[MG] "Concensus" applied to some real-world issues

[Scott Raney]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org> wrote:

Breaking this issue out again, since I think I'm still not
understanding the approach of Ed (et al):

> And to repeat: I see no value in forcing decisions when there is not a consensus. Or high majority. You say in another post something along the lines of: a bad decision is better than no decision. Why? Why do we need to force decisions before their time? Maybe that is true for business, but not for social governance. What is the value of government if it is not of the people? Again, sure, maybe in case on imminent disaster. But otherwise, I cannot see the value of forcing society into bad decisions.

Let's take climate change as a sample issue: Do you believe that if we
can't get consensus, or at least a 2/3 majority, that the government
should take no action on addressing it?

Or defense spending: If 1/3 of the population wants a strong national
defense, do they have a right to enforce that status quo on the other
2/3s, even when we now *know* (based on research on SDAs) that that
1/3 is primarily made up of people who have provably irrational
thought processes on the subject?

Also, please address the relationship between "consensus" and the
percentage of the total population who vote. Is it consensus when 1/3
of the population agrees on something but the other 2/3 don't even
express an opinion?

Regards,
Scott

[Jacopo Tolja]

Dear all
Just a point
If 2/3 *do not express an opinion as a choice* I will consider the result
of the 1/3 binding.
Freedom is for me correlated to participation.
Regards
j


On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 7:21 PM, Scott Raney <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org>
> wrote:
>
> Breaking this issue out again, since I think I'm still not
> understanding the approach of Ed (et al):
>
> > And to repeat: I see no value in forcing decisions when there is not a
> consensus. Or high majority. You say in another post something along the
> lines of: a bad decision is better than no decision. Why? Why do we need to
> force decisions before their time? Maybe that is true for business, but not
> for social governance. What is the value of government if it is not of the
> people? Again, sure, maybe in case on imminent disaster. But otherwise, I
> cannot see the value of forcing society into bad decisions.
>
> Let's take climate change as a sample issue: Do you believe that if we
> can't get consensus, or at least a 2/3 majority, that the government
> should take no action on addressing it?
>
> Or defense spending: If 1/3 of the population wants a strong national
> defense, do they have a right to enforce that status quo on the other
> 2/3s, even when we now *know* (based on research on SDAs) that that
> 1/3 is primarily made up of people who have provably irrational
> thought processes on the subject?
>
> Also, please address the relationship between "consensus" and the
> percentage of the total population who vote. Is it consensus when 1/3
> of the population agrees on something but the other 2/3 don't even
> express an opinion?
>
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>

[Scott Raney]

On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 2:10 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com> wrote:

> If 2/3 do not express an opinion as a choice I will consider the result of
> the 1/3 binding.

This would be OK *except* for the issue of Social Dominators and
Authoritarians. If they can find a way to reduce overall
participation to increase their own influence, they've no qualms about
doing so (e.g., as they do now do discourage voting by putting
barriers to participation in place using the bogus excuse of
preventing voter fraud). The result will be a government even worse
than what we have now because even more of the votes would go the way
these SDAs want (starting wars, enshrining prejudice, punishing
whoever, etc.) which is worse than having representatives, currently
somewhat less than half of whom are SDAs, at least in the US by my
estimate.

> Freedom is for me correlated to participation.

The issue isn't freedom, it's good government. We *need* high
participation rates to keep the SDAs in check.

So, my current thinking on the decision rule is 51% of the actual
voters or 1/3 of the registered voters, WHICHEVER IS LARGER, have to
vote yes. This gets you concensus/near unanimity in low turnout
elections which will keep the SDAs (maybe 30% of the population) in
check, and yet also allows progress on controversial issues where you
have high turnout. This seems a reasonable rule to me mostly given
the existence of proxies that those who aren't able to invest the time
to research every issue in detail will be able to use.
Regards,
Scott

PS: we found an implementation of Altemeyer's authoritarian test on
OK-Cupid (a dating site, of all places), and the news at least there
is good: In that sample of around 1800 people the authoritarian
percentage is somewhat less than 20%. Add in a few percent for the
non-correlated social dominators and we're still under a quarter of
that population. There unfortunately are some serious issues with
that survey:
1) self-selected sample
2) dating oriented and so probably more socially aware
3) It's labelled an "authoritarian test" (should have been labeled as
a general personality test to avoid bias).

I'm going to put one of these up on my site when I get to that point
(labelled something clickbait like "what kind of dragon are you") to
try collect data from FB/reddit/slashdot users.

> Regards
> j

[Jacopo Tolja]

Dear Scott I made some research on RWA just to understand better. I start
to see you as a very pessimistic person while I am definitely an optimistic
person.
I cannot believe that a 30% of the population can control the world... I
believe in software like Airesis where I am actively working and in
software like open annotation... http://vimeo.com/29633009 or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkm0lL-6lc&noredirect=1 where if 30% try
to f.... with me I will spot them because i will have tools to spot them.
Nevertheless here is some aspect that goes beyond being authoritarian or
liberal or what ever we may be labeled.
I read some article about this new research into human psychology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TpRItKtamw Probably we need to enforce
some kind of genetic DNA test to find the extreme-ist character and enforce
a karma handicap in online voting!
Kind Regards
J


On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 12:37 AM, Scott Raney <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 2:10 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > If 2/3 do not express an opinion as a choice I will consider the result
> of
> > the 1/3 binding.
>
> This would be OK *except* for the issue of Social Dominators and
> Authoritarians. If they can find a way to reduce overall
> participation to increase their own influence, they've no qualms about
> doing so (e.g., as they do now do discourage voting by putting
> barriers to participation in place using the bogus excuse of
> preventing voter fraud). The result will be a government even worse
> than what we have now because even more of the votes would go the way
> these SDAs want (starting wars, enshrining prejudice, punishing
> whoever, etc.) which is worse than having representatives, currently
> somewhat less than half of whom are SDAs, at least in the US by my
> estimate.
>
> > Freedom is for me correlated to participation.
>
> The issue isn't freedom, it's good government. We *need* high
> participation rates to keep the SDAs in check.
>
> So, my current thinking on the decision rule is 51% of the actual
> voters or 1/3 of the registered voters, WHICHEVER IS LARGER, have to
> vote yes. This gets you concensus/near unanimity in low turnout
> elections which will keep the SDAs (maybe 30% of the population) in
> check, and yet also allows progress on controversial issues where you
> have high turnout. This seems a reasonable rule to me mostly given
> the existence of proxies that those who aren't able to invest the time
> to research every issue in detail will be able to use.
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> PS: we found an implementation of Altemeyer's authoritarian test on
> OK-Cupid (a dating site, of all places), and the news at least there
> is good: In that sample of around 1800 people the authoritarian
> percentage is somewhat less than 20%. Add in a few percent for the
> non-correlated social dominators and we're still under a quarter of
> that population. There unfortunately are some serious issues with
> that survey:
> 1) self-selected sample
> 2) dating oriented and so probably more socially aware
> 3) It's labelled an "authoritarian test" (should have been labeled as
> a general personality test to avoid bias).
>
> I'm going to put one of these up on my site when I get to that point
> (labelled something clickbait like "what kind of dragon are you") to
> try collect data from FB/reddit/slashdot users.
>
> > Regards
> > j
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>

[Scott Raney]

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Scott I made some research on RWA just to understand better. I start to
> see you as a very pessimistic person while I am definitely an optimistic
> person.

Maybe, or maybe I'm a realist and you're just being naive ;-)

> I cannot believe that a 30% of the population can control the world...

Ah, that would be evidence in favor of the second hypothesis ;-)

But it's actually easier than that: Remember that that 30% (or
hopefully less) are more fearful and more motivated and yet less
ethical than the rest and as a result are capable of (and actually
quite effective at) manipulating the rest of us, many of whom have
their own "issues" that allow this.

> I
> believe in software like Airesis where I am actively working and in software
> like open annotation... http://vimeo.com/29633009 or
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkm0lL-6lc&noredirect=1 where if 30% try to
> f.... with me I will spot them because i will have tools to spot them.

Now who's pessimistic? My proposal is not about "spotting" them, it's
about sorting/filtering the input so you seldom run into the
problematic or just useless stuff, regardless of its source.
Sometimes Social Dominators and Authoritarians *do* have useful things
to contribute. It's probably relatively uncommon, particularly for
those who have decided to take the full-on troll tactic, but it still
happens often enough that our best tool is sorting/filtering based on
the content itself rather than on the producer.

Open Annotation looks like a bunch of smart people with good ideas,
but a slick video does not a revolution make. If they get some
traction then that system can certainly be integrated with ours. But
IMHO they have misidentified the real problem and have given up on
public voting in favor of privacy and anonymity (which is what
authoritarians want and in fact *need* to maintain their control), so
they're working with one hand tied behind their backs and my
predictions is that they're therefore unlikely to amount to much.

> Nevertheless here is some aspect that goes beyond being authoritarian or
> liberal or what ever we may be labeled.
> I read some article about this new research into human psychology
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TpRItKtamw Probably we need to enforce some
> kind of genetic DNA test to find the extreme-ist character and enforce a
> karma handicap in online voting!

Yeah, but that would be an authoritarian tactic and so unfortunately
is not available to us. Fortunately there's a whole world of this
sort of psychological information available to us to use in designing
a system that works without explicitly discriminating against
anyone...
Regards,
Scott

PS: Finished with Django and have ruled that out, and am now knee-deep
in revIgniter which is a LiveCode clone of codeIgniter, a PHP
framework. The more of these things I look at, the more they all
start to look the same. They're all basically doing the same things
the same way and yet are all much harder to learn and harder to use
than they need to be. Part of this is that they're also a lot more
general purpose than what I need so the path forward is starting to
reveal itself to me: It seems it doesn't really matter which framework
I use since I'm probably only going to use a fraction of what it
offers and now that I've got the lay of the land I can pick and port
whichever bits I need from those other frameworks if they're not
already available in the one I end up using. Taking this "machete
mode" route is going to make *me* a lot more productive at the cost of
maybe making it a bit harder for experts on my base framework to pitch
in and help. But I don't see them lining up anytime soon and given
the cross-framework competition I'm seeing creating a "catholic" route
like this might actually make it easier for zealots for other
frameworks to pitch in because they won't have to cross enemy lines...

> Kind Regards
> J
>

[max stalnaker]

In passing, there are some Imo good reasons to use python but language
selection depends on your requirements. Still. There are several CMSs
based on django. Try mezzanine (sp) and django cms. Also my old favorite
is Plone which is based on Zope.

I will look at the some of the cites that you rejected.

Are any of you interested in simply an open source standard voting system?
People think it could save a half billion a year in the US. Just curious.

Max
On May 8, 2014 3:30 PM, "Scott Raney" <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Dear Scott I made some research on RWA just to understand better. I
> start to
> > see you as a very pessimistic person while I am definitely an optimistic
> > person.
>
> Maybe, or maybe I'm a realist and you're just being naive ;-)
>
> > I cannot believe that a 30% of the population can control the world...
>
> Ah, that would be evidence in favor of the second hypothesis ;-)
>
> But it's actually easier than that: Remember that that 30% (or
> hopefully less) are more fearful and more motivated and yet less
> ethical than the rest and as a result are capable of (and actually
> quite effective at) manipulating the rest of us, many of whom have
> their own "issues" that allow this.
>
> > I
> > believe in software like Airesis where I am actively working and in
> software
> > like open annotation... http://vimeo.com/29633009 or
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkm0lL-6lc&noredirect=1 where if 30%
> try to
> > f.... with me I will spot them because i will have tools to spot them.
>
> Now who's pessimistic? My proposal is not about "spotting" them, it's
> about sorting/filtering the input so you seldom run into the
> problematic or just useless stuff, regardless of its source.
> Sometimes Social Dominators and Authoritarians *do* have useful things
> to contribute. It's probably relatively uncommon, particularly for
> those who have decided to take the full-on troll tactic, but it still
> happens often enough that our best tool is sorting/filtering based on
> the content itself rather than on the producer.
>
> Open Annotation looks like a bunch of smart people with good ideas,
> but a slick video does not a revolution make. If they get some
> traction then that system can certainly be integrated with ours. But
> IMHO they have misidentified the real problem and have given up on
> public voting in favor of privacy and anonymity (which is what
> authoritarians want and in fact *need* to maintain their control), so
> they're working with one hand tied behind their backs and my
> predictions is that they're therefore unlikely to amount to much.
>
> > Nevertheless here is some aspect that goes beyond being authoritarian or
> > liberal or what ever we may be labeled.
> > I read some article about this new research into human psychology
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TpRItKtamw Probably we need to enforce
> some
> > kind of genetic DNA test to find the extreme-ist character and enforce a
> > karma handicap in online voting!
>
> Yeah, but that would be an authoritarian tactic and so unfortunately
> is not available to us. Fortunately there's a whole world of this
> sort of psychological information available to us to use in designing
> a system that works without explicitly discriminating against
> anyone...
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> PS: Finished with Django and have ruled that out, and am now knee-deep
> in revIgniter which is a LiveCode clone of codeIgniter, a PHP
> framework. The more of these things I look at, the more they all
> start to look the same. They're all basically doing the same things
> the same way and yet are all much harder to learn and harder to use
> than they need to be. Part of this is that they're also a lot more
> general purpose than what I need so the path forward is starting to
> reveal itself to me: It seems it doesn't really matter which framework
> I use since I'm probably only going to use a fraction of what it
> offers and now that I've got the lay of the land I can pick and port
> whichever bits I need from those other frameworks if they're not
> already available in the one I end up using. Taking this "machete
> mode" route is going to make *me* a lot more productive at the cost of
> maybe making it a bit harder for experts on my base framework to pitch
> in and help. But I don't see them lining up anytime soon and given
> the cross-framework competition I'm seeing creating a "catholic" route
> like this might actually make it easier for zealots for other
> frameworks to pitch in because they won't have to cross enemy lines...
>
> > Kind Regards
> > J
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>

[Reid Millerd]

>IMHO they have misidentified the real problem and have given up on
>public voting in favor of privacy and anonymity (which is what
>authoritarians want and in fact *need* to maintain their control), so
>they're working with one hand tied behind their backs and my
>predictions is that they're therefore unlikely to amount to much.

Not totally clear on your exact stance here but I think this is an
important distinction to make. For the most part everything should be
public and transparent. However I think people need to feel safe expressing
themselves, if their identity is not anonymous (everyone posting under
their public names) there will be certainly be problems irl. Politics needs
to be kept private to an extent or we'll lose voices to fear.


I think every user getting a number is our best alternative. A number which
only they should know. That way everyone's free to say whatever they want.
Voting is recorded and displayed publicly to see and check. Individuals
listed number and which way they voted are public, all activity is recorded
and reviewable. Just their true identity needs to be kept safe. Users true
identities will have to be recorded eventually but no one should ever need
to access it. It should just be automatic. Difficult to pull off maybe...
but I don't think impossible.


On 8 May 2014 18:48, max stalnaker <***@gmail.com> wrote:

> In passing, there are some Imo good reasons to use python but language
> selection depends on your requirements. Still. There are several CMSs
> based on django. Try mezzanine (sp) and django cms. Also my old favorite
> is Plone which is based on Zope.
>
> I will look at the some of the cites that you rejected.
>
> Are any of you interested in simply an open source standard voting
> system? People think it could save a half billion a year in the US. Just
> curious.
>
> Max
> On May 8, 2014 3:30 PM, "Scott Raney" <***@metacard.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Dear Scott I made some research on RWA just to understand better. I
>> start to
>> > see you as a very pessimistic person while I am definitely an optimistic
>> > person.
>>
>> Maybe, or maybe I'm a realist and you're just being naive ;-)
>>
>> > I cannot believe that a 30% of the population can control the world...
>>
>> Ah, that would be evidence in favor of the second hypothesis ;-)
>>
>> But it's actually easier than that: Remember that that 30% (or
>> hopefully less) are more fearful and more motivated and yet less
>> ethical than the rest and as a result are capable of (and actually
>> quite effective at) manipulating the rest of us, many of whom have
>> their own "issues" that allow this.
>>
>> > I
>> > believe in software like Airesis where I am actively working and in
>> software
>> > like open annotation... http://vimeo.com/29633009 or
>> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkm0lL-6lc&noredirect=1 where if 30%
>> try to
>> > f.... with me I will spot them because i will have tools to spot them.
>>
>> Now who's pessimistic? My proposal is not about "spotting" them, it's
>> about sorting/filtering the input so you seldom run into the
>> problematic or just useless stuff, regardless of its source.
>> Sometimes Social Dominators and Authoritarians *do* have useful things
>> to contribute. It's probably relatively uncommon, particularly for
>> those who have decided to take the full-on troll tactic, but it still
>> happens often enough that our best tool is sorting/filtering based on
>> the content itself rather than on the producer.
>>
>> Open Annotation looks like a bunch of smart people with good ideas,
>> but a slick video does not a revolution make. If they get some
>> traction then that system can certainly be integrated with ours. But
>> IMHO they have misidentified the real problem and have given up on
>> public voting in favor of privacy and anonymity (which is what
>> authoritarians want and in fact *need* to maintain their control), so
>> they're working with one hand tied behind their backs and my
>> predictions is that they're therefore unlikely to amount to much.
>>
>> > Nevertheless here is some aspect that goes beyond being authoritarian or
>> > liberal or what ever we may be labeled.
>> > I read some article about this new research into human psychology
>> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TpRItKtamw Probably we need to
>> enforce some
>> > kind of genetic DNA test to find the extreme-ist character and enforce a
>> > karma handicap in online voting!
>>
>> Yeah, but that would be an authoritarian tactic and so unfortunately
>> is not available to us. Fortunately there's a whole world of this
>> sort of psychological information available to us to use in designing
>> a system that works without explicitly discriminating against
>> anyone...
>> Regards,
>> Scott
>>
>> PS: Finished with Django and have ruled that out, and am now knee-deep
>> in revIgniter which is a LiveCode clone of codeIgniter, a PHP
>> framework. The more of these things I look at, the more they all
>> start to look the same. They're all basically doing the same things
>> the same way and yet are all much harder to learn and harder to use
>> than they need to be. Part of this is that they're also a lot more
>> general purpose than what I need so the path forward is starting to
>> reveal itself to me: It seems it doesn't really matter which framework
>> I use since I'm probably only going to use a fraction of what it
>> offers and now that I've got the lay of the land I can pick and port
>> whichever bits I need from those other frameworks if they're not
>> already available in the one I end up using. Taking this "machete
>> mode" route is going to make *me* a lot more productive at the cost of
>> maybe making it a bit harder for experts on my base framework to pitch
>> in and help. But I don't see them lining up anytime soon and given
>> the cross-framework competition I'm seeing creating a "catholic" route
>> like this might actually make it easier for zealots for other
>> frameworks to pitch in because they won't have to cross enemy lines...
>>
>> > Kind Regards
>> > J
>> >
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
>> http://www.metagovernment.org/
>> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
>> Manage subscription:
>> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>
>

[Scott Raney]

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Reid Millerd <***@gmail.com> wrote:

> Not totally clear on your exact stance here but I think this is an important
> distinction to make. For the most part everything should be public and
> transparent. However I think people need to feel safe expressing themselves,
> if their identity is not anonymous (everyone posting under their public
> names) there will be certainly be problems irl. Politics needs to be kept
> private to an extent or we'll lose voices to fear.

I know this is a really tempting position to take, but I'm becoming
increasingly convinced that not only is it not necessary, but is
actually incompatible with human nature and our goal of good
government. The great irony here is that it is primarily
authoritarians who are constantly harping on this issue, yet it is the
characteristics of those very people that are the reason why we can't
provide them what they want:

1) Being both fearful *and* unusually susceptible to social pressure
are key personality characteristics of authoritarians (although not
social dominators, who in general I believe will be on board with
public voting). By giving up on public voting, we basically give
these authoritarians a free pass on voting based on their fears and
their tendency to take on antisocial positions (prejudice and
warmongering being two of their favorites).

2) Authoritarians are actually *also* the primary concern as the
*instigators* of pressure on others to vote a particular way. When
you talk about a boss or a husband coercing someone's vote, the very
nature of the situation calls it out as an authoritarian dynamic.
Neurotypicals not only are far less likely to apply this kind of
pressure (their tolerance for diversity being much higher), but are
also far less likely to be responsive to it. If a wife (and it's
always a wife) feels pressure from her husband to vote the way he
says, that's not a problem with the system, it's a problem with her
marriage, and not one we as a people need to try to solve by
bolstering the power of her husband (and to add to the irony, note
that this very question is actually *on* Altemeyer's RWA test!)

The only exception I can think of is on certain redistribution issues
where there is an inherent conflict between the preferences of a
corporation and that of their employees (e.g., an employee of a
defense contractor voting to reduce the defense budget or cancel a
weapon system, or maybe voting against a measure that would encourage
other employers to relocate into the area which would increase
competition on their employer). But I note that this problem already
exists and people's participation in the process is already
constrained (e.g., no generating petitions or even signing them if
they'd be detrimental to one's employer!). By opening the system up
we're bringing social engineering tools to bear on the issue, which
means we can reduce the bystander effect (look it up!) and so not only
not cause a new problem but help solve another old one.

In summary "losing voices to fear" I think is a useful
characterization, I'm just saying this is a feature of the new system,
not a bug: As a species we need to evolve our customs beyond the point
where our behavior is dominated by our fearful animal natures. We
evolved to work in environments where public voting was the standard
practice and we need to take this fact into consideration when
designing our new system.

> I think every user getting a number is our best alternative. A number which
> only they should know. That way everyone's free to say whatever they want.
> Voting is recorded and displayed publicly to see and check. Individuals
> listed number and which way they voted are public, all activity is recorded
> and reviewable. Just their true identity needs to be kept safe. Users true
> identities will have to be recorded eventually but no one should ever need
> to access it. It should just be automatic. Difficult to pull off maybe...
> but I don't think impossible.

I think impossible, and this is covered in my book:

1) What happens when Snowden or Manning goes to work for The System
and releases all the name/number data? Shut the whole government
down? Destroy all the old vote and proposal records?

2) Even with a number people will be very hesitant to provide
sufficient details in their posts that would allow others to identify
them if they believe this is necessary to preserve their anonymity.
Sometimes this information is absolutely necessary to assess someone's
argument. For example, if a proposal is for a road to be widened, it
makes a hell of a lot of difference whether a poster lives on that
road or instead is one of the people who commutes using that road.

3) Use of screen names is an important part of my proposal because
although it doesn't guaranty anonymity it at least removes the
tendency to make disagreements personal. But it's human nature to try
to "out" people who are disagreeing with you. This tendency needs to
be curbed using social engineering (i.e., a way to flag someone who
does this), but again, we can't make the system vulnerable to collapse
when people break taboo and do it anyway. Assigning a new number
every time this happens is just not a reasonable option.

Has this issue been debated on this list before? Anyone got any
literature to cite on the matter? My "bible" (Public Choice III) only
mentions the issue of secret ballots a handful of times, and only one
I can find where it is the variable: That one says voter participation
*decreased* by 7% in 1890s when secret ballots were introduced, the
theory being that this was due to widespread vote buying at that time
and when you can't verify a vote you can't pay someone to vote for
you. But in a direct democracy the corruption that goes along with
vote buying is not only much easier to spot, but much less likely to
even be a problem in general (i.e., paying *everyone* to vote a
certain way isn't corruption, it's compensation, and so only a problem
if the amount is significantly lower than any negative economic
effects of the vote).
Regards,
Scott

[Michael Allan]

Scott Raney said:
> Has this issue been debated on this list before? ...

I've been in a few debates, here and elsewhere. There's a list of
links in note 2: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#fn-2

> ... Anyone got any literature to cite on the matter? My "bible"
> (Public Choice III) only mentions the issue of secret ballots a
> handful of times ...

I added some citations to this cross-post:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-August/096194.html
http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-August/004934.html

Frank O'Gorman is a good introduction.

--
Michael Allan

Toronto, [phone]
http://zelea.com/


Scott Raney said:
> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Reid Millerd <***@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Not totally clear on your exact stance here but I think this is an important
> > distinction to make. For the most part everything should be public and
> > transparent. However I think people need to feel safe expressing themselves,
> > if their identity is not anonymous (everyone posting under their public
> > names) there will be certainly be problems irl. Politics needs to be kept
> > private to an extent or we'll lose voices to fear.
>
> I know this is a really tempting position to take, but I'm becoming
> increasingly convinced that not only is it not necessary, but is
> actually incompatible with human nature and our goal of good
> government. The great irony here is that it is primarily
> authoritarians who are constantly harping on this issue, yet it is the
> characteristics of those very people that are the reason why we can't
> provide them what they want:
>
> 1) Being both fearful *and* unusually susceptible to social pressure
> are key personality characteristics of authoritarians (although not
> social dominators, who in general I believe will be on board with
> public voting). By giving up on public voting, we basically give
> these authoritarians a free pass on voting based on their fears and
> their tendency to take on antisocial positions (prejudice and
> warmongering being two of their favorites).
>
> 2) Authoritarians are actually *also* the primary concern as the
> *instigators* of pressure on others to vote a particular way. When
> you talk about a boss or a husband coercing someone's vote, the very
> nature of the situation calls it out as an authoritarian dynamic.
> Neurotypicals not only are far less likely to apply this kind of
> pressure (their tolerance for diversity being much higher), but are
> also far less likely to be responsive to it. If a wife (and it's
> always a wife) feels pressure from her husband to vote the way he
> says, that's not a problem with the system, it's a problem with her
> marriage, and not one we as a people need to try to solve by
> bolstering the power of her husband (and to add to the irony, note
> that this very question is actually *on* Altemeyer's RWA test!)
>
> The only exception I can think of is on certain redistribution issues
> where there is an inherent conflict between the preferences of a
> corporation and that of their employees (e.g., an employee of a
> defense contractor voting to reduce the defense budget or cancel a
> weapon system, or maybe voting against a measure that would encourage
> other employers to relocate into the area which would increase
> competition on their employer). But I note that this problem already
> exists and people's participation in the process is already
> constrained (e.g., no generating petitions or even signing them if
> they'd be detrimental to one's employer!). By opening the system up
> we're bringing social engineering tools to bear on the issue, which
> means we can reduce the bystander effect (look it up!) and so not only
> not cause a new problem but help solve another old one.
>
> In summary "losing voices to fear" I think is a useful
> characterization, I'm just saying this is a feature of the new system,
> not a bug: As a species we need to evolve our customs beyond the point
> where our behavior is dominated by our fearful animal natures. We
> evolved to work in environments where public voting was the standard
> practice and we need to take this fact into consideration when
> designing our new system.
>
> > I think every user getting a number is our best alternative. A number which
> > only they should know. That way everyone's free to say whatever they want.
> > Voting is recorded and displayed publicly to see and check. Individuals
> > listed number and which way they voted are public, all activity is recorded
> > and reviewable. Just their true identity needs to be kept safe. Users true
> > identities will have to be recorded eventually but no one should ever need
> > to access it. It should just be automatic. Difficult to pull off maybe...
> > but I don't think impossible.
>
> I think impossible, and this is covered in my book:
>
> 1) What happens when Snowden or Manning goes to work for The System
> and releases all the name/number data? Shut the whole government
> down? Destroy all the old vote and proposal records?
>
> 2) Even with a number people will be very hesitant to provide
> sufficient details in their posts that would allow others to identify
> them if they believe this is necessary to preserve their anonymity.
> Sometimes this information is absolutely necessary to assess someone's
> argument. For example, if a proposal is for a road to be widened, it
> makes a hell of a lot of difference whether a poster lives on that
> road or instead is one of the people who commutes using that road.
>
> 3) Use of screen names is an important part of my proposal because
> although it doesn't guaranty anonymity it at least removes the
> tendency to make disagreements personal. But it's human nature to try
> to "out" people who are disagreeing with you. This tendency needs to
> be curbed using social engineering (i.e., a way to flag someone who
> does this), but again, we can't make the system vulnerable to collapse
> when people break taboo and do it anyway. Assigning a new number
> every time this happens is just not a reasonable option.
>
> Has this issue been debated on this list before? Anyone got any
> literature to cite on the matter? My "bible" (Public Choice III) only
> mentions the issue of secret ballots a handful of times, and only one
> I can find where it is the variable: That one says voter participation
> *decreased* by 7% in 1890s when secret ballots were introduced, the
> theory being that this was due to widespread vote buying at that time
> and when you can't verify a vote you can't pay someone to vote for
> you. But in a direct democracy the corruption that goes along with
> vote buying is not only much easier to spot, but much less likely to
> even be a problem in general (i.e., paying *everyone* to vote a
> certain way isn't corruption, it's compensation, and so only a problem
> if the amount is significantly lower than any negative economic
> effects of the vote).
> Regards,
> Scott

[Ed Pastore]

Also, note some of our discussions on the topic have been summarized here:
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Anonymous_interactions_within_the_metagovernment

Please feel free to expand the article. :)


On May 11, 2014, at 9:47 PM, Michael Allan <***@zelea.com> wrote:

> Scott Raney said:
>> Has this issue been debated on this list before? ...
>
> I've been in a few debates, here and elsewhere. There's a list of
> links in note 2: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#fn-2
>
>> ... Anyone got any literature to cite on the matter? My "bible"
>> (Public Choice III) only mentions the issue of secret ballots a
>> handful of times ...
>
> I added some citations to this cross-post:
> http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-August/096194.html
> http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-August/004934.html
>
> Frank O'Gorman is a good introduction.
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, [phone]
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Scott Raney said:
>> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Reid Millerd <***@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Not totally clear on your exact stance here but I think this is an important
>>> distinction to make. For the most part everything should be public and
>>> transparent. However I think people need to feel safe expressing themselves,
>>> if their identity is not anonymous (everyone posting under their public
>>> names) there will be certainly be problems irl. Politics needs to be kept
>>> private to an extent or we'll lose voices to fear.
>>
>> I know this is a really tempting position to take, but I'm becoming
>> increasingly convinced that not only is it not necessary, but is
>> actually incompatible with human nature and our goal of good
>> government. The great irony here is that it is primarily
>> authoritarians who are constantly harping on this issue, yet it is the
>> characteristics of those very people that are the reason why we can't
>> provide them what they want:
>>
>> 1) Being both fearful *and* unusually susceptible to social pressure
>> are key personality characteristics of authoritarians (although not
>> social dominators, who in general I believe will be on board with
>> public voting). By giving up on public voting, we basically give
>> these authoritarians a free pass on voting based on their fears and
>> their tendency to take on antisocial positions (prejudice and
>> warmongering being two of their favorites).
>>
>> 2) Authoritarians are actually *also* the primary concern as the
>> *instigators* of pressure on others to vote a particular way. When
>> you talk about a boss or a husband coercing someone's vote, the very
>> nature of the situation calls it out as an authoritarian dynamic.
>> Neurotypicals not only are far less likely to apply this kind of
>> pressure (their tolerance for diversity being much higher), but are
>> also far less likely to be responsive to it. If a wife (and it's
>> always a wife) feels pressure from her husband to vote the way he
>> says, that's not a problem with the system, it's a problem with her
>> marriage, and not one we as a people need to try to solve by
>> bolstering the power of her husband (and to add to the irony, note
>> that this very question is actually *on* Altemeyer's RWA test!)
>>
>> The only exception I can think of is on certain redistribution issues
>> where there is an inherent conflict between the preferences of a
>> corporation and that of their employees (e.g., an employee of a
>> defense contractor voting to reduce the defense budget or cancel a
>> weapon system, or maybe voting against a measure that would encourage
>> other employers to relocate into the area which would increase
>> competition on their employer). But I note that this problem already
>> exists and people's participation in the process is already
>> constrained (e.g., no generating petitions or even signing them if
>> they'd be detrimental to one's employer!). By opening the system up
>> we're bringing social engineering tools to bear on the issue, which
>> means we can reduce the bystander effect (look it up!) and so not only
>> not cause a new problem but help solve another old one.
>>
>> In summary "losing voices to fear" I think is a useful
>> characterization, I'm just saying this is a feature of the new system,
>> not a bug: As a species we need to evolve our customs beyond the point
>> where our behavior is dominated by our fearful animal natures. We
>> evolved to work in environments where public voting was the standard
>> practice and we need to take this fact into consideration when
>> designing our new system.
>>
>>> I think every user getting a number is our best alternative. A number which
>>> only they should know. That way everyone's free to say whatever they want.
>>> Voting is recorded and displayed publicly to see and check. Individuals
>>> listed number and which way they voted are public, all activity is recorded
>>> and reviewable. Just their true identity needs to be kept safe. Users true
>>> identities will have to be recorded eventually but no one should ever need
>>> to access it. It should just be automatic. Difficult to pull off maybe...
>>> but I don't think impossible.
>>
>> I think impossible, and this is covered in my book:
>>
>> 1) What happens when Snowden or Manning goes to work for The System
>> and releases all the name/number data? Shut the whole government
>> down? Destroy all the old vote and proposal records?
>>
>> 2) Even with a number people will be very hesitant to provide
>> sufficient details in their posts that would allow others to identify
>> them if they believe this is necessary to preserve their anonymity.
>> Sometimes this information is absolutely necessary to assess someone's
>> argument. For example, if a proposal is for a road to be widened, it
>> makes a hell of a lot of difference whether a poster lives on that
>> road or instead is one of the people who commutes using that road.
>>
>> 3) Use of screen names is an important part of my proposal because
>> although it doesn't guaranty anonymity it at least removes the
>> tendency to make disagreements personal. But it's human nature to try
>> to "out" people who are disagreeing with you. This tendency needs to
>> be curbed using social engineering (i.e., a way to flag someone who
>> does this), but again, we can't make the system vulnerable to collapse
>> when people break taboo and do it anyway. Assigning a new number
>> every time this happens is just not a reasonable option.
>>
>> Has this issue been debated on this list before? Anyone got any
>> literature to cite on the matter? My "bible" (Public Choice III) only
>> mentions the issue of secret ballots a handful of times, and only one
>> I can find where it is the variable: That one says voter participation
>> *decreased* by 7% in 1890s when secret ballots were introduced, the
>> theory being that this was due to widespread vote buying at that time
>> and when you can't verify a vote you can't pay someone to vote for
>> you. But in a direct democracy the corruption that goes along with
>> vote buying is not only much easier to spot, but much less likely to
>> even be a problem in general (i.e., paying *everyone* to vote a
>> certain way isn't corruption, it's compensation, and so only a problem
>> if the amount is significantly lower than any negative economic
>> effects of the vote).
>> Regards,
>> Scott
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription: http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org

[Scott Raney]

Good stuff, thanks! On O'Gorman, that looks like 18th century British
history stuff. I'm thinking more along the lines of current research
in political economics or social psychology...

Rereading that stuff and the list archives it seems like public voting
is not as controversial an issue among us as it is likely to be among
the general population. We need some good backup material to use to
show that it won't be a disaster (and I'm doing my part to show why it
is natural and necessary).
Regards,
Scott

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 7:47 PM, Michael Allan <***@zelea.com> wrote:
> Scott Raney said:
>> Has this issue been debated on this list before? ...
>
> I've been in a few debates, here and elsewhere. There's a list of
> links in note 2: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#fn-2
>
>> ... Anyone got any literature to cite on the matter? My "bible"
>> (Public Choice III) only mentions the issue of secret ballots a
>> handful of times ...
>
> I added some citations to this cross-post:
> http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-August/096194.html
> http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-August/004934.html
>
> Frank O'Gorman is a good introduction.
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, [phone]
> http://zelea.com/

[Ed Pastore]

Scott, to answer both of your scenarios below (climate change and defense spending) my answer is that government shouldn't be operating on the scale that it is.

New-style governments (the ones I'm hoping to see us foster) won't be deciding on defense spending, because that is a issue of a national government. What point is there in having national governments? They are just political artifacts that have little to do with natural geography or ethnicity as much as they have to do with kingdoms and their legacies. A government so vast that it decides the fate of hundreds of millions of people is ludicrous. Maybe someday collaborative governance could operate on that scale for the occasional question, but for the most part governance shouldn't be for areas larger than an ecoregion or city... and usually for much smaller, or more importantly less-geographically-specific communities.

Collaborative governance is a disruptive process, not a direct replacement for the current systems. It is a system for use in communities of any kind: geographic, common-interest, or common-mission. Those typically are not the scale of large nations; nor do they need to make decisions rashly.

Issues like climate change are more nuanced. All of the above applies there too (no gigantic governments making massive decisions), and so that opens up a lot more flexibility and nimbleness. Smaller groups can come up with innovative plans that make progress against climate change without having to get everyone's buy-in. Compare that to what we have now. We have very high scientific consensus about climate change, and national governments are doing next to nothing about it.

As for what percentage of the voting population equals consensus; that's answered in my other post. If voting is iterative, then you know you have consensus when most voters agree... and also that that agreement holds for a while. If a proposal is about to go into effect, more people will hear about it and can easily prevent it if they disagree. So there's no hard number. It's a process.


On Apr 29, 2014, at 1:21 PM, Scott Raney <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org> wrote:
>
> Breaking this issue out again, since I think I'm still not
> understanding the approach of Ed (et al):
>
>> And to repeat: I see no value in forcing decisions when there is not a consensus. Or high majority. You say in another post something along the lines of: a bad decision is better than no decision. Why? Why do we need to force decisions before their time? Maybe that is true for business, but not for social governance. What is the value of government if it is not of the people? Again, sure, maybe in case on imminent disaster. But otherwise, I cannot see the value of forcing society into bad decisions.
>
> Let's take climate change as a sample issue: Do you believe that if we
> can't get consensus, or at least a 2/3 majority, that the government
> should take no action on addressing it?
>
> Or defense spending: If 1/3 of the population wants a strong national
> defense, do they have a right to enforce that status quo on the other
> 2/3s, even when we now *know* (based on research on SDAs) that that
> 1/3 is primarily made up of people who have provably irrational
> thought processes on the subject?
>
> Also, please address the relationship between "consensus" and the
> percentage of the total population who vote. Is it consensus when 1/3
> of the population agrees on something but the other 2/3 don't even
> express an opinion?
>
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription: http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org

[Jacopo Tolja]

Ed vs Scott or viceversa are inconciliable and very interesting aspects.
But one definitive outcome is that different voting system should be
applied for different type of issues. I believe we should concentrate on
this aspect and look for specific solution.
We can confine ourselves in a single system
In Airesis is possible to make discussion in anonymous mode.
Today i decided to open a *metagovernment *group on Airesis and invite all
of you to participate.
I really have a hard time follow the discussion on the ML... is a personal
handicap!
I hope all of you can participate, I will have the system invite you
automatically.
Peace
j

PS you can ask to join here http://www.airesis.eu/metagovernment



On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 4:53 AM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org>wrote:

> Scott, to answer both of your scenarios below (climate change and defense
> spending) my answer is that government shouldn't be operating on the scale
> that it is.
>
> New-style governments (the ones I'm hoping to see us foster) won't be
> deciding on defense spending, because that is a issue of a national
> government. What point is there in having national governments? They are
> just political artifacts that have little to do with natural geography or
> ethnicity as much as they have to do with kingdoms and their legacies. A
> government so vast that it decides the fate of hundreds of millions of
> people is ludicrous. Maybe someday collaborative governance could operate
> on that scale for the occasional question, but for the most part governance
> shouldn't be for areas larger than an ecoregion or city... and usually for
> much smaller, or more importantly less-geographically-specific communities.
>
> Collaborative governance is a disruptive process, not a direct replacement
> for the current systems. It is a system for use in communities of any kind:
> geographic, common-interest, or common-mission. Those typically are not the
> scale of large nations; nor do they need to make decisions rashly.
>
> Issues like climate change are more nuanced. All of the above applies
> there too (no gigantic governments making massive decisions), and so that
> opens up a lot more flexibility and nimbleness. Smaller groups can come up
> with innovative plans that make progress against climate change without
> having to get everyone's buy-in. Compare that to what we have now. We have
> very high scientific consensus about climate change, and national
> governments are doing next to nothing about it.
>
> As for what percentage of the voting population equals consensus; that's
> answered in my other post. If voting is iterative, then you know you have
> consensus when most voters agree... and also that that agreement holds for
> a while. If a proposal is about to go into effect, more people will hear
> about it and can easily prevent it if they disagree. So there's no hard
> number. It's a process.
>
>
> On Apr 29, 2014, at 1:21 PM, Scott Raney <***@metacard.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Breaking this issue out again, since I think I'm still not
> > understanding the approach of Ed (et al):
> >
> >> And to repeat: I see no value in forcing decisions when there is not a
> consensus. Or high majority. You say in another post something along the
> lines of: a bad decision is better than no decision. Why? Why do we need to
> force decisions before their time? Maybe that is true for business, but not
> for social governance. What is the value of government if it is not of the
> people? Again, sure, maybe in case on imminent disaster. But otherwise, I
> cannot see the value of forcing society into bad decisions.
> >
> > Let's take climate change as a sample issue: Do you believe that if we
> > can't get consensus, or at least a 2/3 majority, that the government
> > should take no action on addressing it?
> >
> > Or defense spending: If 1/3 of the population wants a strong national
> > defense, do they have a right to enforce that status quo on the other
> > 2/3s, even when we now *know* (based on research on SDAs) that that
> > 1/3 is primarily made up of people who have provably irrational
> > thought processes on the subject?
> >
> > Also, please address the relationship between "consensus" and the
> > percentage of the total population who vote. Is it consensus when 1/3
> > of the population agrees on something but the other 2/3 don't even
> > express an opinion?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Scott
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> > http://www.metagovernment.org/
> > Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> > Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>

[Scott Raney]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 2:31 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ed vs Scott or viceversa are inconciliable and very interesting aspects.
> But one definitive outcome is that different voting system should be applied
> for different type of issues. I believe we should concentrate on this aspect
> and look for specific solution.

Budgeting is a big one for me: There needs to be a separate system
where budget items are shown and you can move them up or down to
prioritize them rather than only being able to vote yes or no.

> We can confine ourselves in a single system
> In Airesis is possible to make discussion in anonymous mode.
> Today i decided to open a metagovernment group on Airesis and invite all of
> you to participate.

Got in. Not sure if you want bug reports, but I'm using the current
version of Chrome and had problems with:
1) Nice intro tutorial, but it's in Italian and google translate never
gives an option to translate it.
2) "Write and show contributions" is broken (can't write, and the
display is mucked up).
3) Doesn't update the "groups" menu at the top when I joined the
metagovernment group.

I'm also curious about the "Maturity" concept. Can you explain how that works?
Regards,
Scott

[Jacopo Tolja]

Dear Scott
Thank you for participating, the bug report are very important to us maybe
will not be addressed immediately due to the lack of resources, but we
definitely address them.
Please use the exclamation point to make your reports, sorry for the
tutorial , is one of the latest feature and we did not had the time to
Translate yet, starting from the next version we will be able to have them
translated and made them available in real time directly on the web page by
activating a translate mode.
I sent your report but will be better to use the proper bug report page
that add info to the programmer.
Regarding the participatory budgeting, we hope to receive some financing
from the european community based on this
proposal<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha9QkMttETzbA-YcV7OM1zFosmm2z5850ylZlQqcbHo/edit?usp=sharing>we
recently sent.
Kind Regards
Jacopo

ps I use chrome latest on ubuntu and I have problem with gmail!


On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Scott Raney <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 2:31 AM, Jacopo Tolja <***@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Ed vs Scott or viceversa are inconciliable and very interesting aspects.
> > But one definitive outcome is that different voting system should be
> applied
> > for different type of issues. I believe we should concentrate on this
> aspect
> > and look for specific solution.
>
> Budgeting is a big one for me: There needs to be a separate system
> where budget items are shown and you can move them up or down to
> prioritize them rather than only being able to vote yes or no.
>
> > We can confine ourselves in a single system
> > In Airesis is possible to make discussion in anonymous mode.
> > Today i decided to open a metagovernment group on Airesis and invite all
> of
> > you to participate.
>
> Got in. Not sure if you want bug reports, but I'm using the current
> version of Chrome and had problems with:
> 1) Nice intro tutorial, but it's in Italian and google translate never
> gives an option to translate it.
> 2) "Write and show contributions" is broken (can't write, and the
> display is mucked up).
> 3) Doesn't update the "groups" menu at the top when I joined the
> metagovernment group.
>
> I'm also curious about the "Maturity" concept. Can you explain how that
> works?
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>

[Scott Raney]

On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 8:53 PM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org> wrote:
> Scott, to answer both of your scenarios below (climate change and defense spending) my answer is that government shouldn't be operating on the scale that it is.

Ah, I think we've exposed an Anarchist!

> New-style governments (the ones I'm hoping to see us foster) won't be deciding on defense spending, because that is a issue of a national government. What point is there in having national governments? They are just political artifacts that have little to do with natural geography or ethnicity as much as they have to do with kingdoms and their legacies. A government so vast that it decides the fate of hundreds of millions of people is ludicrous. Maybe someday collaborative governance could operate on that scale for the occasional question, but for the most part governance shouldn't be for areas larger than an ecoregion or city... and usually for much smaller, or more importantly less-geographically-specific communities.
>

Fortunately this issue is independent of the issue of representative
vs. direct democracy and of the decision rule.

That being said, your position is completely untenable because it
embodies the classic naivete of anarchists: The belief that once that
wonderful system is embraced by everyone that there will be no need to
fear other "ecoregions". But you've neglected the lessons of history
(as interpreted by me) which is that unless your system specifically
controls the authoritarians it is doomed to failure by conquest. This
includes having everyone using the *same* system and so functioning as
*one* people.

> Collaborative governance is a disruptive process, not a direct replacement for the current systems. It is a system for use in communities of any kind: geographic, common-interest, or common-mission. Those typically are not the scale of large nations; nor do they need to make decisions rashly.
>

I don't see the need to separate those two. It's almost as if you
believe that a slow decision is a better decision. I disagree, and
restate my claim that this is a recipe for gridlock and that *any*
decision is better than no decision.

> Issues like climate change are more nuanced. All of the above applies there too (no gigantic governments making massive decisions), and so that opens up a lot more flexibility and nimbleness. Smaller groups can come up with innovative plans that make progress against climate change without having to get everyone's buy-in. Compare that to what we have now. We have very high scientific consensus about climate change, and national governments are doing next to nothing about it.
>

Hey, if they're going to start seeding the atmosphere with particles
to try to deal with this (a serious proposal in some quarters), I want
everyone on the planet to have voted to approve this first. Your way,
any enterprising "ecoregion" can take the ball and run with it because
there *is* no global government...

> As for what percentage of the voting population equals consensus; that's answered in my other post. If voting is iterative, then you know you have consensus when most voters agree... and also that that agreement holds for a while. If a proposal is about to go into effect, more people will hear about it and can easily prevent it if they disagree. So there's no hard number. It's a process.
>

OK, I got the supermajority rule from your previous posts, but I'm
still missing the termination condition. How do you know when you're
done? And see my other post asking about the time burden you're
willing to impose on people...
Regards,
Scott

[Ed Pastore]

On May 11, 2014, at 12:40 PM, Scott Raney <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> That being said, your position is completely untenable because it
> embodies the classic naivete of anarchists: The belief that once that
> wonderful system is embraced by everyone that there will be no need to
> fear other "ecoregions". But you've neglected the lessons of history
> (as interpreted by me) which is that unless your system specifically
> controls the authoritarians it is doomed to failure by conquest. This
> includes having everyone using the *same* system and so functioning as
> *one* people.

I do not intend to solve all warfare, nor do I think anyone can; at least not until we mature more as a species (which I believe collaborative governance will help promote). But I don't see government of ecoregions either; I just gave that as an example. Governance will become distributed; nuanced; and largely disconnected with geography. If one town wants to build a bridge, there should be nothing stopping people on the other side of the planet from voting it... except that they won't care, so they wont vote. Except in cases where they *do* care for some reason, such as that the bridge will destroy a monument sacred to them: then they can and will vote against it, despite not being anywhere near that region.

As for controlling authoritarians, their authority roots in the threat of violence. It's difficult to threaten violence against a distributed community. Further, there's nothing stopping people from using violence back at them. Their authority starts with the threat of violence, but it only succeeds if people are cowed by that threat and/or don't see a way to counter it.

>> Collaborative governance is a disruptive process, not a direct replacement for the current systems. It is a system for use in communities of any kind: geographic, common-interest, or common-mission. Those typically are not the scale of large nations; nor do they need to make decisions rashly.
>>
>
> I don't see the need to separate those two. It's almost as if you
> believe that a slow decision is a better decision. I disagree, and
> restate my claim that this is a recipe for gridlock and that *any*
> decision is better than no decision.

So let's decide what color pants you should wear tomorrow. I say bright purple. It's a decision: better than nothing, right? Okay, now let's decide what you'll eat tomorrow. I say dirt. Great, another decision! Let's decide if the world should launch all its nuclear weapons right now. Sure, do it. There, another decision! They were better than no decision, right?

How can you possibly justify rash decisions? There is no need for decisions unless they are good ones. Bad decisions, unpopular decisions, hasty decisions... they are all undesirable. My proof? See above.

What is your justification for the opposite?

>> Issues like climate change are more nuanced. All of the above applies there too (no gigantic governments making massive decisions), and so that opens up a lot more flexibility and nimbleness. Smaller groups can come up with innovative plans that make progress against climate change without having to get everyone's buy-in. Compare that to what we have now. We have very high scientific consensus about climate change, and national governments are doing next to nothing about it.
>>
>
> Hey, if they're going to start seeding the atmosphere with particles
> to try to deal with this (a serious proposal in some quarters), I want
> everyone on the planet to have voted to approve this first. Your way,
> any enterprising "ecoregion" can take the ball and run with it because
> there *is* no global government...

No, again, you're stuck in the mentality that governance has to be geography-based, and that decisions are limited to geographies. I propose that public decisions should be open to everyone. A home owners association or a nonprofit group can have limits to participation, since they have a franchise, but public decisions should have no limit to participation at all.

>
>> As for what percentage of the voting population equals consensus; that's answered in my other post. If voting is iterative, then you know you have consensus when most voters agree... and also that that agreement holds for a while. If a proposal is about to go into effect, more people will hear about it and can easily prevent it if they disagree. So there's no hard number. It's a process.
>>
>
> OK, I got the supermajority rule from your previous posts, but I'm
> still missing the termination condition. How do you know when you're
> done? And see my other post asking about the time burden you're
> willing to impose on people...

The way we set it up in our working case on the Metagov website
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Rules
is that no decision is final until a consensus has held for a week. That can be tweaked for the scale of the decision: it's just a working idea for now. The idea is to give enough time for people to notice, react, and break the consensus if necessary. I'll answer the rest in the other thread.

[Scott Raney]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Ed Pastore <***@metagovernment.org> wrote:

> I do not intend to solve all warfare, nor do I think anyone can; at least not until we mature more as a species (which I believe collaborative governance will help promote). But I don't see government of ecoregions either; I just gave that as an example. Governance will become distributed; nuanced; and largely disconnected with geography. If one town wants to build a bridge, there should be nothing stopping people on the other side of the planet from voting it... except that they won't care, so they wont vote. Except in cases where they *do* care for some reason, such as that the bridge will destroy a monument sacred to them: then they can and will vote against it, despite not being anywhere near that region.
>

I'm fine with that, and in fact having the global population involved
in local decisionmaking is something sorely lacking in our current
systems. A lot of times problems we face locally are problems that
others in far away places have already solved (e.g., too bad the US
couldn't follow a lead on health care, ha!) But I'm inclined to have
them involved at the proposal-refining stage but *not* get a vote on
issues that only affect a Locality (my Plan has only two levels of
government, Globality and Locality, the latter being something on the
order of a metropolitan area for urban areas or an ecoregion for rural
areas).

But then, I guess I'm not understanding your position: Is there to be
one global government (which BTW *would* solve that pesky warfare
problem), or not?

> As for controlling authoritarians, their authority roots in the threat of violence. It's difficult to threaten violence against a distributed community. Further, there's nothing stopping people from using violence back at them. Their authority starts with the threat of violence, but it only succeeds if people are cowed by that threat and/or don't see a way to counter it.
>

I'm thinking you're considering only popular conception of
authoritarians (the leaders). The sense I'm using it is primarily the
followers who muck up the system even without the threat of violence
or even an authoritarian leader to support. Again, Altemeyer's book
is a good introduction to this issue:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/


> So let's decide what color pants you should wear tomorrow. I say bright purple. It's a decision: better than nothing, right? Okay, now let's decide what you'll eat tomorrow. I say dirt. Great, another decision! Let's decide if the world should launch all its nuclear weapons right now. Sure, do it. There, another decision! They were better than no decision, right?
>

I like purple! Eating dirt no so much. But mostly I like carbon
emissions or abortion policy as issues that we as a species *need* to
make a collective decision on rather than continuing along with the
status quo because we can't reach consensus on them.

> How can you possibly justify rash decisions? There is no need for decisions unless they are good ones. Bad decisions, unpopular decisions, hasty decisions... they are all undesirable. My proof? See above.
>
> What is your justification for the opposite?

Mostly seeing an *existing* system that is completely non-functional
in solving these hard problems and preferring, and believing we can
achieve, something better. Pretty much *all* the decisions the US
congress makes are suboptimal, but even last year's paltry output of
60 bills (again many of which were useless stuff like renaming
buildings) is better than having no government at all which is what
you seem to me to be proposing at least for any issue where a
significant minority would prefer that.

>>> As for what percentage of the voting population equals consensus; that's answered in my other post. If voting is iterative, then you know you have consensus when most voters agree... and also that that agreement holds for a while. If a proposal is about to go into effect, more people will hear about it and can easily prevent it if they disagree. So there's no hard number. It's a process.
>>>
>>
>> OK, I got the supermajority rule from your previous posts, but I'm
>> still missing the termination condition. How do you know when you're
>> done? And see my other post asking about the time burden you're
>> willing to impose on people...
>
> The way we set it up in our working case on the Metagov website
> http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Rules
> is that no decision is final until a consensus has held for a week. That can be tweaked for the scale of the decision: it's just a working idea for now. The idea is to give enough time for people to notice, react, and break the consensus if necessary. I'll answer the rest in the other thread.
>

This seems fine to me (though the 80% threshold seems high). And I've
also no problem with labeling it as experimental (I'm going to be in
that mode for years!) It seems on this one we only disagree with the
use of the term "consensus" to describe what it is delivering.
Regards,
Scott

[p***@gmx.de]

Hi,

> > I think every user getting a number is our best alternative. A number which
> > only they should know. That way everyone's free to say whatever they want.
> > Voting is recorded and displayed publicly to see and check. Individuals
> > listed number and which way they voted are public, all activity is recorded
> > and reviewable. Just their true identity needs to be kept safe. Users true
> > identities will have to be recorded eventually but no one should ever need
> > to access it. It should just be automatic. Difficult to pull off maybe...
> > but I don't think impossible.
>
> I think impossible, and this is covered in my book:
>
> 1) What happens when Snowden or Manning goes to work for The System
> and releases all the name/number data? Shut the whole government
> down? Destroy all the old vote and proposal records?

I don't think so: As far as I can see, there are cryptographic possibilities such as public-key cryptography to ensure an unique pseudonym but on the other hand to hide the relationships for everyone not owning a supercomputer.

>
> 2) Even with a number people will be very hesitant to provide
> sufficient details in their posts that would allow others to identify
> them if they believe this is necessary to preserve their anonymity.
> Sometimes this information is absolutely necessary to assess someone's
> argument. For example, if a proposal is for a road to be widened, it
> makes a hell of a lot of difference whether a poster lives on that
> road or instead is one of the people who commutes using that road.

That's really a very important point. Looking on a bigger time span, in fact almost every pseudonym will be assignable to the underlaying real identity. This already happens by the fact that someone may want to promote one's contribution in offline life to other people.

I propose to use different approaches for different parts of the system here. In pure discussion or proposing something, people reveal information that could easily be connected to identify someone so that we have to use a more anonymous approach here if we don't want the connection to the real identity. Of course, there are social effects and I think, they will only be solvable in practice.
When it's about decision-making, voting, ranking etc., the problem is more simple. There aren't so many social effects (well, chilling effects). There are reasons why current elections are non-public elections but there are also reasons for transparency in politics.
If there is one, I would prefer an innovative third way.

>
> 3) Use of screen names is an important part of my proposal because
> although it doesn't guaranty anonymity it at least removes the
> tendency to make disagreements personal. But it's human nature to try
> to "out" people who are disagreeing with you. This tendency needs to
> be curbed using social engineering (i.e., a way to flag someone who
> does this), but again, we can't make the system vulnerable to collapse
> when people break taboo and do it anyway. Assigning a new number
> every time this happens is just not a reasonable option.
>
> Has this issue been debated on this list before? Anyone got any
> literature to cite on the matter? My "bible" (Public Choice III) only
> mentions the issue of secret ballots a handful of times, and only one
> I can find where it is the variable: That one says voter participation
> *decreased* by 7% in 1890s when secret ballots were introduced, the
> theory being that this was due to widespread vote buying at that time
> and when you can't verify a vote you can't pay someone to vote for
> you. But in a direct democracy the corruption that goes along with
> vote buying is not only much easier to spot, but much less likely to
> even be a problem in general (i.e., paying *everyone* to vote a
> certain way isn't corruption, it's compensation, and so only a problem
> if the amount is significantly lower than any negative economic
> effects of the vote).

You won't be able to spot it if the threated group of voters is a minority and the majority is intolerant, which in fact still happens sometimes today. This "coercion" is not uneconomic, I think it is a possible social phenomenon.

Regards,
Paul Reichert

[Scott Raney]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 1:57 PM, <***@gmx.de> wrote:

>> 1) What happens when Snowden or Manning goes to work for The System
>> and releases all the name/number data? Shut the whole government
>> down? Destroy all the old vote and proposal records?
>
> I don't think so: As far as I can see, there are cryptographic possibilities such as public-key cryptography to ensure an unique pseudonym but on the other hand to hide the relationships for everyone not owning a supercomputer.
>

Nope, this deals with hackers (or the government) snooping on the
communication lines, but not those who hack into the main database or
employees of the organization running the servers. There *must* be a
screen-name to individual mapping kept someplace to ensure that people
don't just create bogus accounts to commit voter fraud.

> That's really a very important point. Looking on a bigger time span, in fact almost every pseudonym will be assignable to the underlaying real identity. This already happens by the fact that someone may want to promote one's contribution in offline life to other people.
>

Right, and as I've been saying all along, there is no real need for
this sort of privacy/anonymity, and most people (especially young
people) are simply not as concerned about it as some people raised in
an environment where totalitarianism was common (like us old farts).
Sure, this registry would be a favorite tool of the likes of
Stalin/Hitler/Mao, but the point is that our primary goal has to be to
ensure that no one like that ever comes to power again. If we achieve
that, being able to tell who voted how is no more a threat to people's
freedom than asking them to sign petitions, speak at a city council
meeting, or meet with their neighbors to organize a block party.
Regards,
Scott

[max stalnaker]

I support maximum!! Privacy. I support this over preventing minor vote
fraud.
On May 11, 2014 4:30 PM, "Scott Raney" <***@metacard.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 1:57 PM, <***@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> >> 1) What happens when Snowden or Manning goes to work for The System
> >> and releases all the name/number data? Shut the whole government
> >> down? Destroy all the old vote and proposal records?
> >
> > I don't think so: As far as I can see, there are cryptographic
> possibilities such as public-key cryptography to ensure an unique pseudonym
> but on the other hand to hide the relationships for everyone not owning a
> supercomputer.
> >
>
> Nope, this deals with hackers (or the government) snooping on the
> communication lines, but not those who hack into the main database or
> employees of the organization running the servers. There *must* be a
> screen-name to individual mapping kept someplace to ensure that people
> don't just create bogus accounts to commit voter fraud.
>
> > That's really a very important point. Looking on a bigger time span, in
> fact almost every pseudonym will be assignable to the underlaying real
> identity. This already happens by the fact that someone may want to promote
> one's contribution in offline life to other people.
> >
>
> Right, and as I've been saying all along, there is no real need for
> this sort of privacy/anonymity, and most people (especially young
> people) are simply not as concerned about it as some people raised in
> an environment where totalitarianism was common (like us old farts).
> Sure, this registry would be a favorite tool of the likes of
> Stalin/Hitler/Mao, but the point is that our primary goal has to be to
> ensure that no one like that ever comes to power again. If we achieve
> that, being able to tell who voted how is no more a threat to people's
> freedom than asking them to sign petitions, speak at a city council
> meeting, or meet with their neighbors to organize a block party.
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: ***@metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
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>

[p***@gmx.de]

Hi Scott,

> > I don't think so: As far as I can see, there are cryptographic possibilities such as public-key cryptography to ensure an unique pseudonym but on the other hand to hide the relationships for everyone not owning a supercomputer.
> >
>
> Nope, this deals with hackers (or the government) snooping on the
> communication lines, but not those who hack into the main database or
> employees of the organization running the servers. There *must* be a
> screen-name to individual mapping kept someplace to ensure that people
> don't just create bogus accounts to commit voter fraud.

Just a raw example. You want to register on such a platform. There will, of course, be some procedure to check whether you are a real person. After that, you receive a one-time key to sign up. When doing this, the script creates your account and saves to the database that you already have an account. But there needs not to be a connection or mapping in the database between these two files! This is only necessary for registration and won't be available later.

> > That's really a very important point. Looking on a bigger time span, in fact almost every pseudonym will be assignable to the underlaying real identity. This already happens by the fact that someone may want to promote one's contribution in offline life to other people.
> >
>
> Right, and as I've been saying all along, there is no real need for
> this sort of privacy/anonymity, and most people (especially young
> people) are simply not as concerned about it as some people raised in
> an environment where totalitarianism was common (like us old farts).

Well, but that should be no reason for us (me?). Privacy/anonymity (P/A) can be important even if nobody cares about it.

> Sure, this registry would be a favorite tool of the likes of
> Stalin/Hitler/Mao, but the point is that our primary goal has to be to
> ensure that no one like that ever comes to power again. If we achieve
> that, being able to tell who voted how is no more a threat to people's
> freedom than asking them to sign petitions, speak at a city council
> meeting, or meet with their neighbors to organize a block party.

It is.

1) Talking to somebody is no piece of data remaining available for a nearly unlimited time. (Well, as long as there's no CCTV.)
2) It is also no piece of data available for many people.

The contrary is true for a public online discussion! Some militant group *could* exist also in the USA or in Europe. I think, it's not the fact now, but if it's the fact in ten or twenty years, data are still available. There is always some risk and nobody knows the world of tomorrow.

I also still don't know the best approach, but I think we still have to discover it. I don't think, voting should be influenced by any social effects because it's just an atmospheric picture of the people. Social effects could be useful in discussion to avoid Spam or trolling, but not during voting, electing etc.

There are many proposed ideas to solve the problem but all are not optimal. There are filtering (user-based, crowd-based, moderator-based), public voting and more (and combinations of these).

Regards,
Paul

[Scott Raney]

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 6:30 AM, <***@gmx.de> wrote:

> Just a raw example. You want to register on such a platform. There will, of course, be some procedure to check whether you are a real person. After that, you receive a one-time key to sign up. When doing this, the script creates your account and saves to the database that you already have an account. But there needs not to be a connection or mapping in the database between these two files! This is only necessary for registration and won't be available later.
>

This adds a layer of protection for sure, but I maintain that the
original data does need to be maintained to verify it when an
individual moves or claims their account has been hacked (let alone
for auditing). The very existence of the mapping file *anywhere*
renders the system vulnerable to attack and no amount of fancy
footwork is going to eliminate this threat. The best security is just
collectively deciding that we don't need that security and indeed are
better off without it.

>> > That's really a very important point. Looking on a bigger time span, in fact almost every pseudonym will be assignable to the underlaying real identity. This already happens by the fact that someone may want to promote one's contribution in offline life to other people.
>> >
>>
>> Right, and as I've been saying all along, there is no real need for
>> this sort of privacy/anonymity, and most people (especially young
>> people) are simply not as concerned about it as some people raised in
>> an environment where totalitarianism was common (like us old farts).
>
> Well, but that should be no reason for us (me?). Privacy/anonymity (P/A) can be important even if nobody cares about it.

I'm not getting your point. There are two very important reasons for
not allowing this (adding vulnerability to hacks, and lack of control
over authoritarian behavior). Unless you have a good reason why we
*do* need it other than your own preference (prejudice?) it seems to
me better to just dispense with the whole idea.

>> Sure, this registry would be a favorite tool of the likes of
>> Stalin/Hitler/Mao, but the point is that our primary goal has to be to
>> ensure that no one like that ever comes to power again. If we achieve
>> that, being able to tell who voted how is no more a threat to people's
>> freedom than asking them to sign petitions, speak at a city council
>> meeting, or meet with their neighbors to organize a block party.
>
> It is.
>
> 1) Talking to somebody is no piece of data remaining available for a nearly unlimited time. (Well, as long as there's no CCTV.)
> 2) It is also no piece of data available for many people.

These ships have already sailed. Given cell phones and security
cameras *everywhere* there is no longer any expectation of this kind
of privacy *anywhere*. Again, our only hope now is to prevent another
rise of the authoritarians who would exploit this data. A battle,
BTW, that I believe we're losing (to Putin, the Chinese government,
the NSA, etc.). To get on my soap box again, this is *not* just an
academic exercise: The very survival of our species may depend on the
work we're doing here.

> The contrary is true for a public online discussion! Some militant group *could* exist also in the USA or in Europe. I think, it's not the fact now, but if it's the fact in ten or twenty years, data are still available. There is always some risk and nobody knows the world of tomorrow.
>

True, but see my point above.

> I also still don't know the best approach, but I think we still have to discover it. I don't think, voting should be influenced by any social effects because it's just an atmospheric picture of the people. Social effects could be useful in discussion to avoid Spam or trolling, but not during voting, electing etc.
>

I disagree, and in fact why my proposal goes further in requiring live
updating of voting results. Social control at all stages is the
environment we evolved to function best in and is *necessary* to
ensure the authoritarians get the social cues they need to conform to
societal norms.
Regards,
Scott