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by gernb 1274 days ago
You said

> In a real democracy the big challenge should be how to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority

But isn't that exactly what's happening? The minority (red) won against the majority (blue).

1 comments

The grandparent is simplifying. The goal of a democracy is to respect the will of the majority while respecting the fundamental rights of the minority. If you're not doing the first step, respecting the will of the majority, then your democracy has already failed. A tyranny of the minority is strictly worse than a tyranny of the majority.
> A tyranny of the minority is strictly worse than a tyranny of the majority.

Not if the minority opinion is right. The ground truth matters.

The whole point of democracy is that we don’t agree on what’s “the truth” and who is “right” and need a process for deciding what to do notwithstanding those disagreements.
Okay, how do you decide which opinion is right? Perhaps we'll... vote on it? You do see the problem here, yes?
We're talking about politics and democracy here. People will always have a diverse range of opinions on political issues where none of those opinions is objectively "right".

Hopefully one opinion that most would agree on is that in matters of fact any competent representative should pay attention to the knowledge and advice of experts.