face-to-face debates or personal presentations, the Interactive Democracy web site facilitates anonymous debate, point by point, so that this type of prejudice may be avoided. Those that look a bit strange, who dress differently, who appear disabled (like Stephen Hawking), who have a different skin colour, who appear decrepit or youthful, or suffer a speech impediment, can all play their part.
But it does require a certain level of literacy. Badly worded arguments may be dismissed, even if the underlying idea is sound. Therefore, I think the ID web site should allow authors to edit their texts by addition, not subtraction, so that meanings can be clarified, but not changed (people may have already voted their approval of the content and it could be considered deceitful to change it).
(Anders Borg is a fine example of an unconventional looking senior politician - evidence against my argument?)

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