At least in democracies, convincing the people of something is an effective way to get politicians to pay attention to it—their job depends on getting these people to vote for them.
Notably in the UK, David Cameron gave the people a vote on whether to leave the EU because this was an idea that was gaining popularity. He did this despite not himself believing in the idea.
Naturally, plenty of legislation also gets passed without most people noticing, and in this respect we are better off convincing lawmakers. But I think that if we are able to convince a significant portion of the public, we will by extension convince a substantial number of lawmakers through their interaction with the public.
I have not read through the whole of the blogpost that you linked, but I disagreed with the “two important facts” used as a premise (1. People’s opinions are mostly genetic and 2. Most people’s opinions are completely random unless they’re smart.), and did not therefore trust any conclusions that might come from them.
Equally I get the impression that given the scale of the challenge, even if we were to cede that convincing the public is less important than convincing politicians, we will most likely need to do both to have a reasonable shot at passing anything that looks like good legislation.
At least in democracies, convincing the people of something is an effective way to get politicians to pay attention to it—their job depends on getting these people to vote for them.
Notably in the UK, David Cameron gave the people a vote on whether to leave the EU because this was an idea that was gaining popularity. He did this despite not himself believing in the idea.
Naturally, plenty of legislation also gets passed without most people noticing, and in this respect we are better off convincing lawmakers. But I think that if we are able to convince a significant portion of the public, we will by extension convince a substantial number of lawmakers through their interaction with the public.
I have not read through the whole of the blogpost that you linked, but I disagreed with the “two important facts” used as a premise (1. People’s opinions are mostly genetic and 2. Most people’s opinions are completely random unless they’re smart.), and did not therefore trust any conclusions that might come from them.
Equally I get the impression that given the scale of the challenge, even if we were to cede that convincing the public is less important than convincing politicians, we will most likely need to do both to have a reasonable shot at passing anything that looks like good legislation.