Information is not the only kind of power and information asymmetry is not the only kind of power asymmetry. How much does it help that you can watch what the police are doing when they still have all the guns? Maybe not such an issue in America, but what about Hong Kong?
Even if you have equal access to raw information, you wouldn’t necessarily have equal ability to process it. Minorities can still be unfairly oppressed by majorities, even when everyone knows they’re doing it. There’s an ugly outrage/political correctness culture on Twitter and increasingly in academia that mobs anyone they notice who steps out of line. These people often use their real names. How do they get away with this abuse when everyone can see them doing it? I can speculate that they’re more coordinated as a group than the individuals they target. If we give both sides more information, how far does it go to correct the power imbalance? Or does it just make things worse because the mob has more resources to utilize it already? Anonymity is a great defense against this abuse. Privacy helps a lot even without full anonymity. That’s why the mob doxxes their victims when they can.
How much does it help that you can watch what the police are doing when they still have all the guns? Maybe not such an issue in America, but what about Hong Kong?
Public officials in the US get punished very seldom while in China, it’s much easier to throw public official into prison.
China does a lot of public opinion management because public opinion matters to powerful people.
Information is not the only kind of power and information asymmetry is not the only kind of power asymmetry. How much does it help that you can watch what the police are doing when they still have all the guns? Maybe not such an issue in America, but what about Hong Kong?
Even if you have equal access to raw information, you wouldn’t necessarily have equal ability to process it. Minorities can still be unfairly oppressed by majorities, even when everyone knows they’re doing it. There’s an ugly outrage/political correctness culture on Twitter and increasingly in academia that mobs anyone they notice who steps out of line. These people often use their real names. How do they get away with this abuse when everyone can see them doing it? I can speculate that they’re more coordinated as a group than the individuals they target. If we give both sides more information, how far does it go to correct the power imbalance? Or does it just make things worse because the mob has more resources to utilize it already? Anonymity is a great defense against this abuse. Privacy helps a lot even without full anonymity. That’s why the mob doxxes their victims when they can.
The general sanity waterline is currently really ridiculously low. More transparency might help to some degree, but if your epistemology is broken, more information doesn’t help. It just gives you more ammunition to shoot your own foot with.
Public officials in the US get punished very seldom while in China, it’s much easier to throw public official into prison.
China does a lot of public opinion management because public opinion matters to powerful people.