Fred Gohlke wrote:
Good Afternoon, Kristofer
I'd like to start by thanking you for your analytical comments. Your
forbearance on the points where my understanding lags is gratifying, for
I fear your level of education exceeds mine by a considerable margin.
Although I lack formal education, I don't lack the capacity for
independent thought. If you wish to know a bit more about me, you'll
find a brief profile at:
http://whither-democracy.blogspot.com/
You're welcome. Actually, I don't have much of a formal education as
regards election methods or societal dynamics, but I seem to naturally
think in an analytical manner. That, the internet, and curiosity goes a
long way.
Incidentally, why are your web log entries timestamped 2010?
re: "There are two ways to regard the results of an election
method. The first is how accurate the representatives
display the properties or opinions of the people, and the
second is how good a job the representatives do."
In this, you describe a distinction I hadn't considered ...
I focus on how good a job our representatives do rather than how well
they reflect the opinions of the people, because, while I stand second
to no-one in my commitment to our right to govern ourselves, I'm not
blind to the fact that we can be manipulated.
We may, at some point, need to look at why we are susceptible to
manipulation, but, at the moment, I'll only say if we are to govern
ourselves, we must offset that susceptibility with leaders who have the
ability to guide us past our own shortcomings and the integrity to do so
to our common advantage. We will only improve our society when we find
leaders who can transcend the vagaries of opinion without betraying the
public interest.
I can see the point you're making, but I think you should be careful not
to go to the other extreme, too. Opinions may shift, but at the bottom
of things, they're the people's priorities of in what direction to take
society. The vagaries you speak of could be considered noise, and that
noise is being artificially increased by the two main parties, since if
they can convince their wing voters they represent their opinion (or
change their opinion), then those voters are more likely to vote for
them instead of not voting at all. That doesn't mean that there's no
signal, though, and where that signal does exist, it should not be
averaged out of existence or amplified in some areas and attenuated in
others (as could happen if the majority of the majority is not equally
much a majority of the whole).
re: "... because politics is a process, if a method has biases,
then these may amplify in ways that can cause odd results
over time."
I had not understood that point and I'm glad you raise it. Would it be
correct to imagine there is a difference between a systemic bias (as in
the plurality system) and the biases of ideology (as with Liberals and
Conservatives)? I believe your reference is to the former.
Yes, it is. To be more specific, the bias I'm talking about is a
distortion of the wishes of the people. A method that fails mutual
majority might pick a candidate where a majority prefers one of a set
that candidate isn't in, for instance; and more concretely, Plurality
squeezes out the center and provides incentives for two-party rule.
It is my belief (until I learn otherwise) that the process I've outlined
has a bias in favor of the most fundamental goals of society. Humans
have a natural tendency to pursue their own interest, and the choices
they make will reflect this. Time and repetition will refine the
choices from the extremes enunciated by the least thoughtful of us to
their essence as enunciated by the most thoughtful.
That means that your system acts less quickly to change. This is a
method that can work, and it prevents the kind of spurious opinion
oscillation you'd see in Plurality, but again, if it goes too far, it's
too slow. I don't know if it is too quick, just right, or too slow, but
I think it's more likely that it's one of the two latter than the
former, especially given the observation that majority agreements turn
into consensus at the higher levels.
re: "Even if the country was nearly filled with paragons of
virtue, partisanship would happen nevertheless, simply
because of the long term feedback of the system."
Although I don't think you mean otherwise, partisanship is natural for
humans. It exists independently of our political systems. Politicians
exploit that tendency to our disadvantage. They trade on it to attain
power.
An important consideration for a sound electoral method is the ability
to function independent of partisanship. We all have partisan feelings.
Indeed, they are a vital part of society, but they must always be a
voice and never a power. The danger is not in partisanship, it is in
allowing partisans to control government.
What I meant was that even if the majority were (by some miracle)
nonpartisan, parties would form out of necessity. Plurality simply can't
support a horde of independents. As such, Plurality encourages the
formation of parties, and of parties to coalesce until there are two
main blocks -- even in the best case (where near-nobody is partisan),
the nature of Plurality, the method itself, shapes the results, meaning
that it definitely does so under less ideal conditions, such as in the
world today.
re: "... I try to find situations where your method loses
information, and see whether they could cause long-term
problems."
We know systems can be corrupted. If we find flaws in this one now, we
have an opportunity to correct them. I've spent many hours trying to
imagine weaknesses in the method, but that is a matter best investigated
by others. I, like all humans, am constrained by my own blinders.
Yes, and if we find really bad flaws in it, then we can say "no, this
can't be salvaged, let's try something else", without actually having
society be hurt by our "experiment".
My fixes to the system would be to have a somewhat larger council size
and use a PR method to pick more than one representative/delegate to the
next level. This weakens your aim, which is to retain the experienced
who can convince others, but hopefully not too much, and it also
alleviates what I see as the problem, that legitimate shades of the
people's idea of how society should be run would otherwise be excluded.
The exact size of the council would have to be found out by either
trying, or by reasoning. I understand the reason for picking three, as
you gave in your earlier post, so it's likely that inreasing the council
size would make it less of a discussion and more formal, which we don't
want. What we'd need would be to understand how quickly the council
degrades as its size increases, in comparison to the gains elsewhere (in
accuracy and in agreement).
re: "... the intuitive idea is that if a group of three (or
some other number) agrees upon a compromise, then by
necessity, that compromise can't contain all possible
opinions of the group. If this happens in many places,
the compromise of compromises will differ from the
compromise of all, had they been somehow able to elect
directly, simply because the minorities add up to a sizable
fraction that could have influenced matters if they had been
more lucky."
I understand your point. I would agree with it ... if humans were stick
figures. Since we are not, I think it misleading to attribute monomania
to all humans. It is true there are among us people so obsessed with
the rectitude of a belief they will sacrifice themselves and others to
assert their point of view. However, such individuals are but a tiny
part of the human race. Most humans are amenable to reason, but they
must have an environment in which reason can thrive.
Taken as a group, members of a minority can appear monolithic, but when
you examine the individuals that make up the group, you find endless
variations in their belief in and commitment to the group. You also
find they each embody parts of many other groups, some of which are
antithetical to each other. There is infinite variety in their views.
Rare indeed, is the individual that does not favor some minority. I
fear that excessive focus on minorities will distort one's view of
humanity.
In the case of three people selecting a representative, or, perhaps even
better, a spokesperson, the selection is not a compromise, it is a
conscious decision that one individual's advocacy of some dynamically
defined group of topics is superior to that of the others. It is
correct to say the person selected can not contain (represent) all the
possible opinions of the group ... but that is an advantage rather than
a disadvantage. Taken over a broad spectrum ... say the 3000 triads at
the initial level in the example ... the cumulative effect is a
conscious effort by all participants to make the best selection
possible, under the dominant biases of the time.
It's true that all methods must exhibit some distortion; the proof is
simply the one I explained earlier, that if there's a council of size
200 then the only way for someone who holds a single opinion to hold one
that less than 0.5% of the people holds if there's some other opinion
than more than 0.5% holds that's not represented. Thus, to the extent
that we want the representatives to have the full picture, the question
is, compared to other methods, is the distortion/quantization
particularly bad, or is it better than other methods?
That proof is, of course, a simplification which assumes that humans are
stick figures. That isn't true in reality, as you point out. However,
there is still a limit to how wide a span a single representative can
hold - how many different solutions he can contemplate and argue in
favor of - so the method (and any method) will still exhibit a
quantization of the ideas of the people, and the same question returns;
is it worse or better than other methods? (And also, is the quantization
biased so that the method may give feedback like the two-party
entrenchment of Plurality?)
When we model humans as stick figures, these questions can be, after
some fashion, be answered by simulations. When we try to be more
accurate, in that people are not, it becomes more difficult. There is
both the objective neutrality ("judge manner", or the degree to which
one is not corrupted, selfish, etc), and subjective positions (how many
opinions? how wide a span can a single representative hold?).
To return to a more concrete response: if the councilmembers can hold
many opinions, or a range of opinions, and deliberate among those, the
effect of exclusion is significantly reduced, but it'll still be there,
and it may or may not still exhibit the "shaving off significant, but
thinly spread, areas of opinion" effect, only with ranges of opinion
taking the place of stick-man type "either you're with us or without us"
opinions. I don't know whether it would, since it'd depend not only on
the system, but also on the integrity of the councilmembers.
If I may presume to suggest an instance which (I think) bears out the
circumstance you describe, we can reasonably imagine most humans feel we
should avoid the mindless slaughter of war. Yet, the chances of
selecting a candidate absolutely committed to opposing war is very small
because we also recognize the governments of our era are imperfect.
Even so, we can anticipate that when people are not obliged to choose
between 'hawks' and 'doves' they will choose candidates with a
preference for avoiding armed conflict; people who will work, within the
realities of their time, to eliminate war as an element of policy. Thus,
what is declared (by some) to be a minority public opinion (i.e.,
anti-war sentiment) gains influence, not by attracting additional
adherents, but by the ascendancy of reason over partisanship.
Right, I see how the method would ideally work. The most hawkish would
be pulled towards the center by those who are more dovish than them, and
the same for the extreme doves. This would happen either by conviction
(the representative/councilmember elected being convinced it's better
not to be so extreme) or by replacement (if he doesn't); and would be
augmented by the method picking objectively skilled members who'd be
more likely to accept new ideas.
Let's see what ways it could fail.
The councilmember could lie his way to the top. This could be softened
by recall; in some proposed council democracies, the councils are
permanent and a majority at level (n-1) can recall a council at level n,
but even with only the population to have recall at the end of the
process, it would weaken the incentive to lie.
The closest example to councils of councils, that I know of, with the
attendant objection that councilmembers are not accountable to the
people because they can't be revoked, is the Commission of the European
Union. The Commission is made up of members elected by the state
governments, which are in turn elected by the people; or even with one
additional link of indirection, through a parliament. Now, the analogy
might be weak, since the EC is limited by the effects of the systems
used to elect the intermediate steps, and possibly also by the
partisanship incentives you've talked about earlier; and the "councils"
are much larger than your triads as well; but that's the closest we
have. If the EC is a good example, then accountability is going to be a
problem.
The hawkish (say) could have fortuitious geographical distribution and
also be unusually zealous. My simulations seem to show this is not as
much of a problem as I thought, at least not with a one-dimensional
issue of war vs peace. What happens if a triad is unable to agree upon a
candidate? Would it then be done by vote, random selection within the
council, or is that councilmember's position undetermined and filled
randomly at the next level?
re: "The second is that if there are multiple opinions (not just
yes and no), then the triad can't hold an opinion that's
held strongly by less than a third of the people."
As described in the response to the first point, neither humans nor
their opinions are so monochromatic. People often favor opinions that
are not currently popular. When they do, they work for their
implementation indirectly even though direct advocacy would be stymied.
To assert that people are defined by the opinions attributed to them is
putting the cart before the horse. Speaking of horses, I'll stop
beating this one ... it may already be dead.
I'll try to sum it up so we can see how we think here. My concern is
that first, minorities can get shaved off in unpredictable ways, and
second, that because of the small size, each triad may not have all
information required to decide which is the more accurate with respect
to what the people thinks. The first is particular to the triad system,
the second would be the case for all systems with small bodies. You're
saying that the triad councilmembers would make up for it by being
unusually good at what they do; that they would have many opinions and
not stick fanatically to any one of them, because the process would
encourage those who were objectively skilled enough to do this.
If that's right, then the difference here is a focus on whether
councilmembers accurately represent the people, versus how good each
councilmember is at his profession-as-it-were.
To the degree I'm biased, I'm biased towards the first because it
provides a worst case limit: even if you end up with bad councilmembers,
you end up with a cross-section of the people, which is better than a
gathering of bad majoritarian councilmembers, excluding all the others.
Also, I've seen how single-member plurality works, and multiple-member
methods (like STV) seem to produce much better results in practice.
The similarity would be that one could argue towards single-member
plurality in the way you do, that the important thing is not to pick the
partisan member, but the one who'd do his work the best. Then again,
Plurality is flawed even as a single-winner method, so single-member
districts under Plurality may not give a good idea of how far you can
get with the single-member idea; Condorcet may be better.
There is also the amplification effect I've talked about earlier, on how
the errors of the system could provide an unwanted dynamic (like
two-party domination in Plurality), but yes... the horse is dead now,
and I was just going to show how I reasoned.
re: "... if the legislature can recall the executive, having a
majoritarian executive is of less problem than having an
unrepresentative legislature."
This topic is mentioned but not expanded in the second footnote to the
Sefton petition:
"#2: The process is inherently bi-directional. Questions on
specific issues can easily be transmitted directly to and
from the electors for the guidance or instruction of elected
officials."
The point was not expanded, in part, because it is not included in the
petition. Another reason for not expanding it is that it is
implementation-dependent. The natural bi-directionality of the process
allows many enhancements, not least of which is recall. It also opens
the door to substantial digressions from the primary focus of the
process ... to harness our natures to the electoral process. We can
anticipate that this topic can, and will, lead to considerable
dissension between those who feel representatives must be under the
direct control of the people and those who feel we elect people of
judgment and should (within limits) trust their judgment.
To briefly repeat what I've said, I think bidirectionality is going to
be particularly important here, simply because the method contains
multiple elections (one for each level), not just one, so the
bidirectionality is not just from the final to the people, but to all
the other levels as well. Thus, if there's a dilution of responsibility
that must be compensated for by bidirectionality, that dilution happens
multiple times, and so the compensation has to be all the stronger.
re: "... say that there's only one political axis (left-wing to
right-wing). The two parties occupy positions some distance
away from center, say at 0.20 and 0.75. Then the compromise
of the left-wing party will be at 0.20, and that of the
right-wing party will be at 0.75; these are both more
extremely placed than the true compromise at 0.5."
I think I understand. I took the .20 and .75 values to mean a position
within a wing rather than a position on the axis, but that line of
thought led me astray. In an effort to enhance my understanding, I
tried to create a diagram but that didn't work for me, either, so I
tried creating a diagram of my own.
Is this representation, where each symbol (l,m,r) indicates 2% of the
electorate, close? The idea I'm trying to convey is that the (l)eft and
(r)ight portions of the electorate are approximately equal at 40% each
and there's a middle segment, committed to neither side, of
approximately 20%. The candidates for each side are represented as
being 20% (L) and 25% (R) from the least radical end of each wing:
L R
llllllllllllllllllllmmmmm mmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
-01%/-40% -10%/+10% +11%/+50%
If "L" wins:
L (-18)
llllllllllllllllllllmmmmm mmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
-01%/-40% -10%/+10% +11%/+50%
If "R" wins:
R (+20)
llllllllllllllllllllmmmmm mmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
-01%/-40% -10%/+10% +11%/+50%
If that is a reasonable depiction of what you mean, even the most
cursory examination should show how unappealing it is, from the
perspective of the entire electorate. Obviously, the more either
candidate moves toward its polar extreme (and we've often seen that in
the U.S.), the more offensive the concept is to reason. Nor is the
offensiveness ameliorated by the fact that a majority of the electorate
chose the final winner because their choices were limited to two actors
and were based on a multiplicity of emotional triggers inspired by
professional opinion-makers.
That is for the most part an accurate depiction. However, I considered
the values to be absolute. Thus, for 2% per, you'd get
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
#----#----#----#----#----#----#----#----#----#----#
L | R
llllllllllllllllllllmmmmm|mmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
|
-01%/-40% [-10%/+10%] +11%/50%
This doesn't change much about what you said, though, it just makes the
right-wing party candidate slightly more palatable than the left-wing
candidate, since the right-wing party contains more of the
close-to-middle voters than do the left-wing party. Presumably, the
right-wing party candidate would win in a two-party Plurality election.
In any event, this is a sufficiently reasonable depiction of what
happens in primaries. It's idealized and reality may be somewhat
different, since parties may know this and strategize, picking a
candidate closer to the middle. On the other hand, their internal
primary election method might distort results, particularly for US
parties, since they use Plurality.
The relevance of this problem as regards the council democracy / triad
system is that the "l" and "r" voters are majorities, but neither L (the
majority choice of the l-majority) nor R (the majority choice of the
r-majority) is a good candidate. This shows how the true center may be
eliminated for opinion ranges (not binary opinions) in a kind of
real-valued variant of vote-splitting.
If the council deliberation works similar to Condorcet, the effect will
be weakened, since a Condorcet election with a middle candidate inserted
above (at 0.5) would elect the middle candidate:
40: L > M > R (left-wing group)
10: M > R > L (middle group)
40: R > M > L (right-wing group)
and M is the Condorcet Winner.
The effect might happen between councils, though, even if they don't
happen (or happen only weakly) inside councils.
re: "... one thing I observed from the simulations is that the
higher level councils often have not just a majority, but
consensus. Do you think this could lead the councilmembers
to consider their own positions to be held by more than is
actually the case?"
I suspect that is a virtual certainty, for projection is another natural
human trait (albeit one I did not consider and I'm deeply impressed that
your simulations revealed it.) Since I had never considered this aspect
of the process and am an inordinately slow thinker, it will take me a
long time to fully appreciate the significance of this point. At first
blush, I lean toward the opinion that it's favorable: Those who would
advocate positions must have confidence in their rectitude. Part of
that confidence will come from the belief that they speak for many
like-minded people. If this leads to excess, it will affect subsequent
elections (or invoke some action via the bi-directional nature of the
selection process).
Confidence in their position is a good thing, as long as that projection
does not lead from confidence to overconfidence and detachment from
those groups of the people that do not share the councils' positions.
Since a majority is transformed into near-consensus as the
candidates/councilmembers bubble up through the levels, the effect would
probably be more severe the further up the levels you got, and the more
levels there are in general.
re: "... you could either readjust the election method, or
compensate by some other means; I suppose it's the latter
that you're referring to when you say that we'd need to
change the way we maintain our laws."
Yes. Although I don't want to digress unduly, I think it ludicrous that
a provision enacted by a tiny majority of a legislature should become
the law of the land in perpetuity. Laws should have a life defined by
the extent of their public support. Oversimplified, and with a
percentage used for example only, a law enacted by a majority of less
than 52% should have to be re-enacted after one year. Living under a
law is different than discussing it in preparation for enactment.
Therefore, laws should require annual re-enactment until they attract
enough support to raise them to a higher bracket with a longer life or
fail of adoption.
I don't want to digress too much, either, but let's just say that I've
been considering similar ideas, myself; such as laws having a sunset
that depends on how great a majority passed it, or on a president having
a variable-time term depending on his victory margin.
Another, for presidential elections, would be one where it's possible to
do a recall at any time. Then, at the start, you need a "yes" vote of at
least 3/2 of the fraction that voted for the president, but where this
margin gradually decreases.
For instance, you could have a decrease of 0.78 parts of a percent per
month. So a president elected by a fraction of 51% would require a
recall majority of 76.5% at day zero, 76.5 - 0.78 = 75.72% after one
month.. and 76.5 - (0.78 * 3 * 12) = 48.42% after three years. The same
kind of "gradual mounting opposition" could be applied to laws as well.
There should probably be some sort of quorum (absolute limit) so that
one can't do an unnoticed recall.
re: "I'm also saying that if 52.5% of the population holds a
given opinion, 4.1% of the time, a majority of the final
triad members hold the opposing opinion (a "majority
flip"). That's not so bad, and it actually surprised me"
I, too, am surprised ... but surprised it is possible to devise
simulations of such precision. Although I never thought about the
possibility of a "majority flip", it doesn't surprise me that they
occur. Indeed, part of my rationale is that, given time and an
environment in which to reflect, thoughtful people will learn (i.e.,
change their opinions). (In an attempt to interject a bit of humor,
I'll tell you one of my favorite sayings is that I change my opinions
more frequently than I change my socks. All it takes is clearer
understanding.)
That was a stick-man model, therefore majority flips would be a bad
thing. I expected the majority flips to be much more frequent, though.
re: "The second representativeness issue would be similar to
there being four traffic solutions; one has to remain
unrepresented unless some can argue for more than one
solution."
There is little in life I find more stimulating than reminders that
there are valid views other than my own ... and they're the most fun
when they are described simply and clearly so I don't have to work for
the insight. Thanks for this one.
If I've failed to address anything of note, please let me know.
Same thing goes here, but I don't think you did.
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