<Cough> Working for a contractor heavily involved in this project, all I can say is that internally on our servers as well as in any documentation and conversation the vessel is referred to as 'Boaty McBoatface'.
Amazing. Sounds like a fun team :) sometimes tech work can be dull, so it's good to have people who can have a laugh together on a daily basis. Makes for great working conditions IMO.
I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There are plenty of objections to be made against that. E.g. 1) the US being a two party state means that getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions is exceedingly difficult.
2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations that there is no way a politician can actually do what they tell voters because at the end of the day they have to satisfy donors otherwise they can't get money to run elections. There has been studies that show American politicians are mainly aligned with the wishes of the rich rather than people who vote on them.
That is just two big points, which makes the US stand out of many other western democracies, and there are multiple others.
My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won.
Whenever there is an issue most people don't have a vested interest in or think is very important it is likely that whoever wants to stirr up stuff or make some fun are going to win, because nobody else has any incentive.
This is of course a major issue with democracy. When you let people make decisions on things they don't really care about then they will make poor decisions. Democracy shouldn't make everything a choice, but rather be about choosing people you think will make good choices on your behalf.
I don't really agree with the article either, but for different reasons.
Voting is to democracy as is telescopes is to astronomy.
Democracy is about the people being in charge, of the government existing for the benefit of the people (as opposed to a dictator/absolute monarch/aristocracy) on the broadest possible stretches. It's about replacing the people in charge peacefully every few years. It's not about every decision being made at every level of government always being in line with what a majority might vote -- and it's emphatically not about online votes for silly things. It's an abomination to suggest such votes have anything to do with democracy (or, if you're so minded, an elaborate tactic for the power cabal to create the illusion of people being in power, but that theory is rather diminished by the power cabal not following the decision).
Democracy is worst form of government, except for all other others. It's not perfect, and it doesn't hold the seeds of perfection. It's at best a decent way of preventing a strong man and his cronies from grabbing too much power too fast -- it's not even a guarantee against that happening.
However, the unexpected strong performances of Trump and Sanders in the US primaries is for all its weirdness a symptom of the system working, however imperfectly: It's a huge vote of non-confidence in "the system" and the perception that it has been captured by some vaguely defined instance of not-the-people (Sanders: Wall Street; Trump: Who the hell knows? Mexicans?) and that (however crudely) something should be done about it.
Democracy can take many forms indeed. But let's think opportunistically, for a moment.
In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice.
The case of Boaty McBoatface, though, is unusual in that it doesn't actually much matter what the name of a research vessel is. It's just a name. Names are almost always boring. Unless… if the name becomes so popular and widely known that the very name opens up completely new opportunities for raising funds and awareness. Which, I would have thought, was kind of the point of the competition to begin with.
So, why not reap the PR benefits of this name? Why would they start a contest but back out when they hit the jackpot? I do not understand.
It is a difficult line to toe. Obviously if their primary objective is to raise awareness of the (continuing) existence of the boat, BMcBF is a winner, and there are numerous cash-in opportunities such as those you suggest. If done right it might not even look cynical!
If on the other hand giving it a silly name "dilutes their brand" (to use an HN favourite) then they're going to do the stuffy thing. Not entirely sure why folks would be surprised at a Conservative minister taking a conservative approach...
Really seems that SCIENCE does a lot better in the public eye at the moment when it goes populist rather than cloistered, but here we are...
These movements share a message: "the man is screwing us little people". That's a populist message, which it's why they're much more popular than their actual craziness would otherwise grant.
The most popular talking vehicle, in the US at least, is named Thomas.
This isn't a particularly convincing argument for a silly name. If kids will accept Thomas, surely they'll accept a more serious name than Boaty McBoatface.
The point of the boat isn't to be a Budgie the Helicopter style cash machine, is it? It has a serious purpose.
Why does it have to appeal to 4 year olds, who have zero understanding of or interest in what it does? Why does it require an infantile name to appeal to kids who are old enough to be interested in what it does?
The only reason this is even any kind of issue is because of the way internet works, where all kinds of pointless immature stupidity is given far more time of day than it deserves, because newspaper sites have to fill themselves with something.
Edit: Oh dear. Looks like I hit a nerve with some people. :( ∗sad mcsadface∗
AFAIK there's nothing to stop someone creating a character called Boaty McBoatface that teaches 4 year olds why the ice caps are melting, without having its internet joke name attached to a real life $300 million scientific research vessel.
And exactly what problem does attaching the name to a real boat cause? I think the objection to the name is far more childish than the name itself. "Oh no no no, we can't call it that. This is a serious boat, for serious grown ups."
When you allow the public to chose a name for a research vessel, it's inoffensive, popular and creates more media coverage (arguably the goal of having the vote) then no matter how whimsical you think the name is you should stick with it. If you don't want whimsy, don't ask the British public to name your ship.
No one forced them in to the situation.
FWIW I don't find the name stupid, one person's humour is another's stupidity I guess.
I agree that it's totally stupid to use online voting, that is just asking to be hijacked, and I almost believe that they should have to eat the result as a punishment. Almost.
Hopefully it's a lesson for them not to ask The Internet its opinion again.
What? I said objecting to the name is childish. That doesn't mean I think everything should have whimsical names, and I really don't know how you interpreted that from what I said?
My God, this is completely ridiculous, but I'll try one more time.
Do you or do you not believe everything should have a whimsical name?
To save time: If your answer to this is "No, I do not believe everything should have a whimsical name", then what is your non-childish objection to whimsical names in some cases?
Not supporting OP but their question is not at all a dichotomy. The question wasn't should everything have a whimsical name or should nothing have a whimsical name. The question was basically just should everything have a whimsical name. Sounds like your answer is no, because you're ok with things having whimsical names sometimes.
Yes that's how I read it, and it is a false dichotomy, because not thinking something should be the case is not the same as thinking it shouldn't be the case. They're both value judgements of which I make neither.
Wow, it's extremely irritating to see this (parent) post downvoted by people who may not realize (till after downvoting) that what I replied to was edited - from denying what I said to admitting it, making my reply look redundant.
Yeah, serious new Royal Navy boats need serious names, like its predecessors HMS Speedy, HMS Child's Play, HMS Happy Entrance, HMS Arrogant (later renamed HMS Insolent)...
> Why does it have to appeal to 4 year olds, who have zero understanding of or interest in what it does?
You realise that those 4 year olds grow up right? And that by possibly catching their attention and imagination at an early age it might even make them more interested in the area and maybe, gosh, make them want to become researchers and scientists when they grow up and tackle issues like climate change.
And the very people objecting to it now will be retired, dead or moved onto a more senior position and then care less about it.
So, why not reap the PR benefits of this name? Why would they start a contest but back out when they hit the jackpot? I do not understand.
This is reminiscent of a contest on EEVBlog that Keysight just sponsored. Participants entered the contest by posting a video on Facebook describing what they would do with an oscilloscope. The person whose video garnered the most votes would win a new 20 GS/s oscilloscope with a bandwidth spec of 6 GHz and a price tag in the neighborhood of US $70,000.
Naturally, the winner turned out to be a kid who made a video about an electric water heater and got a bunch of her schoolmates to flood the voting page. The highest-ranked entry by someone with a legitimate need for a 6 GHz oscilloscope finished in a distant third place.
So Keysight did the only thing that could have avoided a giant online dumpster fire, and gave one of the scopes to each of the top three contestants. It was an expensive lesson in the failings of democracy (and in not using Facebook for anything important).
So yeah, they should just paint the name on the boat and get over it. Keysight salvaged their marketing effort by taking the high road, but you can bet they won't run this contest the same way in the future. They're lucky they didn't have to give away three dozen 6 GHz scopes to random high school kids.
> It's just a name. Names are almost always boring.
Not everyone feels this way. Names can be important and in the arts are particularly relished/valued and interpreted, to the extent that noms-de-plume and other forms of pseudonym are popular.
A formalist account of names sees them as dumb labels, and in computing you can get away with that. But it's not whole story because it doesn't consider the emotional side.
In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice.
Problem is, it's easier to develop an understanding of national issues than local or regional issues because national issues get pushed on us by media, while you have to actually seek out information about anything local. Everyone talks about national issues, that's social pressure to become knowledgable about them.
> When you let people make decisions on things they don't really care about then they will make poor decisions.
This assumes McBoatface is a poor decision, which is a completely personal (and most likely wrong) assessment.
There are no objective parameters for what a good ship name should be in generic terms. For something with military applications, probably easy spelling and brevity would factor in, but in reality a lot of military ships have long and windy names anyway. Something with a publicity element, like a research ship, could do with something memorable and fun, which Boaty McBoatface undoubtedly is; naming it as some obscure last-century researcher would make it utterly forgettable.
So it looks like there is wisdom in the crowds after all; it's just that often it doesn't match the wisdom of stuffy establishment types.
> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won.
The point is that if it does represent the will of the people and the people in power don't like it, the will of the people will still lose out.
The two party system in the US is a problem, but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties.
If you look at the Democratic party, in 1968 an unfavored candidate was nominated based on votes, and so the DNC decided to institute the concept of super-delegates from thereon out. They did this because letting normal democracy run its course didn't work because the people elected someone the party elites didn't think was the best. The super delegates composed of party loyalists and high ranking party members that could ignore DNC votes. This essentially gave the party more control over who would win and removed voting power from normal people.
In the current election, Donald Trump is doing the same thing to upset the Republican party leadership. The Republicans haven't implemented anything as undemocratic as super-delegates yet, but if Trump wins they might be encouraged to (since it's the type of Democracy-giving-poor-results scenario people in power try to avoid).
> but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties
It's a natural consequence of the specifics of how the US does elections. The US isn't the only country with democracy and plenty of others have more than 2 significant parties.
Most countries where there are more than two parties are smaller. Just like in the US at lower level elections independents and other party members might win.
For that matter, most countries are smaller than the US, both in size and population. There are only two countries with a larger population. China has one ruling political party, and India has had prime ministers from many different parties.
For a full accounting, look back to the rise of the two party system during the Jacksonian era, or the current system of Democrats and Republicans (replacing the Whig party) started in the 1850s.
An explanation based on population size would have to be able to explain why it is that the current two party system in the US started when it was a much smaller country.
The US population in 1860 was 31,443,321. There are now 42 countries with a population larger than that.
It is represented poorly. But it's not clear that combating parliamentary factions would do better.
It's mystifying how such a diverse and populous country can be represented well at all. And the evidence is stacking up to show that it can't, in USA, Russia, China, and India.
The parties are more varied by state than you'd expect - for example, the GOP in New York State tends to be pro-transit, while the DNC in Wisconsin still loves to build huge highways through minority neighborhoods.
> There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties.
Wrong.
It turns out that with First-Past-The-Post, we arrive with two parties.
In many other countries, over centuries, even more parties develop, and fail again.
At best a handful of parties, and it only works in small elections. You get to bigger and bigger elections the system always reduces the choice, which means that the bigger the system is, the less effective democracy becomes.
Of course democracy was never meant to be the most efficient or effective system of government. It's simply the most compromising one.
You say "at best a handful" like there isn't a meaningful difference between "2" and "3 or 4". The US is deeply unusual in their persistent two party system. Germany probably has nearly as many voters (given higher registration and turnout rates) as the US, and certainly doesn't operate as a two party system
> [Boaty McBoatface] represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam[n] about.
Indeed the vote was obviously silly and did in fact achieve its desired goal: publicity for arctic research. The officials are insane if they don't go along with the choice. It's an opportunity for further publicity on arctic research for decades to come!
Exactly. It's the same bloody-mindedness that got 'Killing in the Name' - essentially the phrase "---k you I won't do what you tell me" shouted repeatedly - to No 1 at Christmas as a reaction against the X Factor manufactured idol hype. (And almost got 'Ding dong, the witch is dead' to No 1 after Thatcher's death...)
States could probably change the 2 party system by eliminating the preferential access that the parties have to the ballot.
Imagine if the national conventions were deciding which of the many already balloted candidates to endorse, rather than a media circus driving national attention to a smaller and smaller number of candidates that are then placed on state ballots by the parties months after an independent would have had to finished submitting ballot petitions.
It would still be a circus, but it wouldn't be a circus where the choices are filtered through a few thousand people. I suppose it would be necessary to again make the first loser the Vice President, but that shouldn't really hurt anything.
I think another huge problem with democracy is the voting systems. As far as I'm concerned, if they used a simple plurality (first past the post) voting system, then the results are invalid, and that goes for any election that uses that system. It cannot be said to represent the will of the people.
I didn't participate in this election (I'm not a UKian) and didn't see exactly how it was done, but I'll bet (esp. given the statements made about the results, and how the winner got 3x the number of votes of the runner-up) they had a big list of names, and then people had the chance to vote for exactly one of those names. "Boaty McBoatface" therefore was probably not the choice of the majority of the voters, but only a small minority, with all the other votes spread across a bunch of other names.
If the name was not chosen by a clear majority of people, then it's not the "choice of the people".
If this had been done by some other voting system, then we would have seen very different results most likely. Approval voting might have worked well here; whichever name got the most votes of approval, if more then 50% of the voters approved it, can rightfully be said to be "the choice of the people".
This is the problem with "democracy": the voting system itself is inherently rigged and unfair, and then we're told to believe in its results. How many elections actually use a voting system besides plurality? Not many.
I plead guilty, as that particular name was so hilariously funny, that I voted while I was still laughing. And I'm a Finn, not a Brit, so I wouldn't even expect that my vote would be taken seriously.
> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won.
This can be said about the election in pretty much all western societies. There have been several occasions where I myself have not voted in the UK elections. Does it make those elections any less valid? Same can be said for the US as well, where even those who voted found that majority rule didn't matter in the end [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...]
Maybe we should follow the Australian way where people are forced to vote or face a $100AU fine. But then democracy right, it should give you the right to not vote.
There is not I'm afraid, you have to mark the ballot paper. So the way round it is to mark the paper outside of the boxes, thus making it an invalid vote.
> getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions
The parties in the US don't control the opinions and seats of their elected members, which means you get a greater variety of political positions under the same label than you do in a lot of parliamentary systems. Republicans in California can easily be left of Democrats in Georgia.[0]
There are opinions held by small interest groups that are not reflected in the democratic process, to be sure.
On the other hand, performing artists have their own line in the tax code, so sometimes these groups do get their way.
> US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations that there is no way a politician can actually do what they tell voters because at the end of the day they have to satisfy donors
A lot of studies have debunked the influence of money on campaigns.[1]
Jeb's massive war chest didn't keep him in the race.
Here are the richest individuals to ever launch a bid for the presidency[2]:
1) Ross Perot
2) Steve Forbes
3) John Kerry
4) Mitt Romney
5) Al Gore
The Clintons are next, but most of their money was made after Bill's Presidency.
Giuliani, Edwards, and Huntsman round out the list (before this election, I'm not sure if anyone really knows how much Trump is worth).
A lot of losers on that list for a system so influenced by money.
The story is more complex than the article says. A Spanish forum (one of the top-40 more visited sites in Spain) voted massively the name "Blas de Lezo" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blas_de_Lezo ) a Spanish admiral who in 1741 defeated a British Army far bigger than his own one.
After gaining the #1 position the organization decided to withdraw the name from the polling, causing more controversy about this digital process.
Certainly one of the funniest stories to pop-up in the interwebs during the last year..
> A band of Spanish net buccaneers has mounted a determined incursion into Her Maj's territorial cyberwaters by demanding that Blighty's forthcoming Royal Research Ship be named the RRS Blas de Lezo, in honour of the man who administered the British a serious military shoeing during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
If you believe it would have been outrageous that this man had his name in a british ship, you'll be surprised by the shitstorm that would happen if his name would be given to a spanish ship.
OK, keep downvoting. I couldn't care less. Do you think I'm being too terse? Take a look at the last edit. Or is it something else? I don't care either way.
Among other things, I guess those of us who don't know every piece of trivia about Spanish culture would get an explanation of what exactly is unsavory about this Blas de Lezo person.
You had it in the Wikipedia article linked by the op.
Edit... anyway: De Lezo took part in the Spanish Sucession War. In that war, Catalonia lost some fueros (middle ages common law) because it was against the Borbons (that won) and in the revisionist version of history that we're hearing in very recent years, that's tantamount to genocide.
Thanks, that was the explanation you could have given several posts ago. While skimming the Wikipedia article, I noted that he got a statue in Madrid, then skipped the rest of that paragraph, which was the only one that hinted at this controversy, and even then did not give the reason you give here. Please excuse us for not following the Spanish news so closely, and then downvoting you for your sheer arrogance.
The solution is simple. Continue calling the boat Boaty McBoatface. Ignore all references to the government's preferred name. They can choose what's painted on the side, but the name depends only on what people call it. If enough people call it Boaty McBoatface its name really is Boaty McBoatface. If your job depends on calling it the government's preferred name then subtly alter the timing of your speech to make it clear that it's not the real name while maintaining plausible deniability. Only written communication from coerced people remains a problem, and hopefully that will be far outweighed by people using the real name.
This will probably happen anyway. Research ships are manned by researchers (usually of the non-bureaucratic variety) and in my experience are game for a laugh. Regardless of what it gets officially named, this ship will almost certainly be unofficially referred to as Boaty McBoatface by its crew.
(And as another commenter who is familiar with the project internals pointed out - they already do call it McBoatface)
> The solution is simple. Continue calling the boat Boaty McBoatface. Ignore all references to the government's preferred name.
This is good advice. In Toronto we have a baseball stadium called the Rogers Center (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Centre). It was originally called the SkyDome but it was bought by a company called Rogers and renamed.
Everyone still refers to it as the Skydome. Corporate branding be damned:)
This happens with airports a lot. Some really wonderful and generous old pilot or aviation engineer dies, so the field gets renamed in honor of the person. But aviators still refer to the field by it's traditional name. It's not a slight against the honored dead; rather, it's just out of habit and the fact that it's tremendously easier to remember "$CITY_NAME Airport" than it is "$GUY_WHO_DIED Field".
Speaking of airports, I know of several people who outright refuse to refer to Washington National Airport by its current name, "Ronald Regan Washington National Airport". They will go so far as to correct someone who says "Regan National" and insist, "Washington National."
Some people in DC are still annoyed by the renaming, partly because of the air controller thing, and partly because Congress changed the name against the wishes of the people of DC and then forced DC to pay for changing the signs out of the city's budget.
Definitely. Ever wonder why New Orleans' airport has the symbol MSY, but is named Louis Armstrong airport? MSY stands for Moisant Stock Yards, in honor of early aviator John Moisant.
Im recent years, the city renamed the airport to Louis Armstrong airport, but no one in the city refers to it as that. Everyone still calls it Moisant. Not that we don't like Louis Armstrong, it's always been called Moisant and New Orleans really doesn't like change.
I always wondered why that airport was called MSY.
However, I can think of one counterexample: JFK airport in NYC. It used to be called Idlewild, named after some golf course I think, but was renamed to JFK (with the airport code JFK) back in the 60s. No one knows what "Idlewild" is any more.
Another fun example is the Louisville International Airport which was originally named Standiford Field, thus the airport code SDF and even locals still sometimes refer to it as Standiford, but in this case was renamed to the more obvious choice (Louisville International Airport) to confuse people less.
A further tangent, but the more obvious airport code LOU is still in active use across town at Bowman Field, the city's original air field (definitely not an airport) and these days the oldest remaining continually operating air field in the country.
Random aside but when I was a kid in the early 80s I found a radio in my grandparents basement which could pick up the radio chatter at Bowman. I would listen to that thing every time we visited
I have a counterexample for this one: in Phoenix, there's an outdoor arena/pavilion that used to be called "Desert Sky Pavilion", a nice non-corporate name referring to the local geography. Well it went through that whole corporate branding crap, and while I was there at least, it seemed like people were calling it "Cricket Pavilion" (which was the current name at the time). Here's what Wikipedia says about the naming:
"Ak-Chin Pavilion (formerly known as the Desert Sky Pavilion, Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion, Cricket Pavilion, Cricket Wireless Pavilion and Ashley Furniture HomeStore Pavilion) is an amphitheater located in Phoenix, Arizona, which seats 8,000 under a pavilion roof and an additional 12,000 on a hillside behind the main stands."
The Senator's hockey stadium in Ottawa has been through a few names since it was built in 96: Palladium, Corel Centre, Scotiabank Place, Canadian Tire Centre.
In the past few months I have heard all 4 names used for the facility.
If I ran a news organization I'd use the old name on principle but I know what would happen. Companies would start to pay me to use the "proper name." It's the next step after product placement.
Perhaps, but the name Willis is not from the current owners, but simply one of the primary tenants. The previous owners threw in naming rights as part of the rental agreement.
It's been nearly a decade since Austin's "Town Lake" was renamed by the city council as "Lady Bird Lake" (in honor of Lady Bird Johnson). To this day, I'm not sure I've ever heard it referred to as anything other than Town Lake. I certainly can never remember to use the new name.
This happens a lot. There's a nightclub in Cambridge called Ballare (since 2003), but it is almost exclusively refered to by students as Cindies. There's another club, and I can't even recall what its "real" name is as "The Place" and "Life" were used interchangeably for it.
I don't see much fun in that. The funny thing about getting the ship named Boaty McBoatface is that it would be painted on the ship and would be named as such in official documentation. The ability to casually refer to the ship by that name does exist, obviously, but how often do people refer to specific government ships by name anyway?
The problem with this "joke" is that it's a mildly amusing story at best. Having it painted on the boat is just prolonging something that never really made it to the amusement level of a joke with legs.
I hope the officials hold firm. Long after the easily entertained public has moved on, they can do their job without being reminded of how poor the sense of humor in the general populace actually is.
> I hope the officials hold firm. Long after the easily entertained public has moved on, they can do their job without being reminded of how poor the sense of humor in the general populace actually is.
How is the a bland, inane government-issue name it will no doubt end up with going to be any better?
Outside of the people who actually work on the ship, how many members of the public are ever going to have any reason to call this ship anything at all after the poll is over?
I mean, it's cute to give the public an opportunity to name something, but half the people who voted in the poll have probably forgotten the ship even exists by now.
The marketing opportunities alone are insane. I am amazed that they are turning down the name. This ship had the opportunity to be as well known as the Titanic (but for better reasons)
Agreed. Especially if they do something funny with the paint, like a giant happy face on the front or something. Maybe some cartoon arms on the side. Suddenly it goes from a soon-to-be-forgotten research vessel into an iconic mascot.
I'd buy a Boaty McBoatface toy and I'm not even British.
“The new royal research ship will be sailing into the world’s iciest waters to address global challenges that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including global warming, the melting of polar ice, and rising sea levels,”
"Imagine Boaty McBoatface sailing into the world's iciest waters with the wide-eyed fascination of a child. Observing global challenges that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, Boaty McBoatface absorbs new facts and ideas without the jaundiced and prejudiced views of older research vessels while providing fresh perspectives and iron-clad observations of data regarding global warming, the melting of polar ice and rising sea levels."
And what's wrong exactly if the name appeals to every 5 years old in the country? I think /that/ is inspirational -- how better to get kids interested in the science than having them following that boat adventures over the oceans?
I think refusing that name would be not just be 'anti democratic' -- it's just be very un-british, because as a foreigner, that's /exactly/ what I'd expect the british to come up with as a name, just for a smirk, and that's something I like about them!
Seriously! I can't believe that the boat probably won't be named Boaty McBoatface!
My nephew would have wanted to learn about it, it would have been something I could keep up to date a bit on what it's doing and he'd love to hear about it.
Hell I can't believe the people on the project didn't go 100% for it right away, giving the boat a fun paint-job and maybe even doing something like working with a children's book author to write some stories about what the boat is doing that are geared toward children.
It would have been an amazing way to get kids involved and interested in the whole thing.
Hear hear. I'm going to pass on your suggestion to NERC and my children's schools if you don't mind. I think using Boaty as a focus for school science projects is a great idea.
And you're absolutely right, it's bloody un-British to refuse to name it Boaty. I mean, we won't do anything about it but there'll be a lot of tutting I'll be bound.
I'm also a bit sore that they removed the Spanish admiral as an entry. Not exactly fair play. Rather disappointing actually.
The best thing to have come out of this is a headline from satirical online newspaper Waterford Whispers: US Military Introduce Childbomber McChildbombface
Crowdsourcing of a name is not about democracy. It doesn't appear to me that the public was widely informed that they had to make a democratic decision, instead sounds like a bunch of kids trolling. I think the article is conflating two unrelated entities here.
As a sideline, what is democracy even? Democracy via elections would be oligarchy to ancient Athenians, who prefered democracy by lot anyway.
And of course Athenian democracy would be oligarchy to modern democrats, who think that more than 10% of the population should be enfranchised...
Agree with your point that it doesn't really help the discussion to treat obscure and easily manipulated online polls on trivia as actual mass expressions of public will. I mean, it's about as valid as the poll Redditors brigaded to try to prove that nearly every American would vote for Sanders.
The vote was well covered in the British press, and the people I know who voted were neither kids not anything other than completely serious about the name.
This article is good food for thought in a year dominated by two strong "outsider vs the Establishment" candidates in the US, populist rise in all the European elections, and the entire Brexit issue. We are confronting a lot of areas where the "will of the people" differs from "the will of the people who know what the fuck they're talking about." this raises a lot of questions about "democratic-ness."
executive powers originally designed for extenuating circumstances are being used on one side and the other: to select delegates in an election, to get around a stonewall Congress in Washington, to name a boat in England. Where they aren't used, there is pressure to use them: to avoid a Brexit disaster, to stand up for a comedian's right to free speech in Germany, to respond to terrorist threats in France and Belgium.
I have to wonder if this is the Internet doing to Democracy what it is doing to Capitalism : breaking fundamental assumptions of how the world works. Information and opinions work very differently, now. We are part of much larger social herds, governed by different forces, with much faster (and more selective) information transfer. Populism is a different beast today than when Berlusconi ran in the 90s. Maybe it's time you disrupt democracy.
Why is it undemocratic to not respect the outcome of an online poll? First of all, online polls are never democratic (They are directed to subset of the population - which is pretty obvious when they are hijacked.).
Second - even proper referendums are usually advisory, i.e. the outcome isn't bindnig for legislators. I don't see a democratic problem with that either unless legislators would go against a strong public opinion, repeatedly.
Not calling it Boaty McBoatface will just be a massive missed opportunity for effective science outreach and a crappy PR move.
You say it's going to be doing important research? Great! Add a social media presence, pull in people with the "funny name" and keep them for the exciting and interesting research.
But you're not going to that, because you're too important for that, ... because you're snobs.
This is the country of the author who gave us ship names such as Gunboat Diplomat, You'll Thank Me Later, and (my personal favorite) I Blame Your Mother. You'd think the NERC would understand that it's all in good fun and would have the grace to use the name chosen by us unwashed masses. I mean, it's irreverent, but it isn't obscene, so who cares?
I wouldn't have thought to bring up Banks, but it's a good point. To think that a lack of gravitas in naming is an indictment of democracy is absolutely ridiculous.
I think it's on topic as there are many ships in his books with names referencing a lack of "gravitas". As explained by Banks:
"But it was a scathing review of Culture ship-naming policy delivered by another Involved civilisation. They suggested that such enormously powerful and intellectually refined entities ought to have names with a little more gravitas, to reflect their near-god-like status; the immediate and sustained reaction of one of the Culture's ship manufacturies was to name all its subsequent vessels things like:
Stood Far Back When The Gravitas Was Handed Out; Gravitas, What Gravitas?; Gravitas... Gravitas... No, Don't Help Me, I'll Get It In A Moment; Gravitas Free Zone; Low Gravitas Warning Signal"
I guess the NERC researchers might be a bit less keen if there was a risk they'd ever have to put out a distress call like this over a bad radio connection:
"mayday ma-day may--y this is Shi--y McShi-face ..."
Comparing Boaty McBoatface to electing a democratic official for representation is a little disingenuous. One is a popularity contest of suggestions to a concrete answer of a question, the other is marking a preference for someone who you hope will perform executive actions in line with what you want.
Surely it's closer to compare it to a referendum: in which, the public majority agreed on an answer that the establishment didn't like, and will now renege on.
> the other is marking a preference for someone who you hope will perform executive actions
You so wish. It's a popularity contest like any other. Proof: Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Ventura, Berlusconi, Trump, Franken, the Ghandi dynasty, even the last Troudeau. Name recognition alone pretty much trumps (eh) everything else, once you couple it with pre-existing popularity you've basically won, no matter what your message is. You can try to outweigh that with massive doses of continuous higher education, sure, but the natural rest state is that any electoral process is mostly a popularity contest.
What the poll results don't tell you is how much people care about the choice they picked. In a representative democracy, it's not just about what the majority wants, but how much people really care.
If a majority prefers pepperoni pizza but will eat basically anything, don't be surprised when the representative orders vegetarian. The vegetarians care far more about the exact type of pizza that's served and are more likely to change which representative they vote for in order to get what they want.
It may be cultural thing, but in the UK tech scene at least even if people are flexible about pepperoni it's mostly because there is a large and delicious range of meat-based pizzas to split the vote. The representative who orders just vegetarian pizza clearly isn't thinking in terms of re-election.
The rep who orders just vegetarian pizza will have a bloody revolution on their hands. I have pretty much three criteria for pizza selection: No anchovies, no pine apple, and at least one form of meat.
Seconding (thirding?) this. Where I work, any rep who orders a group of mostly meat-eaters vegetarian food because the group has a single or a few vegetarians too, will be seen as making a declaration of war.
I've had people walk out of company dinners (to get "real" food) due to inconsiderate behaviour like this, from supposedly "tolerant" managers. Needless to say, such incidents are seldom repeated.
And I say inconsiderate, because that's what such behaviour constitutes as in my cultural climate.
The author has conflated democracy with voting. Sortition - the selection of Government at random from the citizenry - is a far superior mechanism, and results in a Government that is genuinely of the people.
There's a system that, in my opinion, is even better (fairer, less prone to corruption) than sortition, and that's liquid democracy (a.k.a. delegative democracy):
The idea being, you can let people vote on your behalf, or you can vote directly, and you have the freedom to choose between these on an issue by issue basis.
I rather like the concept, but I can see it having some interested and unanticipated side effects if you allow people to select their delegate by category rather than individual bill by individual bill. The person that decides whether people's delegates for voting on (e.g.) an act related to surveillance default to being the delegate they selected for "civil liberties" or the delegate they selected for "national security" actually ends up with rather a large degree of executive power, despite probably having a lower profile than the leader of an executive regular parliamentary or presidential system. Of course, there's a reasonable argument that this is still much more transparent and fair (and reversible) than, for example, coalition bargaining, but it is a system I'd like to see used in practice more in bodies like trade unions before we decide it's the solution to national governance.
> "I rather like the concept, but I can see it having some interested and unanticipated side effects if you allow people to select their delegate by category rather than individual bill by individual bill."
The point is that you can delegate for individual bills, as well as taking back your power to vote on individual bills. You can delegate by category, but you don't need to if it doesn't serve you. The idea is that the people you delegate to have to stick up for your best interests, as their power can be taken away at any point if they do not.
Agree that you can delegate for individual bills, but my point was that most people won't delegate for individual bills most of the time, but probably will choose delegates for "categories" of decision making if the system is set up that way.
Surveillance law is a pretty relevant example, since for most people not on HN it's a relatively low priority, and there's a fairly high likelihood that if they're able to delegate somebody to vote for them on a general area like "civil liberties issues" (for most people, a delegate with a decent libertarian credentials) and "national security" (for most people, a delegate who promises to be robust), the person or committee that decides for whether a particular surveillance bill is considered "civil liberties" or "national security" in effect holds a casting vote any time most of the public doesn't feel strongly enough to make a bill-specific decision. Somebody has to resolve differences between a budget balancing bill popular with the public's preferred delegates for "taxation" issues and a bill with public spending implications popular with the public's preferred delegates for "health issues", "education issues" or "social policy issues" too. Since they're supposed to be administering a process rather than enacting a particular programme of government they were elected on like a de jure executive, they're probably also subject to far less scrutiny.
Of course, the system still has the advantage that the public can step in and overrule their regular representative whenever they feel strongly enough to do so, but not necessarily any more effectively in practice than powers to force a referendum as a form of public veto.
The categorisation issue is a good one to raise, it would be something to iron out. You may be interested in this video, the speaker mentions a couple of solutions to the categorisation issue, as well as a bunch of other implementation issues they're trying to address:
The reason why nobody has sortition, is because deep down democracy is about being as agreeable as possible to the median citizen. If you have vague feeling that you decided who is prime minister, you are more motivated to pay taxes and fight wars.
The country that gets least tax evasion and most volunteers to army is likely to perform better than anybody else. And so survival of the fittest governments has favored democracy for past three centuries.
> The reason why nobody has sortition, is because deep down democracy is about being as agreeable as possible to the median citizen. If you have vague feeling that you decided who is prime minister, you are more motivated to pay taxes and fight wars.
I doubt this has any explanatory power as to why sortition isn't used much today.
Among other things, the median citizen doesn't care even a little bit about who is prime minister or otherwise in charge.
I think it has a lot of explanatory power. From what I've seen the main reason people don't care about who's in charge is because they think all the candidates are basically the same and none actually represent them.
If you are U.S. citizen, you probably would prefer Obama over Enrique Peña Nieto. Personally as a Finn I like Sipilä and Niinistö over Putin. In a way any Finnish party head would suit me better than Putin. It matters little which of them, but it matters a lot that it's one of them.
In medieval Europe, vassal dukes would bargain who king they would pay taxes to. And you had situations where Britain was ruled by dude who spoke French and lived in Normandy.
> you are more motivated to pay taxes and fight wars
Well, you don't really have a choice in the former, and when there's a draft, you don't in the latter either.
> The country that gets least tax evasion and most volunteers to army is likely to perform better than anybody else
I disagree. You are elevating the state too high. I would counter that the countries with the most economic freedom -- those that have embraced markets and rule of law -- are the ones at the top.
You do have choice to go completely against your government. If some unpopular dictator enacts draft, there is going to be loads of guerrilla fighters around. Because now they have to fight anyhow, why not fight for themselves.
"Government of the people" or not, I've yet to see anything resembling a convincing argument that the average citizen thrust into government is actually better at government than someone who spends their life prior to and in office trying to demonstrate their aptitude at government to the average citizen.
I really don't get why people are trying to manufacture drama over the name of a boat, seriously.
"tyrannical" because a group that got a boat, asked some people what their thought on the matter was, and then said "no that silly"?
"What happened to disapproving of what you name your boat, but defending to the death your right to name it" and now this is infringing on free speech as well?
The code name for Apple's Power Macintosh 7100 was "Carl Sagan", an in-joke that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 would make Apple "billions and billions". Sagan asked Apple to rename the project, so they chose "BHA", short for "Butt-Head Astronomer". Sagan sued Apple (twice) and lost. Apple eventually renamed the project "LAW", short for "Lawyers are Wimps".
This seems like bad move on the British government's part. Name the thing Boaty McBoatface and reap great PR for years.
Edit: Or maybe it's all part of the plan. Let us all down by hinting that they're not using the name, then announce a change of heart. The internet would explode.
I'm sure that the crew and people who do research on it, if they have any sense of humor, would get an enormous kick out of it too. How'd it be to tell your mates that you'll be out for 6 weeks at sea on RRS Boaty McBoatface ? I'd personally bust out laughing every time I talked about it.
It's not to say that the work isn't serious or important, just that sometimes it's OK to have a laugh, even in an omgsrsbzns environment. It's not really at the expense of anyone (aside from perhaps the pride of a few) and it's not really disrespectful or non-kid-friendly (actually I'm sure kids would love it) like e.g. RRS Naff Minger or something else that the internet at large might dream up. My point is that it's actually a viable family-friendly name, and I mean...just look at it. Totally looks like a Boat McBoatface to me. It has that Pixar anthropomorphic look to it. It also looks like a big toy version of a real boat. Very cartoony, especially in bright red
The look is just an added bonus; the bow design ensures a much smoother ride in poor weather conditions - rather than riding the wave (and, potentially earning the vessel the nickname 'The Vomit Comet'), it cuts through the wave (reducing vessel heave) and even (drumroll) effectively disperses the waves as they traverse along the hull, reducing drag.
So - better ride, less fuel consumption, cartoonish look. Win-win-win.
I dunno, how would you feel about putting it on your CV? Like calling a business Smelly Bottom Industries would be funny and populist, but people who actually worked there would struggle to take pride in the fact.
I'd probably put down that I'd been working on an Antarctic research vessel. If I put down whatever generic name they actually do use most employers would probably assume I'd been a deckhand on a cross channel ferry or something
Yes exactly. If anything, it's a great way to get kids interested initially and tell the story about what it's doing, why, how they do something like that some day, etc.
I think whatever this ship ultimately ends up being called, it is going to be forever more informally referred to as Boaty McBoatface by anyone who goes near it, or to who has call to reference it.
In the realm of prank names, this one is actually pretty good. It's not sexist, racist, obscene or infused with hate speech. I can see shutting down a prank name that's got hurtful overtones. But this one is playful and harmless.
Direct democracy and representative democracy are different. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking the Internet suggestion box for ship names was direct democracy.
> “The key point is that representatives’ voting behavior was not strongly constrained by their constituents’ views,” Achen and Bartels write. “Elections do not force successful candidates to reflect the policy preferences of the median voter.” The authors claim there’s no hard evidence to suggest that these dynamics would vary in countries with political systems of proportional representation and more parties than in the U.S.
I'm not a fan of grover norquist but I think it is unfair to say our representatives should be free to disregard the pledge they so publicly made when they were campaigning. Yes, we expect our representatives to go against their platform in extreme cases for the greater good but I'd say if that happens, the representative must turn right around and resign immediately from office and not run for office again.
No, it doesn't matter if the cause was an "obstructionist" Congress. It didn't matter with George HW Bush and it won't matter now.
Can you imagine if we had a referendum for independence of Scotland and had Cameron said "nah jk" after the results came in favor of Independence? Or if he started attaching new conditions to the promised he made Scots to vote no? "Oh we will get right to the issue of devolution but we must make sure Scots can't vote in England only legislation" but then who didn't they say that when campaigning?
Imagine a system where there was a yearly pie eating contest to determine the king for a year. Would it be OK for the current winner to abolish the contest and make the position hereditary? Of course not!
I'd say it's fair for candidates to break promises. If voters keep voting for them and their party despite seeing that happen, then it means voters don't mind broken promises. This is what's nice about democracy - you don't have to argue about too many rules, the rules evolve naturally. For some reason it turned out that keeping promises wasn't a natural rule that voters wanted. The same goes for resigning. If they don't resign and are still re-elected or their party is still re-elected then that reflects what their constituents want, not some artificial rules that some unelected rule-maker (who would that be?) decided on.
The US system seems to be doing quite well. The majority of the population doesn't care at all, and their votes don't count. Those are people who either always vote for the same party or don't vote at all. The important decision then comes down to the minority of people who are most interested in the policies - the swing voters. Isn't that quite an efficient division of labor?
10 years ago, I got elected to our local parliamant and I learned that democracy does not work very good for searching names. That's just something which somehow is not a good fit for the political process. Perhaps other methods how votes are counted (Condorcet or other methods) could work better.
Similar issue: when the new Wembley stadium got a new bridge, there was a voting for the name of the bridge. The german football (soccer for my american friends) player Dietmar Hamann scored the last goal in the old stadium, and german football fans tried to overrun the election to force the englishman to name it "Dietmar-Hamann-Bridge", a slap in the face for every english football fan. Although Hamann won the vote, the bridge got the name White Horse Bridge (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Bridge)
This small example shows the true nature of any democratic government: if you vote the way they don't like, they will not submit to it. Voting is useless.
You are projecting your own opinions and representing them as "the will of the people". I personally vastly prefer things in life being amusing and unexpected rather than boring and pompous, and as such I think "Boaty McBoatface" is likely a way better name than whatever will be chosen as its replacement. Wanting life to not be bland is not "internet trolling" nor "mockery".
This name is obviously a joke name that probably shouldn't be used. Yes, there is a responsibility to maintain a democracy by the governing body. But shouldn't there also be a responsibility on the governed to take voting decisions seriously?
I would guess that the name itself was put forth as a signal to the organizers that "we know your public vote is bullshit, and this will prove it", and every vote in favor was saying "we triple-dog dare you to prove us wrong, and actually give up that meaningless iota of control to the people".
I think that everyone already knew that the poll was nothing more than a meaningless diversion, and "Boaty McBoatface" was just throwing it back into the organizers' faces. Everybody knew this would happen, and that was the entire reason for the joke names. If it doesn't matter anyway, it's at least good for a laugh or two.
Something else that may have not been considered is that the whole voting system was rigged. Much in a "marblecake the game" scenario. What should be done in a situation where the vote has been rigged by nefarious/trolling actors?
When the consequences of playing along are what they are in this case? Play along. They've been handed a fantastic PR opportunity, and they're turning it against themselves.
As the article makes clear, this wasn't a bait and switch, it was clearly said at the start what the parameters were. They were there to avoid this type of situation where people chose a crass name.
It seems to be an attack on the fundamentals of modern governments, that the legitimacy of the government follows from the will of those governed. Because those governed can't be bothered.
So, what's your next suggestion, then?
Personally, as a random human and as a scientist, I have no problem with Boaty McBoatface, although I know a lot of the stuffier set who would regard it as ridiculous and insulting, and might reflect those feelings on the work done aboard the ship. (I also feel those people should be vetoed.)
The Boaty McBoatface incident reminds me, with a smile, of a similar incident when Kraft (Australia) turned to the public to name a new variant of Vegemite. The winning name was "iSnack 2.0" which sure seems (at least to me) to have been intended as satire/commentary. Anyway the product launched under that name to much ridicule, before being later renamed Cheesybite.
Interestingly, the name Vegemite itself was also originally "crowdsourced" back in the 1920s [1], so the effort had some tradition behind it. Perhaps "Vegemite" also sounded really silly back then.
I think (but not sure) that it's still for sale in Australia... in any case it is/was delicious, regardless of the name.
The British government also fails to realize that by accepting the name, people might be surprised to learn their government actually listens to the people! Then in the future these kinds of events might be taken a bit more seriously.
Really, really over the top with the drama here... This is a crowd sourced name where people didn't take it seriously. This has happened countless other times with Internet polls. Not everything is a statement about democracy...
It's a bad name. If it were a funny name, or creative, I think there would be a point to make here. But its neither.
The only reason to vote for this name is because it would be funny to make them name it something stupid. The humor is only in the anarchy. A mindset that juvenile doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
I think it's both funny and creative. Got better PR for a science project than we've seen in a long time. Your objection is as immature as if I said you had a bad face and your name was stupid.
What an idiotic article. "Democracy doesn't work. " So the authors wouldn't mind if the US became a dictatorship?
One reason that democracy works vastly better than authoritarian government is that the public agrees on a lot of things. For instance, the public in the US disapproves of governmental corruption, and so it is far lower than in authoritarian countries like Putin's Russia.
Oh, and if the authors think that informing the public doesn't work, then why are they working for a media organization is, guess what, informing the public?
The real issue with democracy is that people (me included) care far more about whether a research vessel is christened Boaty McBoatface than they do about almost anything else.
The UK Gov't really doesn't get it. Just imagine the marketing and sales opportunity for a Kids Television Show about Boaty McBoatface, the Research Vessel.
Or how about toys, educational videos, educational cartoons, educational books featuring Boaty McBoatface and friends.
This is a Scientific Research Vessel that people could really fall in love with, and instead of capitalizing on that possibility, they'll give it a name like the Hawking. Nothing against Hawking.
First off, this is nothing like how elections work. People are still run by representatives in democratic countries.
Second, everyone, including the government is making it sound as if this is a "terrible name", just because it's out of the framework they imagined it to be. But I think this is a great name and has brought nothing but popularity to the project being done on that boat.
>First off, this is nothing like how elections work. People are still run by representatives in democratic countries.
It's partially true this isn't how elections work, but I think what the article was trying to get by or at least what I got out of it is that the process was democratic and in similar ways democracy fails. Now this is somewhat subjective and entirely dependent on what you call democracy. It's funny I read this now as I had just started reading a new book I got titled Our Republican Constitution by Randy E. Barnett (great read by the way.) The writer is talking about the American constitution.
Once when Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the framers had devised he answered famously "a republic, if you can keep it." This was in contrast to a democracy which the writer says they didn't wholly disagree with, but having an excess of democracy had created problems.
The author states two conflicting paradigms a Democratic Constitution and a Republican Constitution. He states these are not reflections of what we see as the democratic and republican parties that the USA has today as both parties have believers of both viewpoints. His main distinction that I perceived from reading was that the Democratic Constitution perceived what was constitutional or law by the "majority". Well the alternative to that doesn't seem like it would be anything good it's quite the contrary. The alternative as he states is The Republican Constitution (what he states was the founders paradigm) which has the basis of constitutionality on whether each "individual" had there basic rights. In some cases throughout american history majority rule hasn't favored the individual e.g. racial segregation. In cases where majority rule opposes the inalienable rights of the individual I feel democracy fails and as I stated before that's the one part that I could agree with the journalist that democracy isn't always the best solution to a problem.
Compromise is the essence of democracy. In that spirit, I suggest the following:
A serious official name, for example the HMS Stephen Hawking.
The people's choice, hand-painted in comic sans.
I don't see a cause for outrage here. They never promised to abide by the results of the vote, and drawing parallels to the political system feels like a complete non sequitur.
Eh, I did not enjoy RSS Boaty McBoatface. However, like 15th entry really caught my attention in that voting poll - RSS Boat. Now that's something simple yet elegant.
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization
of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend
his person, his liberty, and his property. These are
the three basic requirements of life, and the
preservation of any one of them is completely dependent
upon the preservation of the other two. For what are
our faculties but the extension of our individuality?
And what is property but an extension of our faculties?
If every person has the right to defend even by force —
his person, his liberty, and his property, then it
follows that a group of men have the right to organize
and support a common force to protect these rights
constantly. Thus the principle of collective right —
its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on
individual right. And the common force that protects
this collective right cannot logically have any other
purpose or any other mission than that for which it
acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot
lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or
property of another individual, then the common force —
for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to
destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals
or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases,
contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to
defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say
that force has been given to us to destroy the equal
rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting
separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights
of others, does it not logically follow that the same
principle also applies to the common force that is
nothing more than the organized combination of the
individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than
this: The law is the organization of the natural right
of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common
force for individual forces. And this common force is
to do only what the individual forces have a natural
and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties,
and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to
cause justice to reign over us all.
Now I don't agree with his appeal to "God" as the justification for the inherent nature of the right to self-defense, but his basic argument is sound.
