As usual, I ignore all the places where we agree and emphasize the
disagreements ... because life is more fun that way. 8^)
On 09/09/2016 12:01 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
(I rarely actually hang by the media outlet waiting for these things).
I'm not sure when it happened. But at some point I began to buy the idea that politics
is deeply embedded in everything. I think it started when I moved to the bay area and
heard people (constantly) say things like "that's just politics" ... implying
that whatever they were talking about was somehow not politics. This article reinforced
my position just this morning:
Enough With This Basic Income Bullshit
https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bullshit-a6bc92e8286b#.1xcadg3vf
As a result, I began following all the politics I could stomach as closely as
my [in]competence would allow.
Though I think gay (LGBTQZedOmega) and reproduction rights would have been
retarded and a few (other) conservative Xtian rights would have been advanced
differently but...
Maybe. I resist our "great person" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory)
tendencies wherever I find them, though. It's reasonable to speculate that Obama had much less to
do with those advances than we might think. But it's also dangerous to argue that some
event/process would have happened regardless. That's a typical flaw of my libertarian friends
who'll claim that advances like artificial hearts or whatnot, despite being government funded,
would have emerged even without government funding. Criticalities (like "great people")
probably do play some/much role in some/many cases. I'm simply skeptical that we can tease out
which cases.
In short, this game has absolutely nothing to do with the
idealistic system(s) framing Arrow's or Condorcet's propositions. And
that may partially explain why markets would be more robust predictors.
Excepting, I would contend that "this game" is *shaped* by the lack of viable
paths to successful 3rd party intrusions INTO the game.
Well, good games, games that I find _fun_, anyway, are always co-evolutionary
with implicit objective functions. Boring games are those with unambiguous
rules, zero-sum outcomes, etc. Were I to run for a large office (or
participate on the campaign of someone running), I'd regard the viable paths as
part of the game, not isolable merely as the context of the game.
Perhaps this is why, during near-drunken argumentation, people always accuse me of
private definitions and "moving the goal posts". 8^) Who says I can't move the
goal posts? What game were _you_ playing?
This is my own fundamental point, no matter how poorly made. I'm looking for
the mechanical changes that might be made in our system to *allow* third
parties to be relevant. There is a chicken and egg. For all the things I like
about both Jill and Gary, they are not as serious of candidates as I think we
need in third parties. As long as third parties are a priori non-viable at this
level, we will not see anyone *build* a machine and put a seasoned driver at
it's helm... and of course, the argument many make against supporting third
parties *because* they are not viable, or that their chosen representatives are
not experienced or serious enough is a little bit self-fulfilling methinks.
So both Ross Perot and Bernie Sanders are good examples, here. Bernie tried to
seize (or cajole) control of a good machine. Perot (if I understand correctly
... I was very naive at the time) built/repurposed his own. I think there's a
great chance diverse characters like Jeff Bezos or Nate Silver could change the
game enough to do it. But they'd need to be very Machiavellian and much less
ideological or narcissistic than our typical candidates.
In the end, I chalk it up to how we incentivize different types of work. We
tend to reward moronic activities, skills, attributes (like the ability to
throw a stick further than everyone else ... or good bone structure) more than
the geeky/wonky skills/behaviors needed to change the game.
Also I hoped that this august body (ok, so we are into September by now) would
have more interest/insight into the game-theoretic/structural issues implied by
our electoral system. Maybe the real world stakes are too high to even try to
think objectively/abstractly for most of us....
Yes, I would have thought this directly in the camp of "applied complexity". I have a
friend working on election security: http://freeandfair.us/ But that work is too "close to
the metal" for me, I guess. I'd prefer a systems engineering project experimenting on
geopolitical systems in general. I imagine there are lots of people doing that work, breathing
stale air in faraday cages peppered around the country housed in various nondescript buildings.
--
☣ glen
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