A “bit” is the very smallest unit of information, representing the result of a choice between two and only two possibilities. One bit can tell you whether a switch is on or off, a number 1 or 0, a charge positive or negative, etc. It takes at least five bits to designate a letter of the Roman alphabet, and because designating a character from the traditional ASCII character set required eight bits, that was designated a “byte”, the smallest unit of computer memory. The information contained in this column to the end of this sentence is roughly 600 bytes (4800 bits); not much really. So what would you say if I made the facially-absurd claim that the entirety of human political thought, from its earliest beginnings to the present day and spanning every single person in every country on the globe, could be accurately and concisely summarized by 1/4800 as much information? You would correctly surmise that anyone who actually believed such a thing would have to be some kind of imbecile, and yet tens of millions of people believe exactly that; they think everything important about any person’s entire range of political cognition can be summed up precisely and acurately by exactly one bit of infomation. Left or right, blue or red, good or evil, Little-endian or Big-endian. Is it any wonder that modern US politics bears almost no resemblance to the real world?
One Bit
November 15, 2019 by Maggie McNeill
Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny | Tagged left-right myth, politicians | 9 Comments
9 Responses
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Absolutely f*cking brilliant Maggie!!! Real people’s political ideas are not pigeonholed into nice convenient categories, unless they twist and distort their thinking into a predetermined pattern to fit a particular ideology they have been told is “right.” Or left. lol
So you know about Little-endian and Big-endian? Sounds like you’ve at least dabbled in programming.
I agree, it’s absurd to try to categorize a person’s political views in a bit.
Nope. But I HAVE read Gulliver’s Travels.
[…] https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/one-bit/ […]
This practically summarizes the current “Choose who rapes and rules Louisiana” race quite nicely.
Our typical election choices are like a contest where we get to pick our favorite beverage; Coke or Pepsi. What, you don’t like cola? You don’t like soda? Too bad. Coke or Pepsi. Pick one. Oh, the branding may be different, but the contents of the can are nearly indistinguishable.
I’m also reminded of the Simpsons episode where the two aliens are the candidates for president and after their identities are revealed one says, “It’s a two party system. You have to vote for one of us!”.
Sorry to nit-pick, but English text usually carries only about 2.5 bit of information per character, and the electorate distribution is a bit more than one bit of information, since it is not equally distributed.
But your overall point is well taken. Here (Switzerland) people get to vote on numerous issues every 3 months and every major law or change to a law has to pass a general vote or it does not take effect. (People can also ask for new laws, although that usually fails.) The effects are sometimes negative (populists and those vulnerable to their skewed presentation of the truth are a factor here as well), but overall this works nicely to keep politics reasonably honest.
Oh well, the bit for the electorate distribution is actually _less_ than a bit because of not being perfectly equally distributed. My apologies.
There are two parties.
The first party encounters “the other” and determines it is none of their damn business. The second party encounters “the other” and immediately reaches for a gun to force either compliance or death.
All politicians, law enforcement and our financial leaders along with a majority in our democracy belong to the “comply or die group. the marginalized and a small number of the enlightened belong to the second.