Fred Gohlke wrote:
Good Evening, Kristofer
Before responding to your most recent letter, I'd like to revisit a
topic mentioned in your letter of Fri, 26 Sep. In discussing the way a
group of three people might resolve a traffic question involving three
alternatives, each championed by a member of the group, you mentioned
the possibility of a fourth, unrepresented, alternative. I found your
suggestion stimulating.
It stimulated more than I expected because, in reflecting on it, I
recalled an aspect of human relations that influenced adoption of the
triad concept in the first place ... the tendency of small groups of
problem solvers to experience intuitive leaps.
In the hypothetical case we're discussing, the goal of the group is to
solve the problem. It is not uncommon for such efforts to produce
unanticipated results. Indeed, some enterprises seek such results with
'brainstorming' sessions. The chances of such mental leaps are severely
restricted (if even possible) when the decision-making group is
ideologically bound. The mind is a wonderful thing. We mustn't chain it.
That is true, and after reading, I think I've given the wrong
impression. What I want is not so much to reproduce partisanship
accurately as to reproduce the entire range of ideas accurately. This
is, I think, the real idea of PR, at least as I see it: that the groups
are accurate not just by party, but by idea distribution. In the context
of brainstorming, such a group distributed in a good way would have more
points of view to draw upon; in your example, they would know about the
fourth option, so they could take that into account when deciding if,
perhaps, there is a solution that goes beyond all these yet get
reasonably close to the goal of the four options that were proposed.
I'll try to refine this, although I may sound a bit like I'm talking
about cardboard persons or stickmen again. Part of this is because I
don't really know how people are going to act, so I'm making a first
degree approximation, to use such a term.
And, now, to work ...
re: ... why are your web log entries timestamped 2010?
Because the site puts the most recent posts at the point where they are
the first encountered by visitors. I asked the site how I could put the
material in 'book order', and they told me I'd have to reverse the
dates. I chose a future date, and made subsequent posts at earlier
dates to put the material in a logical order for the visitor.
Alright. I haven't seen that kind of format elsewhere - presumably they
list the most recent entries first so that people who come back know if
anything's new.
With regard to focusing on the job our representatives do ...
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: 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 ...
I agree, but believe the signal is strongest during the selection phase.
That is when people focus their attention on their priorities of in
what direction to take society and select the people they believe will
lead them in that direction.
Here I'll refer to what I saw in my simulations. They show that, at
least for simple opinion models, those ideas held by a majority turns
into a near consensus. Something has to go, and that is the ideas by the
minority. As far as I understand, your response to that is that people
are not static: the ostensible majority learns from the minority as
we progress up the stages. That may be the case, and if so, that is
good; but if not, then the method significantly limits the ideas that
are not common to all.
I'll restate that what I'm talking about is not simple partisanship.
Maybe a picture would work better. Consider the candidates' reaction to
certain ideas as a plain. In some areas, you have mountains (where they
agree very much on the corresponding idea), and in others, you have only
small hills (where they're indifferent). Proportional representation
would ideally construct a good replica of the combined landscape of the
entire population.
