The only argument I have with this proposition is that many do not have a desire or interest in understanding the principles involved in the subject they are voting on. Many are lead like sheep. Even though their intentions are good and motivations are good, the result of the vote would not. In our times I believe representative is still the best because a few knowledgeable people (or have the ability to surround themselves with experts) are less likely to be misleaded than the ignorant (uninformed) or misguided masses.
Demtri, I don’t know what you’re looking for. If you’re willing to say that the senses and reason, i.e. every way that we can possibly receive information from the world, is what validates science, then so am I. If you want to say that “personal experience” can be a reliable indicator of objective reality, when properly and rigorously controlled, so am I. In that case, we don’t disagree and science couldn’t ask for better validation. If you mean to say that the scientific method is just as useful in producing truths as a lazy and causal observation, even a lazy and casual observation will show that you are mistaken.
MagnetMan, up until relatively recently, no one thought a machine could do math. Up until recently the idea that women or minorities can equal white men intellectually was rejected out of hand (and still is by many). These millions upon millions that believe this do not make it so. Millions can be mistaken. Look at the numbers in the evolution debate as a comparison to those who believe in Divine Consciousness.
As for a direct democracy, how is it possible? I think it would only work if everyone were assigned an immutable and unfakable IP address at birth, and all their opinions were fed into a great big computer that spits out policy. Otherwise, there will always be a measure of representation: Someone has to write the laws. Check Wikipedia for an example of how coherent communal writing is. 
Although, that would be a great idea for a project. Wikigovernment: A publicly configurable and ever evolving constitution that reflects everyone’s ideals. I suspect it would be a lot of bickering, but maybe it would produce something worthwhile.
Demtri, I agree. People aren’t all that well informed. Their policy decisions would be about as well informed as their current choice of representation.
I am saying personal experience and science have the same merits. They are both self-validating. The only determining factor that can be placed on the merits is the reliability you place on the merits of the observer. Neither one is self-sufficient. Science does not have merit on its own because it is self-validating. The only way personal experiences and science can have any merit at all is through the trust one places in it. Which is completely subjective not objective.
This voter apathy is due, I believe, to dissatisfaction and even boredom with the present political system. There is a general realization that the endless infighting between two apposing parties never leads to any substantial changes in policy…
It is my belief that a viable democracy can only be opperable when it is comprised of voters with proven records of social responsibility. The idea that an 18 year old can negate the vote of his 60 old grandfather is patently aburd. I would like to see a set of social benchmarks that any man or women worth their salt should meet. At the top of my list would be an unbroken marriage record and the rearing of decent kids. That would be followed by a good work ethic; good moral standards, volunteer social work and courage in defence of the country. I think such voters would pay close attention to all issues that affect family and national values. I think youth too would aspire to reach those values and get to vote.
That is the conventional view. Though I am sure that most congressional representatives are good and honest peole, the system iytself is corrupted by endless lobbying and open to endless manipulation. Besides new generations of people are npw hooked upto the w.w.w. and the standard of general knowledge is increasing exponentially.
Sorry but I do not quite get your correlation here. Which part of my post are you challenging?
Now we are back to distrust again. I thought I proved that bad is marginal, not prevalent. Anyway,if we can’t find a way to solve cheating we are dead meat. Where there is a will there is always a way.
I would go with a Senate - made up of two married seniors of impeccable social credentials. There would be no campaigning for that office. They would be nominated to their seats by the people from each State, based on their popularity as good parents and grandparents and generally charitable citizens. Excessive private wealth would disqualify them. Their business would be to take what we vote on and make it coherent on paper, If there is disagreement among them they must turn to us for ratification
Any advance would be better than what we have now
You have defeated your purpose of a democracy with your qualifiers to vote to eliminate my argument.
Demtri, how are you distinguishing science from personal experience? It seems like science is just a formalization of how we experience.
MagnetMan, my first paragraph was a response to your statement that “Tens of millions of ordinary people, of every race, of every clime, of every period in human evolution have attested to making personal contact with [a Divine Consciousness] - and via that contact their personal lives have been illuminated.” It was more of an aside, as it bears little on the discussion at hand.
I like the idea of more stringent requirements for voting, but I have some questions about your suggested criteria. Marriage? Children? Why? Aren’t there good and honest people that aren’t married? And a requirement or preference for children would exclude gays. Especially where it comes to senate members, a family might be a hindrance. And I’m skeptical that the family is the institution that we should enshrine in our society.
I like the idea of a senate, a large body of experts with no head, whose pay and amenities are fixed and inviolable, who is largely sequestered from society in, and who choose as a group their own replacements from a pool of global experts. (I should credit the Nowhereistan movement for much of that proposition, though I don’t agree with all of what they propose). They would take input in extensive polling, and determine how best to achieve the desires of the masses.
I am not distinguishing the two. If one person tells me of a personal experience and it contradicts science, then neither has merit over the other. The only merit that can be placed is the trust the individual places on one or the other. Science is not a validation of the personal experience because it is self-validating. The only validation is that of the individual done on an individual basis.
Our first vote would be to vote on the need for qualifiers. You would be safe until then. 
Parents have more of their eyes on the future than any others.
Sure there are and their input would be sorely missed. There are plenty orphans seeking a parent., They should adopt, Single parents would be fine.
Gays can be good parents.
I expressly stated grand parents - married seniors who have served their time faithfully.
A nation’s character is based on family values. We all come from there. No family, no nation.
I
Why not use those qualifiers to represent you in the current system? It sounds more like you would prefer representative just more responsible voting on who represents the people. Because by limiting voting you are still using the representitive method.
OK, if you’ll allow single parents and adopted parents, I’m not as opposed to it.
As for the family, there’s good reason to believe that that is a modern development (evolutionarily speaking). Historically, the tribe was at least as important as the nuclear family, possibly even more so. Humans didn’t have distinct enough living situations to divide family from the broader social group as sharply as we do today. And our closest animal relatives still live in tribe-like groups, where family is acknowledged, but it is nearly lost in the thick social web that connects everyone to everyone else. In early humans, this was likely even more true, as humans depend much less on instinct than do other species. I think that we should base society around larger social groups like communes or villages.
Demtri, science is the collected personal experience of many trials of the same phenomenon, with precautions taken to minimize bias and other contamination. Where personal experience might say “I spoke with a tree today”, science will say “he was likely tripping balls, because he ate this species of fungus and we’ve seen similar results in the past, and no one around him heard the tree talk back except him”.
Which one has validation that isn’t self-validation? Neither.
Premise #1
Trees do talk, but we can’t understand them until we eat a species of fungus.
Premise #2
The species of fungus causes you to trip balls and hear trees speak.
Validate either claim without using self-validation. Validate without using either science validating itself through science or personal experience validating through your own experience.
Why is that important? I can practically validate the scientific claim through personal experience, but not the personal experienc claim through science.
We can make testable predictions to test each hypothesis: If trees really do talk, first of all we’d expect every person tripping balls to experience trees talking, and second we’d expect the trees to provide the same information (i.e. two people tripping balls independently and talking to the same tree should be told the same name, the tree should have the same voice, etc.). If it’s the drug, we’d expect to find a neuroreceptor that responds to a chemical in the fungus. We’d expect to be able to replicate it; we’d expect different people to have different experiences to some degree.
Furthermore, the experience of a talking tree is at odds with so much of personal experience. There will always be outlyer hypotheses that account for a phenomenon in strange ways (the trees are liars, they only talk occasionaly, etc.), and at some point you play the odds.
But the point is that you do this sort of thing all the time; everyone does. You routinely assume that others experience the same reality that you do, and that their experiences validate or invalidate your own. There’s nothing wrong with that. Whether Descartes can doubt their existence doesn’t matter. Science is validated by what you do, in fact, do, and not by philosophical certainty. Science proves itself in practice.
Run of the mill philosophical arguements don’t invalidate science, premise 1 and 2 are widely widely different claims, whats wrong with probability assessments like, consciousness solves impossible adaptive problems and requires specialized neural circuitry to do so, sure the trees may talk, but automatically theres a huge reason to suspect they don’t.
Science does not prove itself in practice. That is the assumption of merit I am challenging. It only proves itself through itself. It doesn’t have merit on its own because it is self-validating.
My point of self-validation and lack of merit is important because of statements like this.
Because science is self-validating they don’t have the merit to dismiss such cases. The first poster was correct. It is arrogance, foolishness and ignorant. It is using a self-validating system to dismiss another self-validating system. Both have no merit. The only merit is the trust one places in the system.
In this case people like you place your trust in science over personal experience and claim it through arrogance. But they both are valid and equally without merit. Science doen’t have merit innately as many presume.
They are not equally valid. No matter how valid a personal experience can be, the scientific perspective is more valid because it is founded on more personal experiences. Science isn’t just personal experience, it is personal experience fine tuned to produce knowledge that makes objectively verifiable claims.
Claims of the paranormal are tested all the time. Take ESP, for instance. People claim that they can detect thoughts or feelings or something like that through consciousness alone, but that is a testable claim. When you claim to know what I’m thinking, and I ask you “What am I thinking right now?” and you don’t know, that says something about the nature of your personal experience. It doesn’t say that you’re not experiencing anything, it just says that your explanation isn’t useful (read: predictive). ‘Science’ is just a label for the method that best uses personal experience to make accurate predictions.
You’ll notice that I didn’t refer to science when I stated how and why claims are dimsissed. I simply referred to other personal experience: tests and investigations. But they are personal experiences that are more reliable than the experiences of people making paranormal claims, because they are are controlled, and they are objective. It’s not arrogance, it’s experience!
Science is a validation process used by the knowledge of science. Personal experience is a validation process used by the knowledge of the person. They are not one in the same. If a personal experience fall outside of the scientific knowledge does not make it invalid it only makes is outside of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge doesn’t have more merit because it is only validates science knowledge. It is your belief in science that gives it more merit to you.
Science isn’t a label for a method that best uses personal experience to make accurate predictions. It is a label for a method that uses scientific knowledge to determine if personal experiences fall within scientific knowledge. That is how it is self-validating. Science has it scope of knowledge and it determines if the personal experience falls within its scope of knowledge.
Just look at your statement. ESP is paranormal, that is only true in scientific knoweldge. Personal knowedlge says ESP is normal. It is your belief in scientific knowledge over personal knowledge that makes that claim. You are using scientific knowledge to validate the premise before the premise is even tested. You start with scientific knowledge and validate it through science. That is self-validating. The only thing you have determined is that ESP is not within the scope of science. That has no merit except that you have validated it is not within scientific knowledge. What is arrogant is the concept that scientific knowledge is greater than personal knowledge.
I understand the abstract nature of the point you are making, but in the absolute state it is senseless. Heisenberg has proved that the observer affects the observed. Nohing is certain. It is the metaphysicians view that both are one and the same. Man, no matter his education, is Narcissiis staring at the mirror of his own reflection.