Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
Good Afternoon, Raph re: However, under your system, they (minority views) do get represented in the level 1 triads. What they lose is the having high level representatives. Ah. Now we're at the crux of the matter ... Whether or not a minority view retains high level representatives depends on how well the holder of the minority view is able to persuade others of the validity and desirability of the minority view. The system guarantees that each and every view will have an audience, but nothing, absolutely nothing, can make that view worthy of representation except compelling advocacy. re: However, since your proposal is for a council rather than the Parliament, then this is not as much an issue. The proposal I posted was drafted for a specific Council. The concept is equally appropriate for selecting representatives for any legislature. re: The worst case is that all except a minority view gets removed. Can you explain how that could occur? A dedicated minority could easily take control of the system. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are organised, just a bloc that holds a strong viewpoint. A dedicated religious group could fall into that category. If they represented 25% of the population and used a veto any appointment unless you are selected strategy, then they would be well represented in the next stage. The odds of a triad having at least one of them is 58%. Assume that half of them get through and the other half they veto, then they will represent 29% in the 2nd round. The remaining 41% will be people outside the bloc (though maybe lower as there could be vetoes there too). 29 out of 71 is 41%, so they have increased their share from 25 to 41% (65% increase). In round 2, 41% gets them a member in 79% of the triads. Assuming the same results, that gives them 39.5% through against 21% other. Thus in 2 steps they have a 65% majority. Repeated over 10 rounds would increase their share to nearly 100%. Now this is also true with standard election methods. People can stand for election on false pretenses and then do things that are not supported by the public. However, the more levels, the more chance of it happening. That's subjective. The math is neither objective nor reasonable. The argument based on the concept of a 'veto' is invalid. In a triad, it takes two to make a selection. If a zealot refuses to agree to a selection (i.e., 'vetoes' it) the triad will be unable to make a selection (I cannot believe rational people will vote for a zealot who refuses to participate). If there is no selection the bigot cannot advance. Triads are made up of human beings intent on finding the best of their number to act as their representatives. To suggest they will select bigots is preposterous. The reality is that bigots, religious or otherwise, will be the first eliminated, for there is nothing more offensive to humans than zealotry they don't share. Perhaps the most misleading point in the foregoing citation is the failure to recognize that we're talking about real, breathing human beings; people of intellect and judgment; the kind of people we interact with, every day of our lives. We may not agree with all of their views, but we must acknowledge that they are capable of reason. If not, homo sapiens isn't very sapient. re: One possible solution to this would be to have the six people meet and then have one triad judge the other. If the rationale I've presented opposing this notion is inadequate, the implementors may agree with you. re: My original suggestion was for a chain. I missed that. Sorry. Mea culpa. re: ... there is the same problem is the population is not divisible by 3. That issue is addressed in the proposal: Level 2 is a special case. If the number of candidates does not divide equally into triads, any candidates remaining are overflow. When there is overflow from Level 1, the extra person(s) automatically become candidates at Level 2. Thereafter, when there is overflow at any level, the number of people needed to create a full triad are selected at random from the people who were not selected at the previous level. re: (Since there is a limited time in which evaluation must be completed, increasing the number of evaluation targets must reduce the depth and effectiveness of each individual's evaluation.) I don't really see that as a major issue. Failure to see this as a major issue is a serious concern. The purpose of Practical Democracy is to give us an opportunity to evaluate the people who will represent us in our government. We don't know these people, yet we are going to entrust them with our future. It is imperative that we evaluate our choices. We may not always get it right, but if we have the time and the exposure to them, we can do a lot better than we've been doing. We are enduring a
Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
Good Afternoon, Kristofer re: The rationale (for protecting an opinion not held by the majority of the electorate) is that it enables compromise. I submit that the essence of the Practical Democracy concept is compromise. Three people, exchanging views on a variety of public issues and choosing the spokesperson who most closely represents the attitudes of the group, will work out to the best solution possible. In most cases, 'n' won't win, and neither will 'y'. Instead, superior alternatives will be found. re: The compromise on a national level might be different from the compromise on a local level, meaning that the entire spectrum should be preserved to the extent that it is possible. That is an implementation concern. The original draft of the concept was done for the State of New Jersey (US) using the 2004 voting-eligible population of 5,637,378 people. It anticipated that, at certain levels, those not selected to advance to state or national offices would constitute a parallel process for local and county offices. The issue was not seeking ideological representation but selection of the best, brightest and most trustworthy people for public office. re: Otherwise, you can get effects similar to primaries where the primary electors elect those that are a compromise within their own ranks, and then the general election turns out to have candidates that are more extremely placed than the voters. I don't believe the methods are comparable in any way. Parties control the selection of candidates for public office. They are chosen for their bias and their lack of integrity, not for their ability to serve the public interest. That creates a situation in which corruption is inevitable. re: (A wise electorate will realize their best interests are served by electing people with the wit and wisdom to listen to, consider, and, when appropriate, accept fresh points of view.) Yes, but to do so, they need the big picture. Anyone who achieves selection to, for example, our Congress, is guaranteed, not only to have 'the big picture' but to be able to enunciate it in so compelling a manner that even those who seek the same seat are convinced. If the selected person is deficient in any way, the others will be sure the weakness is made clear before the choice is made. re: What I meant is that even if you could magic up an election method, there will be som reduction of minority opinion. There simply isn't enough room in a 200-seat legislature (to use example numbers) to perfectly represent opinions that are held by less than a 200th of the people ... That is a fact. We must keep in mind that we elect the 200 people in that legislature because we want them to make the best decisions for the entire electorate regarding issues that arise during their term. If an issue arises that affects a minority we want them to consider the matter carefully and arrive at the best resolution possible for all of us ... regardless of anyone's ideology. re: ... if the method tries, then some opinion held by a greater share will suffer. On this I think we agree ... We do. re: The majority /of that council/. That need not be the majority of the people at large. If the real majority is thinly spread, it can get successively shaved off until nothing remains. That may be. I haven't examined the point carefully because my focus is on electing better decision makers. There is no doubt that there will be issues that are not clear-cut. To resolve them, we need to change the way we maintain our laws. I could describe one way of doing so but would rather not digress unless you consider it important. re: ... if a candidate says Okay, I'll try to compromise and gets the votes of the rest of the triad, and then escalate, then what's keeping the candidate from turning on his promise? Presumably you'd expect most people to be honest, but there's still an uncertainty, and that uncertainty appears at every level. That is, and will always be, a risk in representative government. As I said in the outline: This is a distillation process, biased in favor of the most upright and capable of our citizens. It cannot guarantee that unprincipled individuals will never be selected ... such a goal would be unrealistic ... but it does insure that they are the exception rather than the rule. re: Majority flip frac is the fraction of the times that the last triad had a majority for one position where that position was in a minority among the people. Wah! Ya got me! Awww, I'm joking. I confess that I don't understand the math involved but I think I've got a slight glimmer of the picture. Let me also say this. I REALLY wish I could work with math like that. What little I can see in what you've done is exciting. I guess
Re: [EM] Delegable proxy/cascade and killer apps
Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: If computers are permitted, then to keep sock puppets away and formalize trust networks, you might use a trust metric. When given direct trust (A trusts B to this extent), they extrapolate indirect trust (A trusts C because A trusts B and B trusts C). Some of the trust metrics also aim to be hard to manipulate, so that, for instance, if a user makes 1000 clones, all of these clones are bottlenecked through that user and so trust adjustments against the user affects all the clones as well. My trust network for the electoral register has bottlenecking. It's still poorly doc'd. I have only the code: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/_/javadoc/votorola/a/register/trust/package-summary.html Here's one example of a trust metric for P2P networks: http://www.stanford.edu/~sdkamvar/papers/eigentrust.pdf And here's another, that's claimed to be manipulation resistant: http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html Raph Frank wrote: This is another for film ratings. It gives each moving a score and is resistant to random raters. http://www.mathaware.org/mam/08/reputation.pdf Thanks for the refs gents. My searches turned up nothing. I'll read these shortly, when I doc the network. -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Delegable proxy/cascade and killer apps
I think I can finally document the theory. I've been in list discussions for a year now. It's payed off in design ideas. Now I have working code. But it's hard to sustain a discussion (and maybe hard to put the code into practice) without a clear theory. I hope it's on topic for this particular list. The theory does build from a voting method (DP/C) of course. Here's roughly how it starts: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht (hit refresh, to see the latest figures) Maybe other members of the list are interested in critical theory of society, and how it could hook up with voting (aside from Fred Gohlke and me)? Anyway, I just a need a week or so before I can answer questions and critique... For now, pardon, I'll just reply to particular points. A system could have a strong network effect combined with a large critical mass. However, they are normally related. A stong network effect would mean that the start-up requirement shouldn't be that massive. Sorry, then my definition of network effect was wrong. I doubt we disagreed about anything else. Delegable proxy is like your system. Everyone can change their vote and proxy assignments at any time. I have to ask Abd when he's next online for refs (even to list postings) so I can credit them. So the vote is shiftable by the original caster. Does the caster also know that it assents to single action, such as the promulgation of a particular bill, or the empowerment of an officer? (I have to ask Abd.) It introduces another warehouse into the supply chain... Well, if it to cut down on noise. Effectively, the proxy is saying I will only read changes made by this group of people and also This is my proposal. Limiting the group who can push to my draft. That's what I meant by giving write access to my immediate, principle voters (maybe 5-20 people) who may be proxies themselves. It can be done with a single Wiki. In effect, it is like an inbox wiki and an outbox wiki. A proxy who isn't creating his own proposal could just point at his proxy's outbox wiki. This is a reasonable balance as the proxy may not have unlimited time. For low level proxies, they aren't likely to be professional proxies. The separate out Wiki gives me a clean copy, so people know I approved it. I like that part. But I can get that from a single Wiki too. The last revision edited by me is the clean copy. With a single Wiki, I don't have to do all of the text integration (from in to out) by myself. Often the inputter's own integration will suffice. I just clean it up a little. There may be no elsewheres left to go. Why not? There should be a huge number of low level proxies. If you are a near top level proxy, then the higher level proxies should at least listen to you, especially as you can carry your supporters to them. If they don't, then maybe you need a better negotiating strategy. (The number of proxies may not be huge. In the early stages it will be small. On the other hand, with a little patience, it may eventually grow. So there's openings in time, as well as space.) But you agree that every draft ought to have an un-suppressable presence, even if nobody else likes it. That's all I was arguing for. -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
