UKIP!

[SueEllen]

PPE should be first to go.

The only problem with that is we would get stuck with political leaders who studied History like this one and this one

[xoggoth]

Personally I think society would be best run by engineers who do not get involved in emotion, ideals or any concern for individuals. They should treat laws as they would machines, people as they would raw materials and design the process to provide the highest yield of human satisfaction.

All necessary wisdom is to be found in the Church of The Blessed Perry

[BrilloPad]

Personally I think society would be best run by engineers who do not get involved in emotion, ideals or any concern for individuals.

That already happens. All politicians care about is getting re-elected.

We need society to be run by people get involved in emotion, ideals and have concern for individuals.

[doodab]

Personally I think society would be best run by engineers who do not get involved in emotion, ideals or any concern for individuals. They should treat laws as they would machines, people as they would raw materials and design the process to provide the highest yield of human satisfaction.

All necessary wisdom is to be found in the Church of The Blessed Perry

I agree, it's basically an optimization problem. I do think you have to constrain the distribution of the "yield of human satisfaction" somewhat in order to avoid social unrest though. This seems to be where most forms of social organisation have fallen down, historically speaking. Some measure of social unrest can probably be tolerated, I suppose to account for it you need to attribute a negative value to the dissatisfaction felt by certain members of society and include that in the overall sum.

There is a branch of maths that deals with this sort of distribution problem already, though it's an active research area so new ideas are coming along all the time. It's quite interesting stuff. There is also a lot of illuminating research and experimentation in what is known as "behavioral economics". I reckon in 20-30 years or so we'll have enough theory and scientific evidence to enable rational social organisation without recourse to dogma. The main problem as I see it lies in actually measuring satisfaction, as determining each persons subjective value function requires asking them and people are prone to fibbing if they think it will make them better off.

My guess (and it is a guess, although I suppose I could have a crack at proving it if I was better at maths) is the old capitalism vs socialism debate will be put to bed when it's proven that a mixed strategy bests either pure strategy.

[Mich the Tester]

Personally I think society would be best run by engineers who do not get involved in emotion, ideals or any concern for individuals. They should treat laws as they would machines, people as they would raw materials and design the process to provide the highest yield of human satisfaction.

All necessary wisdom is to be found in the Church of The Blessed Perry

Hmmm, take a look at these films some time... All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - Watch Free Documentary Online

That idea sounds great but could become quite dystopian.

[Unix]

Personally I think society would be best run by engineers who do not get involved in emotion, ideals or any concern for individuals. They should treat laws as they would machines, people as they would raw materials and design the process to provide the highest yield of human satisfaction.

All necessary wisdom is to be found in the Church of The Blessed Perry

Is that a reading from Mein Kampf? :nazi:

[speling bee]

Personally I think society would be best run by engineers who do not get involved in emotion, ideals or any concern for individuals. They should treat laws as they would machines, people as they would raw materials and design the process to provide the highest yield of human satisfaction.

All necessary wisdom is to be found in the Church of The Blessed Perry

Would compulsory euthanasia of severely disabled babies at birth be acceptable if satisfaction efficient?

[vetran]

Is that a reading from Mein Kampf? :nazi:

why should ruling by logic not emotion equate to Nazism? Possibly communism.

Seems eminently sensible to me. We seem to spend far too much time trying to make pressure groups happy and not enough time making sure that we do the simple things right.

[doodab]

why should ruling by logic not emotion equate to Nazism? Possibly communism.

According to the advocates of free markets it equates to laissez faire capitalism.

[d000hg]

I'd agree with that only in respect of the courses that provide the skills that the country needs and which actually benefit the students by allowing them to get higher wages (actually the same thing given the way markets work). Charges should remain or even be increased for some courses that do neither.

Since most educational institutions are state-funded, an alternative would be to cut funding for pointless degrees, both for the college/university and the individual applying to the course.

Where and how do you draw the line then? The easy viewpoint is "engineering good, media studies bad" but that's pretty anachronistic. If we're talking about basing it on economics then making something "real" is not intrinsically better than a service, if both generate income. TV generates a lot of money, as does tourism. And then subjects like English & History are generally recognised as "serious, worthwhile" degrees but offer less direct pathways to work than a media/graphics design degree. And then there are degrees in social science, youth-work, etc which invariably lead to very low-paid jobs which are arguably very important.

Suggestions?