Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Included is a link to the "Undivided Attention" podcast where the guest is
Taiwan's Digital minister. She discusses the progress and successes that
Taiwan has made in producing *digital democracy* software, implementing
*radically open transparency* at the government level, and building search
engines whose underlying dynamics combat *political polarization*. Since the
discussions up until this point have been desperately lacking for working
examples, I hope to move the discussion out of the speculative with this
offering:
https://your-undivided-attention.simplecast.com/episodes/the-listening-society-yZ1PBlPF

A year or so ago, Nick and I were discussing what could be done to
incentivize individuals to engage others across their ideological/political
boundaries. While Nick was in favor of implementing a *richer* notion of
*moderator* into debate platforms, I aimed to change the underlying dynamics
of our suggestion engines. Suggestion engines today are known to facilitate
silo-ing by identifying others like one's self and offering the individual
more of the same, and a good deal of the literature supports the observation
that iterating on this process leads to dense delta-like concentrations of
what an individual tolerates or believes. An approach that I find actionable
is to extend the suggestion process to model individual tolerances, suggest
content at individual tolerance boundaries, and incentivize the extension of
those boundaries.

Tang explains that in Taiwan, they built suggestion engines that promote
content more when the content is agreed upon by individuals that typically
disagree. While I cannot speak to the efficacy of this approach, I am happy
to see similarly dynamical attempts to solve the problem. For those that sat
through the 3-hour anti-trust senate hearings, it is clear that without such
a sophisticated approach, the government will attempt to solve the problem
by demanding *case-by-case* that *such-and-such* result be *more fair*.
Additionally, for those of us in the tech business, it is clear that such
platforms are capable of what they do exactly because they are automated. To
hire 100,000 individuals to moderate Facebook is simply not a solution, and
to Nick's point, especially not a solution under the current
poverty-stricken conception of *moderation*. This means that solutions will
need to be implemented at a systems level and through studying the dynamics
which arise from a platform's actionable behaviors and policies. I am
thankful that some nations are taking the problem seriously enough to take
action and that soon we may have working examples of *digital democracy* at
scale.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

While I  appreciate your narrative, it's not clear to me how that story hardens 
the digital voting app against the successful exploitation we're seeing in our 
representation. While the therapist comment seems to be cheeky, there's a good 
argument to be made that universal healthcare or a basic income or even 
establishing election day as a national holiday would instantaneously make all 
American's *better* consumers. Poverty is exhausting. Freeing people up to 
think a little harder about *who* they're voting for would help a lot. It's 
fairly easy for us wealthy people to look down on the sick and tired for their 
ignorance and stupidity. It takes significant effort to restructure the world 
so that they're less sick and less tired.

Re: Roger's lament of why we can't all work on higher order pursuits, I take 
Sturgeon's Law seriously, it's easier to foster the 10% of everything that 
isn't crap if all 100% of us have our basic needs met. Sure, there's some truth 
to Republican fears that if you give lazy people an inch, they'll take a mile. 
But by *not* giving the ~30% of the US population near-poverty enough time and 
energy to *think*, we miss out on whatever it might be any crypto-Musks would 
think about or work on.

If a digital voting app can help solve such problems, I'd like to know how. If 
it can't, much like the neuralink, it will simply be another tool by which the 
rich exploit the poor, by which those of us *with* free time/energy exploit 
those of us without free time/energy.


On August 30, 2020 1:14:35 PM PDT, Jon Zingale  wrote:
>Fixing things,
>as far as I can tell, will require investment in the capability of the
>American people and the disruption of a program to produce good
>consumers.
>Short of that, I don't know what the next steps will need to be, but I
>suspect those steps will involve a good therapist.


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Merle Lefkoff]

Thanks for the video John.  The last authentic voice in the Presidency.
I'm proud to have called him my boss for a year and a mentor for many
more.  I too am gravely disappointed.

On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 2:15 PM Jon Zingale  wrote:

> Glen,
>
> I suppose it isn't really fapping  if
> one shows good brinkmanship :) The troubles our political institutions
> met during the 2016 election, via weaponized social media technologies,
> no doubt point to a serious vulnerability in our democratic process, and
> no doubt one that is being studied by more resourceful and intelligent
> people than I. IMO, the field was prepared long before the seeds of chaos
> and distrust were sown.
>
> Over the entirety of my life, and with the complicit consent of our (mostly
> boomer) citizens, a devious narrative took hold that the American people
> were not intelligent enough or capable enough to reason about the events
> of their world, much less govern themselves. This perspective is too often
> parroted as an axiom in political conversations, where one might say,
> "Yeah, but do you really think that Joe Smoe on the street can...". This
> cultural self-shaming strikes me as having a three-fold purpose:
>
> 1. to lull the participants of a democratic republic into sitting back, taking
> a load off, and letting someone else drive for a while. The responsibility
> of governing oneself is hard work and *you deserve a break **today*.
>
> 2. to invoke nation-wide Stockholm syndrome where individuals come to believe
> that since some abstract daddy or expert is better equipped to think
> about politics, it's better to leave the thinking to those abstractions 
> (Chomsky's
> commissar argument ).
>
> 3. to cultivate better consumers.
>
> Unfortunately, a democracy cannot function this way but it seemed to be Ok
> for a short time. The *career guys *functionally operated as *daddy *and
> we could cheer them on from the comfort of our television sets. In effect,
> politics became a spectator sport.
>
> As far as I can tell, this wave of disenfranchisement found purchase in a
> crucial transition period from Carter's administration into Regan's. 
> Hippie-cum-yuppies,
> in the face of the enduring hardships of the era: cold war, peak-oil,
> failure in Vietnam, the rise of international terrorism, crisis of
> confidence , etc... did what
> any raised on superhero and GI Joe comic-book loving American would do,
> they took the blue pill
> . Regan offered
> America a return to the *good times*, cultures of protest withered away,
> and soma was had by all.
>
> Abroad, neoliberalism (à la Regan, Thatcher, and Ayn Rand-loving Alan 
> Greenspan)
> became the dominating strategy for the west over developing nations.
> Leadership wrt democratic ideals and stewardship of our own republic was
> ceded to objectivists 
> believing in the cake of their own success bias. Meanwhile, at home, the
> public was weened from nutrient-rich information sources[!] and
> transitioned toward propaganda-driven rhetorical forms, emulating the
> successes of advertising culture, and through this shift, our sound-byte
> culture was quickened.
>
> What makes the actions to delegitimize our trusted institutions so insidious
> is that the critique isn't wrong. For a brief period in the '90s and
> leading up to the WTO/IMF protests in Seattle, political unrest was
> beginning to wake from its nearly two-decade-long slumber. Discontents
> (realizing the vanishing prospects for their own creation of wealth,
> imminent environmental collapse, and the wholesale exploitation of
> developing nations) formed grassroots movements to confront the 
> irresponsibility
> of Regan-era *good time* thinking. Well, at least until the unfortunate
> events of 9-11 epiphenomenologically nipped all movement in the bud, and
> ushered in an *era of terror*, and like a good family, the public banned
> together to support the suspension of even the most basic of civil
> liberties.
>
> When you say, "As I understand it, the attack was a successful use of *active
> measures*. The objective was to find *extant* rifts in US society and
> exploit them. This resulted in a sophisticated data science-driven attack
> on platforms via technology like Facebook", I sympathize and can only
> feel grave disappointment that this is the legacy we inherited. Fixing
> things, as far as I can tell, will require investment in the capability
> of the American people and the disruption of a program to produce good
> consumers. Short of that, I don't know what the next steps will need to
> be, but I suspect those steps will involve a good therapist.
>
> Jon
>
> [!] Paralleled almost symbolically by world-wide and aggressive campaigns
> to
> market substitute breastmilk
> 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Jon Zingale]

Glen,

I suppose it isn't really fapping  if one
shows good brinkmanship :) The troubles our political institutions met
during the 2016 election, via weaponized social media technologies, no
doubt point to a serious vulnerability in our democratic process, and no
doubt one that is being studied by more resourceful and intelligent people
than I. IMO, the field was prepared long before the seeds of chaos and
distrust were sown.

Over the entirety of my life, and with the complicit consent of our (mostly
boomer) citizens, a devious narrative took hold that the American people
were not intelligent enough or capable enough to reason about the events of
their world, much less govern themselves. This perspective is too often
parroted as an axiom in political conversations, where one might say,
"Yeah, but do you really think that Joe Smoe on the street can...". This
cultural self-shaming strikes me as having a three-fold purpose:

1. to lull the participants of a democratic republic into sitting back, taking
a load off, and letting someone else drive for a while. The responsibility
of governing oneself is hard work and *you deserve a break **today*.

2. to invoke nation-wide Stockholm syndrome where individuals come to believe
that since some abstract daddy or expert is better equipped to think about
politics, it's better to leave the thinking to those abstractions (Chomsky's
commissar argument ).

3. to cultivate better consumers.

Unfortunately, a democracy cannot function this way but it seemed to be Ok
for a short time. The *career guys *functionally operated as *daddy *and we
could cheer them on from the comfort of our television sets. In effect,
politics became a spectator sport.

As far as I can tell, this wave of disenfranchisement found purchase in a
crucial transition period from Carter's administration into Regan's.
Hippie-cum-yuppies,
in the face of the enduring hardships of the era: cold war, peak-oil,
failure in Vietnam, the rise of international terrorism, crisis of
confidence , etc... did what
any raised on superhero and GI Joe comic-book loving American would do,
they took the blue pill
. Regan offered
America a return to the *good times*, cultures of protest withered away,
and soma was had by all.

Abroad, neoliberalism (à la Regan, Thatcher, and Ayn Rand-loving Alan
Greenspan)
became the dominating strategy for the west over developing nations.
Leadership wrt democratic ideals and stewardship of our own republic was
ceded to objectivists  believing
in the cake of their own success bias. Meanwhile, at home, the public was
weened from nutrient-rich information sources[!] and transitioned toward
propaganda-driven rhetorical forms, emulating the successes of advertising
culture, and through this shift, our sound-byte culture was quickened.

What makes the actions to delegitimize our trusted institutions so insidious
is that the critique isn't wrong. For a brief period in the '90s and
leading up to the WTO/IMF protests in Seattle, political unrest was
beginning to wake from its nearly two-decade-long slumber. Discontents
(realizing the vanishing prospects for their own creation of wealth,
imminent environmental collapse, and the wholesale exploitation of
developing nations) formed grassroots movements to confront the
irresponsibility
of Regan-era *good time* thinking. Well, at least until the unfortunate
events of 9-11 epiphenomenologically nipped all movement in the bud, and
ushered in an *era of terror*, and like a good family, the public banned
together to support the suspension of even the most basic of civil
liberties.

When you say, "As I understand it, the attack was a successful use of *active
measures*. The objective was to find *extant* rifts in US society and
exploit them. This resulted in a sophisticated data science-driven attack
on platforms via technology like Facebook", I sympathize and can only feel
grave disappointment that this is the legacy we inherited. Fixing things,
as far as I can tell, will require investment in the capability of the
American people and the disruption of a program to produce good consumers.
Short of that, I don't know what the next steps will need to be, but I
suspect those steps will involve a good therapist.

Jon

[!] Paralleled almost symbolically by world-wide and aggressive campaigns to
market substitute breastmilk

.
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

As I understand it, the attack was a successful use of "active measures". The objective 
was to find *extant* rifts in US society and exploit them. This resulted in a sophisticated data 
science driven attack on platforms via technology like Facebook. There are 2 layers to it: 1) the 
primary objective is to sow distrust in US institutions (including voting) and "career 
politicians" and 2) secondarily sow chaos simply to reduce the efficiency of US institutions 
(including the state department's attempts at diplomacy and our military's attempts at whatever it 
is they do).

As the exploits are ongoing, any digital voting *security* must address this 
type of exploit, either directly or dovetailed with other mitigating efforts.


On 8/23/20 9:58 AM, jon zingale wrote:

Thank you. Would you please restate what 'type of exploitation' we saw in
2016? I will think about it this week and hopefully find time to address it,
my Sunday is already pretty backed up.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Thank you. Would you please restate what 'type of exploitation' we saw in
2016? I will think about it this week and hopefully find time to address it,
my Sunday is already pretty backed up.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

OK. I suppose we have the option of taking on a burden of going through your 
old posts and finding where you address the following: That a digital voting 
app runs the risk of exacerbating the type of exploitation we saw in 2016.

I've done that and you have *not* addressed that objection, which is why I 
raised it. If you feel you have addressed it, I would sincerely appreciate some 
help finding where you did so. A simple restatement of how you mitigate that 
risk would be fine. There's no need for spelunking.

On 8/23/20 9:21 AM, jon zingale wrote:

Glen (and hopefully not one of your bots >8^D),

The 'code' exists as the writings I have already produced. You are making
claims that are not in the writing. Since it has already been written once,
I don't really wish to re-write. Even this sidebar of bickering in-post is
lame. I am simply not suggesting things that you attribute to me, which I
find frustrating to see propagated over the forum. I feel that you are using
an image of me (or my writing) to push some thoughts you have that are
tangentially related to my posts. If that is the case, I suppose I can
adjust. But to those that respond to the image, I wish to disambiguate my
posts from it.


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Glen (and hopefully not one of your bots >8^D),

The 'code' exists as the writings I have already produced. You are making
claims that are not in the writing. Since it has already been written once,
I don't really wish to re-write. Even this sidebar of bickering in-post is
lame. I am simply not suggesting things that you attribute to me, which I
find frustrating to see propagated over the forum. I feel that you are using
an image of me (or my writing) to push some thoughts you have that are
tangentially related to my posts. If that is the case, I suppose I can
adjust. But to those that respond to the image, I wish to disambiguate my
posts from it.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Sorry. Where is your code for this digital voting app? I missed the link.

On 8/23/20 9:10 AM, jon zingale wrote:

I can see that you are in a bad mood. Again, I have addressed these issues
in writing already. To take a play from your book: READ THE CODE!



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Glen,

I can see that you are in a bad mood. Again, I have addressed these issues
in writing already. To take a play from your book: READ THE CODE!



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Hm. I'm not intentionally doing that. But if you're unwilling to address the 
concerns I'm trying to raise, then there's not much else I can do. Accusations of 
libel are a tad more serious than misattribution or strawman. Nice brinkmanship! 
>8^D

On 8/23/20 8:56 AM, jon zingale wrote:

It is a bit frustrating to see so many misattributions to my writing in your
posts. It is ok if you don't grok what I am saying, but please do not
misattribute. Many of your criticisms were already addressed in the writing.
For instance, I am not suggesting a homogenized replacement of the current
voting system. There are many other misattributions and really I don't have
the time to keep up with the libel. To the extent that you are disagreeing
with an abstracted model of me in your own mind, carry on.


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Glen,

It is a bit frustrating to see so many misattributions to my writing in your
posts. It is ok if you don't grok what I am saying, but please do not
misattribute. Many of your criticisms were already addressed in the writing.
For instance, I am not suggesting a homogenized replacement of the current
voting system. There are many other misattributions and really I don't have
the time to keep up with the libel. To the extent that you are disagreeing
with an abstracted model of me in your own mind, carry on.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Re mismatched expectations with voting and representation versus liberal use of 
metaphor: If you agree that too much focus on metaphor *is* too much focus on 
the tool, then you should agree that a focus on digital voting is treating the 
symptom, not the cause. And that implies this effort of Jon's is at best 
premature, at worst harmful distraction.

Re ensemble studies: I agree but would take it a notch further. One of the 
flaws in most digital voting ideas is the homogenization of the tool set. 
Similar to the first-past-the-post issue, which leads to exploitability, is the 
embedding of fragility through critical infrastructure. We see this a lot with 
the Def Con red teaming ... or in old school terms, the hegemony of Windows. We 
see it in the immune system and work like Forrest's, as well as ecology. We 
also see it in Facebook and other social media's tendency to exacerbate 
extremism. Homogeneity causes fragility. One inference we can make is that the 
popular vote, in first-past-the-post systems, is already fragile under our 
diverse cumulative counting systems. Homogenize that counting system and you'll 
make it even more fragile. I.e. Jon's agenda increases exploitability and 
fragility.

Re refactoring "Isn't this what refactoring is about?": Refactoring (usually) 
increases fragility, because it homes in on a small set of aspects or use cases. It's 
akin to database normalization. My point was that the more cruft you insert between the 
voter and representative, the more *gamable* the system. The *diversity* (heterogeneity, 
uncertainty, variation, entropy) of the paths/aspects through the systems, however, does 
increase robustness. So, there's a qualitative difference between *what type* of 
technology you insert.

The different ensemble studies in absentee voting, vote integrity methods, etc. 
provide different exploits a gamer might choose. And if we implement Jon's 
agenda of *nationalizing*, unifying, a vote counting method, then we are 
(essentially) refactoring the process, normalizing the process, homing in on a 
single, homogenous, way of doing things. In either case, diverse tech or 
normalized tech, you increase exploitability. In the former, you lower 
fragility. In the latter, you increase fragility.

Re gamability of parliamentary systems: Yes, I agree. They can be gamed, but I 
think they're more robust against simple gaming tricks like what 
Trump/Bannon/Kushner/Russia pulled off in 2016, which consists primarily of 
exploiting our first-past-the-post Dem/Rep, Lib/Con, Us/Them dichotomies. The 
UK is a more interesting example with Brexit and the spoofing/lying they had to 
do to get that to happen. What I'd like to see Biden do is start an initiative 
to plug the holes Trump et al exploited. But I doubt it'll happen. We're 
hoodwinked into thinking about the tools and won't be able to think about the 
deeper issues those tools are meant to help with.

Re provoking violence: Agreed again. I'm a big fan of Frantz Fannon. But that's 
as far as I go toward political violence. If you *must* engage in it for some 
sort of catharsis, then we should all tolerate it as best we can. But if you 
engage in it simply because of the rush/giggles it provides, then you're part 
of the problem.


On 8/22/20 11:48 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

I do agree on this, even though (because) I resemble that
description...   "when you are a navel gazer, everything looks like lint"?


Yes, this seems to be the "Hard Problem" of real-world "collective *",
and in fact I don't think studying the maps is enough in the sense that
I believe we need to *generate* a lot of these maps *in the real world*
which is why I'm a fan of the seeming disorder, for example, in global
(and even national) pandemic response.   It is the real-world
realization of *ensemble studies* crossed with the ideal of  the
"halting problem"?   The only (or reasonably efficient) way to answer
the problem of "Life the Universe and Everything" is to let it play out,
even if we understand in advance that the Eigenvalue is '42'.

I agree with the general sentiment.  Patches on top of patches on top of
patches does not yield a more robust system... at best, it circumvents
the last or most egregious breach/abuse.     This is what refactoring is
all about?   In a more general sense, what  paradigm shifts are all
about.
> Having recently (re)watched Turn; Washington's Spies and John Adams, and
reading "Team of Rivals" (Goodwin's biography of Lincoln starting
decades before his presidency and following his frienemies and
coopetitors through the time) with Mary, I have a new appreciation for
how hard those people worked *and* how flawed many of them were, and how
flawed the processes involved.   It both makes me much more appreciative
of the result and simultaneously understand how "Sacred" it isn't.   My
friends in UK and OZ would all tell me that *their* Parliamentary System
is/has-been gamed badly also.   But I find the accomodation of 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

> Re mismatched expectations with voting and representation versus
> liberal use of metaphor: yes, they are strongly related. My impulse is
> to object slightly and say that I'm a big fan of metaphor. But I'm not
> a big fan of constant reflection on our (ubiquitous) metaphors. It's
> analysis paralysis ... or navel gazing. It's human to see *through*
> the metaphor, as a tool, to it's target and constant focus on the tool
> is debilitating ... similar to arguing about word definitions.
I do agree on this, even though (because) I resemble that
description...   "when you are a navel gazer, everything looks like lint"?
> Re personal vs political position: yes, I feel the same way you do in
> wondering if/how my individual *can* possibilities help construct the
> world I *want* to see. This is another form of (forward) map from
> individual to collective. We see lots of posturing about how some one
> person thinks they know how that map works (e.g. individualists
> claiming it doesn't work at all, socialists claiming all their
> favorite examples demonstrate how it should work, technologists
> claiming "if you build it they will come", etc.). I tend to push back
> and ask that we study the map(s) before making such claims.
Yes, this seems to be the "Hard Problem" of real-world "collective *",
and in fact I don't think studying the maps is enough in the sense that
I believe we need to *generate* a lot of these maps *in the real world*
which is why I'm a fan of the seeming disorder, for example, in global
(and even national) pandemic response.   It is the real-world
realization of *ensemble studies* crossed with the ideal of  the
"halting problem"?   The only (or reasonably efficient) way to answer
the problem of "Life the Universe and Everything" is to let it play out,
even if we understand in advance that the Eigenvalue is '42'.
> Re Parscale/Bannon gaming: Exactly. The more our representation
> depends on first-past-the-post, and the more technology we insert in
> between the humans being represented and the humans doing the
> representing, the more *gamable* the system.
I agree with the general sentiment.  Patches on top of patches on top of
patches does not yield a more robust system... at best, it circumvents
the last or most egregious breach/abuse.     This is what refactoring is
all about?   In a more general sense, what  paradigm shifts are all
about.  
> Re what are we trying to achieve with our representation?: I don't
> know. It would be *great* if we could ask that of the people,
> everyone, homeless and wealthy alike, in such a well-formed way that
> their answers would parse and compose. 

That is what a "National Conversation" should look like, and what
primaries/debates/elections *might used to have* served.   I felt *I*
had a little bit of that during the short-circuited Democratic
Primaries...  but would like more.  

> But I doubt we can. That question and its forms co-evolves with the
> answers. 
Yup...
> And that coevolutionary, wandering, implicit set of objectives argues,
> again, for a more robust and spread out representation. I.e. a
> parliamentary system which allows the wings and extremes to
> participate in the government helps ask good questions and helps
> provide parsable and compositional answers. A ranked choice voting
> scheme helps formulate the questions and answers. The electoral
> college (and Senate/House structure) was a (failed) attempt to do
> that, too, I think.

Having recently (re)watched Turn; Washington's Spies and John Adams, and
reading "Team of Rivals" (Goodwin's biography of Lincoln starting
decades before his presidency and following his frienemies and
coopetitors through the time) with Mary, I have a new appreciation for
how hard those people worked *and* how flawed many of them were, and how
flawed the processes involved.   It both makes me much more appreciative
of the result and simultaneously understand how "Sacred" it isn't.   My
friends in UK and OZ would all tell me that *their* Parliamentary System
is/has-been gamed badly also.   But I find the accomodation of factions
and "wandering" among various semi-stable (e.g Lagrange) points a step
above.

I believe that Trump's significant contribution has been to show us how
gamed and gameable our current system has become.  He said he was going
to "drain the swamps and eject the alligators", I claim he simply took
control of the levies and gates, thus "managing the swamps", introduced
his own nest of Crocodiles (who he seems not to even recognize when they
get hauled out of the swamp and into court/prison) and then presided
over the ever-more-toxic-miasmic-and-dangerous result as the Lord of the
Flies that he is.

>
> I *love* the idea of the paintball gun. But it does sound a bit like
> suicide ... suicide by gun nut.

Yah... *one* of the many reasons for not doing it, though I suspect a
well practiced paintballer (not me) could run circles around a crowd of
open-carry militia nuts, decorating 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Re mismatched expectations with voting and representation versus liberal use of 
metaphor: yes, they are strongly related. My impulse is to object slightly and 
say that I'm a big fan of metaphor. But I'm not a big fan of constant 
reflection on our (ubiquitous) metaphors. It's analysis paralysis ... or navel 
gazing. It's human to see *through* the metaphor, as a tool, to it's target and 
constant focus on the tool is debilitating ... similar to arguing about word 
definitions.

Re personal vs political position: yes, I feel the same way you do in wondering if/how my 
individual *can* possibilities help construct the world I *want* to see. This is another 
form of (forward) map from individual to collective. We see lots of posturing about how 
some one person thinks they know how that map works (e.g. individualists claiming it 
doesn't work at all, socialists claiming all their favorite examples demonstrate how it 
should work, technologists claiming "if you build it they will come", etc.). I 
tend to push back and ask that we study the map(s) before making such claims.

Re Parscale/Bannon gaming: Exactly. The more our representation depends on 
first-past-the-post, and the more technology we insert in between the humans 
being represented and the humans doing the representing, the more *gamable* the 
system.

Re what are we trying to achieve with our representation?: I don't know. It 
would be *great* if we could ask that of the people, everyone, homeless and 
wealthy alike, in such a well-formed way that their answers would parse and 
compose. But I doubt we can. That question and its forms co-evolves with the 
answers. And that coevolutionary, wandering, implicit set of objectives argues, 
again, for a more robust and spread out representation. I.e. a parliamentary 
system which allows the wings and extremes to participate in the government 
helps ask good questions and helps provide parsable and compositional answers. 
A ranked choice voting scheme helps formulate the questions and answers. The 
electoral college (and Senate/House structure) was a (failed) attempt to do 
that, too, I think. The reason I think a steady re-org of representation is 
necessary before digital vote tech is because these questions are not 
well-formed. If you don't understand the input, you won't understand the output.

I *love* the idea of the paintball gun. But it does sound a bit like suicide 
... suicide by gun nut.


On 8/21/20 1:10 PM, Steve Smith wrote:


On 8/21/20 9:58 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:


The problem is that we expect our representation to be, somehow,
faithful/accurate. We can see this in microcosm with the false
equivalence between household budgets and national economies (or in
comparing the USPS to a corporation, or in approval rates for our
representative vs Congress as a whole, or in thousands of other
individual vs collective contexts).

And I take this to be strongly related with your issue with metaphor...
metaphors can be used thoughtfully to help explain or understand one
system in terms of another, but they can also be used to *generate* or
*exploit* conflations for various purposes misaligned with understanding
or explanation.

As I've tried to exhibit re: guns, I am unabashedly two-faced.
Personally, I think anyone ought to be able to destroy the world.
Politically, socially, that's madness and we ought to ban handguns
entirely.

I appreciate this span.   I experience it more *generally* in the sense
that my extreme awareness of Libertarian ideals unto Anarchism is that I
can do anything I *can*.   But as you imply (I think), I *choose* to
live within the context of a culture where I have to constrain many of
the things I *could* do, as a participant in shaping the society/world I
want to live in. [...]

Any tool designed to accurately hone in on that tiny little wiggle in
the popular vote will continue this false equivalence between
individual and collective, increasing the us-vs-them tribalism that
produced Trump's win.

And in some way perhaps magnify it, or make it something the likes of
Parscale/Bannon could exploit into a (slim/faux but qualitatively
signifcant) win.


Voting and polling are simply symptoms. I'd welcome tools that target
the disease rather than making it worse. In the meantime, I'm with
Nick. Transparency means paper ballots and some human connection to
the tabulation and aggregation process. If Jon thinks that position
helps him understand how Republicans win elections, then it's useful
to go into a little more detail about the actual problem like I'm
trying to do, here.


And so, explicitly, can you elaborate yet more on this abstraction?
What I think you introduce (well) above is the conflation between the
personal/collective, private/public conceptions.  I could (as I often
do) riff on *my* apprehension of what that looks like or how it goes
wrong, but I would welcome your's and other's thoughts on this.  In
particular I'm interested on "just what is it" we are trying to 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

On 8/21/20 9:58 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:
> Hm. I want to confirm that this post is commentary and you're not
> expecting a response. 
I'm always *hoping for* responses, but don't usually expect that my
style or even content is something others care to or feel able to
respond to.  
> But maybe it's push-back for me to be *more* explicit about the
> problem? Just in case, I'll throw more words/gestures at it.
Yes, I definitely meant to invite that if not *expect* it.   And I
appreciate it.
> The problem is that we expect our representation to be, somehow,
> faithful/accurate. We can see this in microcosm with the false
> equivalence between household budgets and national economies (or in
> comparing the USPS to a corporation, or in approval rates for our
> representative vs Congress as a whole, or in thousands of other
> individual vs collective contexts).
And I take this to be strongly related with your issue with metaphor... 
metaphors can be used thoughtfully to help explain or understand one
system in terms of another, but they can also be used to *generate* or
*exploit* conflations for various purposes misaligned with understanding
or explanation. 
> As I've tried to exhibit re: guns, I am unabashedly two-faced.
> Personally, I think anyone ought to be able to destroy the world.
> Politically, socially, that's madness and we ought to ban handguns
> entirely.
I appreciate this span.   I experience it more *generally* in the sense
that my extreme awareness of Libertarian ideals unto Anarchism is that I
can do anything I *can*.   But as you imply (I think), I *choose* to
live within the context of a culture where I have to constrain many of
the things I *could* do, as a participant in shaping the society/world I
want to live in.   I *want* to live in a world where there are very few
people suffering acutely from any of the implied needs in what I've
referred to as neo-Maslowian...    I don't want to be deluded into
thinking that my simple acts of commission/omission actually directly
*cause* the world to be a better place, but I also think it is a
delusion that I can operate acutely *counter* to the ways of the world I
want to live in and still expect it to manifest in that way.  In your
example, I believe that by owning, carrying, brandishing firearms I help
to create a world where my only sense of security is likely to come from
owning, carrying, and brandishing more and better firearms.  So I don't
and live with the paradox that *others* do choose that path, and thereby
have the opportunity to impress-by-force on me and mine with those in
ways that might be blunted if *I* chose their path as well.   My house
could become the sight of a  national news-headline-worthy firefight
with friends, neighbors, criminals, law enforcement, military, etc...
depending on the scenario.
> As the Carter paper on Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology tries to
> tease out, fidelity/accuracy in representation is a huge problem, one
> exhibited across all scales and domains (tech included). Clinton
> famously demonstrated *she* understands the difference when she
> expressed that she has different private vs public positions about
> Wall Street. Of course! We all should have individual vs. social
> distinctions. The problem is the map (or lack thereof) between them.
>
> We can even use the virus and the fact that personal psyches have
> trouble with large numbers, exponential growth and statistics. E.g.
> that everyone was surprised by how "wrong" the polls were about
> Clinton being X% likely to win.
>
> Any tool designed to accurately hone in on that tiny little wiggle in
> the popular vote will continue this false equivalence between
> individual and collective, increasing the us-vs-them tribalism that
> produced Trump's win.
And in some way perhaps magnify it, or make it something the likes of
Parscale/Bannon could exploit into a (slim/faux but qualitatively
signifcant) win.
> Voting and polling are simply symptoms. I'd welcome tools that target
> the disease rather than making it worse. In the meantime, I'm with
> Nick. Transparency means paper ballots and some human connection to
> the tabulation and aggregation process. If Jon thinks that position
> helps him understand how Republicans win elections, then it's useful
> to go into a little more detail about the actual problem like I'm
> trying to do, here.

And so, explicitly, can you elaborate yet more on this abstraction? 
What I think you introduce (well) above is the conflation between the
personal/collective, private/public conceptions.  I could (as I often
do) riff on *my* apprehension of what that looks like or how it goes
wrong, but I would welcome your's and other's thoughts on this.  In
particular I'm interested on "just what is it" we are trying to achieve
with our representative democracy and how well are we and where might
there be room for improvement?

Mary and I have been discussing the details of how (mechanically) we
will participate in this November 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Hm. I want to confirm that this post is commentary and you're not expecting a 
response. But maybe it's push-back for me to be *more* explicit about the 
problem? Just in case, I'll throw more words/gestures at it.

The problem is that we expect our representation to be, somehow, 
faithful/accurate. We can see this in microcosm with the false equivalence 
between household budgets and national economies (or in comparing the USPS to a 
corporation, or in approval rates for our representative vs Congress as a 
whole, or in thousands of other individual vs collective contexts). As I've 
tried to exhibit re: guns, I am unabashedly two-faced. Personally, I think 
anyone ought to be able to destroy the world. Politically, socially, that's 
madness and we ought to ban handguns entirely. As the Carter paper on 
Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology tries to tease out, fidelity/accuracy in 
representation is a huge problem, one exhibited across all scales and domains 
(tech included). Clinton famously demonstrated *she* understands the difference 
when she expressed that she has different private vs public positions about 
Wall Street. Of course! We all should have individual vs. social distinctions. 
The problem is the map (or lack thereof) between them.

We can even use the virus and the fact that personal psyches have trouble with large 
numbers, exponential growth and statistics. E.g. that everyone was surprised by how 
"wrong" the polls were about Clinton being X% likely to win.

Any tool designed to accurately hone in on that tiny little wiggle in the 
popular vote will continue this false equivalence between individual and 
collective, increasing the us-vs-them tribalism that produced Trump's win.

Voting and polling are simply symptoms. I'd welcome tools that target the 
disease rather than making it worse. In the meantime, I'm with Nick. 
Transparency means paper ballots and some human connection to the tabulation 
and aggregation process. If Jon thinks that position helps him understand how 
Republicans win elections, then it's useful to go into a little more detail 
about the actual problem like I'm trying to do, here.



On 8/21/20 8:20 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

Glen -

I know you tried to be explicit about what the core problems are, and I
am aligned with what you have gestured at and I don't expect you to have
been complete or detailed in this type of forum on such a huge subject.
Huge in depth, breadth, and perhaps more critical, import.  I am glad
you are carrying that torch to keep the playing/working field
illuminated well.

On the other hand, I *do* think the mechanisms involved in maintaining
coherence, etc.  must be considered and acted upon as possible/necessary
as well.  In the idiom of the moment, it isn't enough to declare that
the Postal Service is sacred and must be allowed/supported to be robust,
etc... but the staffing policies, the maintenance of physical mailboxes
and delivery trucks and sorting machines must also be attended to to
achieve the former.  To the extent that the latter is where the former
are encoded, I am sympathetic with those who are eager to "get to work"
on the specific mechanisms which *can* be worked on while the
abstractions of the moment feel hard/impossible to address.

I think this is an example of one of our ongoing threads of conversation
here... not just about the *spectrum* of concrete<->abstract, but the
need to keep the distinction in our awareness and to evaluate the
tensions between them and work them against (or more to the point, with)
one another.

My experience with systems analysis, engineering, development seem
relevant and mirrors what I suspect many here also use as their lens.
Networked Digital Computing is our hammer, so the aspects of our
Democracy which has purchase for a hammer becomes our nail.

I suspect that your own steeping in working on modeling biological
systems and using bio-inspired idioms for modeling non biological
systems gives you a better perspective on this tension than some of us
might have.   My own limited understanding of such things suggests that
this tension between mechanism/goal and intrinsic/extrinsic is key, and
I am hoping that the tension between Jon's focus (at this moment) on
mechanism/intrinsic (to the voting system) and your more big-picture
awareness of the constraints/goals of human endeavor is precisely the
kind of tension that allows our whole system to pivot from something
that might have worked (barely, sortof, for many/some of us) in the past
to something which can continue to meet the whole level of needs in some
as-yet-unspecified new-Maslowian hierarchy or complex.

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I know you tried to be explicit about what the core problems are, and I
am aligned with what you have gestured at and I don't expect you to have
been complete or detailed in this type of forum on such a huge subject. 
Huge in depth, breadth, and perhaps more critical, import.  I am glad
you are carrying that torch to keep the playing/working field
illuminated well.

On the other hand, I *do* think the mechanisms involved in maintaining
coherence, etc.  must be considered and acted upon as possible/necessary
as well.  In the idiom of the moment, it isn't enough to declare that
the Postal Service is sacred and must be allowed/supported to be robust,
etc... but the staffing policies, the maintenance of physical mailboxes
and delivery trucks and sorting machines must also be attended to to
achieve the former.  To the extent that the latter is where the former
are encoded, I am sympathetic with those who are eager to "get to work"
on the specific mechanisms which *can* be worked on while the
abstractions of the moment feel hard/impossible to address.

I think this is an example of one of our ongoing threads of conversation
here... not just about the *spectrum* of concrete<->abstract, but the
need to keep the distinction in our awareness and to evaluate the
tensions between them and work them against (or more to the point, with)
one another.  

My experience with systems analysis, engineering, development seem
relevant and mirrors what I suspect many here also use as their lens. 
Networked Digital Computing is our hammer, so the aspects of our
Democracy which has purchase for a hammer becomes our nail. 

I suspect that your own steeping in working on modeling biological
systems and using bio-inspired idioms for modeling non biological
systems gives you a better perspective on this tension than some of us
might have.   My own limited understanding of such things suggests that
this tension between mechanism/goal and intrinsic/extrinsic is key, and
I am hoping that the tension between Jon's focus (at this moment) on
mechanism/intrinsic (to the voting system) and your more big-picture
awareness of the constraints/goals of human endeavor is precisely the
kind of tension that allows our whole system to pivot from something
that might have worked (barely, sortof, for many/some of us) in the past
to something which can continue to meet the whole level of needs in some
as-yet-unspecified new-Maslowian hierarchy or complex.

- Steve

> There are other trials beside absentee voting. It's largely
> irrelevant, though, as is the patent. My point was that this focus on
> "digital" voting will do more harm than good. Of course, everyone is
> free to do harm, accidentally or on purpose. My only objective was to
> point out why these efforts will be harmful if the core problems
> aren't addressed first.
>
> On 8/21/20 7:46 AM, jon zingale wrote:
>> Absentee voting is a technology ushered in during (for military) and
>> after
>> the civil war (for civilians). I would not say that this *Tool
>> doesn't solve
>> problems*. If I were to substitute *absentee voting* in for tools and
>> technology in your post, I am not sure how you distinguish absentee
>> voting
>> generally from a digital application option. If I side-stepped your
>> post, it
>> is mostly so that I could stay with the fire I had started.
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

There are other trials beside absentee voting. It's largely irrelevant, though, as is the 
patent. My point was that this focus on "digital" voting will do more harm than 
good. Of course, everyone is free to do harm, accidentally or on purpose. My only 
objective was to point out why these efforts will be harmful if the core problems aren't 
addressed first.

On 8/21/20 7:46 AM, jon zingale wrote:

Absentee voting is a technology ushered in during (for military) and after
the civil war (for civilians). I would not say that this *Tool doesn't solve
problems*. If I were to substitute *absentee voting* in for tools and
technology in your post, I am not sure how you distinguish absentee voting
generally from a digital application option. If I side-stepped your post, it
is mostly so that I could stay with the fire I had started.


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Absentee voting is a technology ushered in during (for military) and after
the civil war (for civilians). I would not say that this *Tool doesn't solve
problems*. If I were to substitute *absentee voting* in for tools and
technology in your post, I am not sure how you distinguish absentee voting
generally from a digital application option. If I side-stepped your post, it
is mostly so that I could stay with the fire I had started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_States



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[glen∉ℂ]

Nah. That's simply false and cleverly ignores my post entirely. Tools don't 
solve problems. The typical Republican approach of throwing money at some vague 
problem doesn't work. What does work is to identify the problem and develop 
candidate solutions to it using the extant tools. Resources devoted to your 
nonexistent tool will make the problem worse. And even if your tool did exist 
[⛧], it would make the problem worse.

The problem is our mechanism for representative government. That mechanism lenses in, magnifies, the wiggle 
and defocuses the "bases" to the periphery. You see it every day. Just yesterday, there was a 
segment on some TV show asking the panel about whether or not Harris as VP will help sway the 
"undecided" ... the "independent". Pffft. It's nonsense. Your tool will do that, enable 
that, magnify that, if the actual problem isn't addressed *first*.

And it's a very difficult problem to solve. So the more time we spend on 
distracting nonsense like alternative voting technology, the *less* time we 
spend working on the actual problem(s) -- the electoral college, 
first-past-the-post, informed citizenry, gerrymandering, etc. It's not zero 
sum, of course, but there are opportunity costs. The first thing to do when you 
find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. The USPS, vote fraud nonsense is 
more eshatological Trump disinformation designed to distract us dorks from the 
real problem(s) while the gamers continue their game.


[⛧] There are *many* exploratory alternative voting efforts going on all over 
the country, all of which exhibit a panoply of security flaws.

On 8/20/20 7:53 AM, jon zingale wrote:

To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an alternative
voting technology option. While liberating elections from a winner-takes-all
modality is also something I want, it relates to a mostly orthogonal
problem. Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for polling stations, phone
apps, and snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the technology I am advocating
for will be here, what it will be when it arrives is what I wish to direct
concern toward. Witnessing an endless procession of squandered opportunity
is what I find so abhorrent. If the first actionable steps are being taken,
great, we now have the opportunity to take others.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

> Steve -
>
> Are you saying that DT tenukis every move? It appears to me that the Dems
> follow him around the board. While the latter is most certainly a beginner
> mistake, the former (if memory serves) was the sound advice given to a young
> Janice Kim from her father. idk, I will ask her next I see her.

I am too lame at Go to say much, but aping the idiom as best I can, I
think the *media* has followed him around the board and to the extent
the board we are playing on is much larger than the 19x19 standard grid,
he has gotten away with a Tenuki nearly every week/event.  

The analogy breaks down badly unless we can invoke some kind of
*collective* Go playing with team Trump and team McConnel and team
Limbaugh/Jones and team Bannon (see the news on him today?!) and
probably team Putin and Team Assange and ???  with, as you say Team
Pelosi, Team mainstream Media, and Team alternative Media (e.g. DN,
Guardian, etc.) "following them around the board".  

I'm looking forward with morbid fascination/trepidation at how the
configuration of the board is going to need/deserve "cleaning up" in a
few more months... I'm sure there will still be rearGuard defenses
skirmishing against those who DO try to clean it up, just as there must
have been in all the failed Trump enterprises (Steaks, University,
Casino, ... ) and now the myriad schemes he's started/aborted/abandoned
these last 3.x years from the White House.

I hope Biden/Harris, and more to the point, the army of functionaries
(Cabinet staff, Department/Agency staff, etc.), look at what *those*
cleanup crews had to deal with... like the retreating Axis armies in
Europe WWII, it suspect there will be (metaphorical) undetonated
munitions everywhere if not outright mines set to destroy evidence and
slow down the Allies.

I also hope Biden/Harris and their other power-allies look more to
Mandela's or Havel's lead than to Stalin's or Putin's or Trump's in a
post-opposition nation.

Of course many here will (loudly or silently) decry my implied optimism
on the upcoming overthrow of "he who shall not be named".

- Steve

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Steve -

Are you saying that DT tenukis every move? It appears to me that the Dems
follow him around the board. While the latter is most certainly a beginner
mistake, the former (if memory serves) was the sound advice given to a young
Janice Kim from her father. idk, I will ask her next I see her.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

EricS -
> So it’s not for the US today, but the thing that put Scott Boorman on
> the map (and fairly quickly got him installed in Yale), was an attempt
> to be a bit systematic and disciplined, and commit to some specific
> interpretations, for Mao and the infludnence of Go on military
> strategy across much of Asia, and on the consequences for
> misunderstanding and non-sequitur responses in West/East conflict zones:
>
> https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Scott-Boorman/dp/0195014936

Excellent!  I shall add learning Japanese to learning Go to my bucket
list ...

or just reading:  https://www.amazon.com/Scott-Boorman/dp/0195014936


I like the book-blurb about the US thinking it was playing Chess when in
fact it was///Wei-Ch’i (also known as Go)/.   Back home, it looked to me
like the politicians were playing Checkers, expecting to sacrifice the
board of Pawns tactically to "win"  and many of us being fitted for our
"cannon fodder" Pawn-costumes were playing "hell NO, I won't GO" or
"hell YES! Ho Gung HO!", ending up as cannon-fodder (body-bag or
tarNfeather draft-dodger suit nonetheless.

This past 4 years has felt like a recurring nightmare game of
Tic-Tac-Toe even though we know the best outcome is a cat's-game unless
your opponent makes a stupid mistake, but then letting said opponent
(DT) flip the board every time he's about to lose (change the subject of
the headlines this cycle with an outrageous tweet/order/act).

Flipping Tables / (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ | Know Your Meme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe#Strategy


- SteveS

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[David Eric Smith]

So it’s not for the US today, but the thing that put Scott Boorman on the map 
(and fairly quickly got him installed in Yale), was an attempt to be a bit 
systematic and disciplined, and commit to some specific interpretations, for 
Mao and the infludnence of Go on military strategy across much of Asia, and on 
the consequences for misunderstanding and non-sequitur responses in West/East 
conflict zones:

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Scott-Boorman/dp/0195014936 


Eric



> On Aug 21, 2020, at 2:43 AM, Steve Smith  wrote:
> 
> Jon-
> 
> I would find it fascinating (if possibly/assuredly misleading) for someone 
> well-schooled in Go Strategy/Tactics and history to establish a running 
> commentary on the specific moves afoot in our (national/global) political 
> (socioeconomic) go-board.   
> 
> My last foray into Go beyond trying to learn to play casually 10 years ago 
> was during the 1983 CA conference in Los Alamos when there was a lot of 
> discussion of using CA to construct Chess/Checkers/Go playing programs.   
> 
> I don't remember (nor can find) any papers directly referencing the subject 
> at that time, and when I tried to follow up on the Go aspect (in1983), I got 
> sidetracked into Gosper's proto-Hashlife memoization CA conception... which 
> promised to support "seeding" such game-players with middle-and end-game 
> "gambits".   I don't even know if that is the right term and bashing through 
> GoogleSearches only leads me further astray down a multiscale foam of 
> white-rabbit warrens.
> 
> Some of the more interesting vestibules in the maze of rabbit-warrens:
> 
> Gambit Project: software tools for game theory 
> 
> Hashlife, memoization and entropy 
>  
> 
> AlphaGo 
> Go as Cellular Automata - xah lee 
> 
> Hexaganol Go - xah lee 
> 
> ...
> I am left wondering if some of the recent FriAM maunderings are not relevant. 
>First level Go strategy involves the tension between "connection and 
> separation" and literal vs virtual or potential versions of both which rhymes 
> slantly (I hear?) with the "cohesion/coupling" discussion, as well as the 
> "epiphenomenon" discussion and the more background/constant consideration of 
> "emergence".
> 
> I'm way over my TL;DR limit as usual, but I will tag on that my own throwdown 
> in CA is a (never realized) foray into an (k-1)^2 decomposition of space (vs 
> k-d/quad-oct-tree partitioning)..   the key to the concept is to maximize 
> redundancy and coverage of pattern space vs space-efficient decomposition.  I 
> believe it has a play in the generalization of Guerin's dual-field stuff, 
> especially in the context of the patch-turtle duality of Netlogo.But I'm 
> too busy wandering through the self-similar foamy white-rabbit warrens to do 
> more than make short stepwise motion in that direction every few years. 
> Which triggers another diversion into Glen's "diachronic" vs "episodic"...   
> trying to understand if there is a yet-more-general model of which this 
> distinction is a (useful but) degenerate form, explaining my (and other's) 
> propensity for rabbit-hole-diving, and (possibly) the long-term or 
> large-scale utility of same?
> 
> mumble/ramble
> 
> - Steve
> 
> On 8/19/20 11:07 PM, jon zingale wrote:
>> The current administration enjoys making *big moves* both in rhetoric
>> and action, all establishment without fortification. The 20th-century
>> weiqi master, Go Seigen, is known for a remarkable strategy that may
>> find an analog here. Go Seigen would often cede the biggest moves to his
>> opponent while playing in such a way as to introduce *imperfections of
>> shape* in the other's unsettled groups. Slowly, he would build thickness
>> around the board with which to harass, overwhelm, and ultimately defeat
>> his opponent.
>> 
>> 
>> 
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Huh, cool. Piqued my interest, I should probably order a copy :)



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Steve,

MAKIF'AT writes:
“Books are catnip – or porn, if you want to be vulgar about it - to me, and
if they’re in plain sight, well, I’m going to be looking at them.  I’m also
gonna hightail it out after the meeting and look up as many of the titles as
I can remember to see if they should go on my wishlist.  I’m a bibliophile,
and that’s what we do.”

I relate deeply. Thank you, Signore Eco. In another life, I would have loved
to be a librarian. When Margaret retired from her position as the SFI head
librarian, I asked her if I could be considered for the post. She reminded
me politely that I don't have a library science degree. The more unfortunate
reason, as far as I am concerned, is that I simply don't have the
temperament for it. I am hot-blooded through and through. A few years ago
the downtown branch of the Santa Fe public library notified me to return a
copy of Richard Hamming's 'Numerical Methods', a really nice hard-cover
Springer copy. I did and then waited for a day to check it back out again,
but alas it was gone, and not just checked out by another patron. The entire
math section disappeared! I went to the desk and asked about the book. The
math section was boxed up and sent to auction. They assured me that they
were to get new books soon. I asked for another copy of the book and they
were sad to inform me that it was too expensive for them to replace. One
month later, I returned to find that the math books had been replaced by
books about mathematicians. Surely they were just ignorant, us wizards read
such esoteric tomes and they cannot be responsible for knowing what it is we
want or need. I walked up to the checkout desk and asked if they were hiring
for a curation position, and they again sadly informed me that they were
not. I haven't returned since. Please, make no mistake, Alexandria is
burning.

As far as Go documentaries are concerned, have you checked out 'The
Surrounding Game'? A co-director of the film, Cole Pruitt, was finishing
up a post-doc at LANL when he and Will completed the film. Cole would join
us for the Saturday Santa Fe go club meetup at St. John's to play and he was
a pleasure to learn from (~3 dan?).

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surrounding_Game



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Jon -

Well said.  I often look at our collective (in different chunkings) in
terms of opportunities lost.   Evolution is intrinsically wasteful by
some measure, so it does not surprise me that from a
judgemental/discriminating/big-picture/hindsight perspective *virtually
everything that happens in human endeavor* seems incredibly wasteful.  
I spend (nearly) half of my energy boggled by this apprehension and
(nearly) the other half trying to refactor my perspectives of these
things so that they *don't* seem wasteful/squandered.   Looking for
"method in the madness" and then working the meta-problem of pruning a
variety of obviously delusional overfits to the data at hand.    I
recognize that many/most/all of my throwdowns/gurgitations here are lame
projections of the latter half.  

I especially appreciate the link to the PDF text of your Borges
reference.  I can rarely put my hands on the original paper texts I read
some of these things in due to multiple hashings of combining libraries,
owning a bookstore, living with a bibliovore ( voracious book/collage
artist), shelving/reshelving/boxing/storing elaborate excesses, etc. 
Here is someone else who has taken a whack at (or reflection on) one
aspect of the problem: Bibliophilia Obscura.


This particular Borges short reminds me particularly of Vonnegut and
perhaps Harrison Bergeron
, but then I suspect
Vonnegut was significantly influenced by Borges' abstractions. <...
tangent snipped ...>

Oh yeh, and you "can't grep paper" (even if my fragmented associative
memory also often fails to find the right search terms: e.g.
Franklin:faction).

On the topic of "wasteful decadence", I finished watching AlphaGo and
YouTube rolled me into the PBS documentary The Amazon Empire which I
suspect implicates us *all* in one way or another. <... yet another
tangent snipped... >

Carry on!

 - Steve


> Sure my tongue-was-in-cheek wrt redirecting 1/9 of the U.S military budget to
> fund solving this problem, maybe it does detract from my main point. Fixing
> the problem of wasteful decadence is also not on the docket for me this pass
> through. I feel a lot can be said about what a culture burns its resources
> on. Hell, if we must,  à la Ghostbusters, choose the form of the destroyer I
> choose the societal engine described in Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon"[£].
>
> To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an alternative
> voting technology option. While liberating elections from a winner-takes-all
> modality is also something I want, it relates to a mostly orthogonal
> problem. Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for polling stations, phone
> apps, and snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the technology I am advocating
> for will be here, what it will be when it arrives is what I wish to direct
> concern toward. Witnessing an endless procession of squandered opportunity
> is what I find so abhorrent. If the first actionable steps are being taken,
> great, we now have the opportunity to take others.
>
> [£] https://web.itu.edu.tr/~inceogl4/modernism/lotteryofbabylon.pdf
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Well stated Jon, Well pivoted Glen... 

I'd challenge us to go further and reconsider/rethink how "Democracy" in
all it's recognizable forms is only a weak attempt at achieving more
fundamental goals/constraints of ??? (fairness, egalatarianism,
inclusiveness, diversity, liberty, ???).   

We, of course, are a Democratic Republic (modulo electoral college,
gerrymandering, voter suppression, widespread disinformation, direct
voter fraud) rather than a direct Democracy.   Interesting the current
dominant (exclusive duopoly?)

Worst form of governance


Tyranny of the majority


Seems to reference our discussions of the canonical nearly-decomposable
hierarchy, cohesion and coupling between identity-groups or
special-interest-groups, etc.

I cannot put my hands/eyes on the Ben Franklin quote I remember from
reading his Autobiography (inherited from my Grandfather through my
Father who likely never read it) some 20 years ago.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography


A search yields no use of the term "faction" in the Pr. Gutenberg text
above...  I suspect he used another term which I transmogrified into
"faction", or maybe I made the whole thing up, but I remember him
offering a nice tension around the temporary aligning of factions to
respond to a given challenge followed by a dissolution of those factions
to allow for a re-alignment into new factions to meet new and different
challenges.  

Self-organization galore?

- Seize


On 8/20/20 3:31 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> The only plausible answer to this is the acceptance of a satisficing rule, a 
> tolerance for error/uncertainty. That's what allows us to trust the USPS, 
> which is simultaneously cursed by individuals on a regular basis, yet one of 
> the most trusted institutions in place. All this election integrity hooha 
> centers around quantitative confidence and perfection.
>
> But our first past the post system consistently tightens up our *intolerance* 
> for uncertainty/error. That's the change that needs to be made first. As long 
> as our elections are winner-takes-all and based on 50/50 thresholds, 
> technology can't help us. Technology will simply kick the can down the road, 
> leaving the main problem unaddressed. I.e. your billion dollar projects will 
> largely be a waste of money, perhaps resulting in a Star Wars quality spinoff 
> machine, but not solving the targeted objective.
>
> The first actionable steps are being taken. Ranked choice voting is steadily 
> being adopted. It's also *not* a panacea. But at least it targets the 
> disease, rather than the symptoms.
>
> On 8/19/20 10:06 PM, jon zingale wrote:
>> Eric,
>>
>> Yes, what are the next actionable steps? In an upstream post I wrote:
>>
>> "Maybe a little flippantly and without dragging this entire post into design
>> details, the voting app needs little more than a Facebook like-button, a
>> Redis
>> server, authentication, and a light-weight rest API. If the idea were to be
>> taken
>> seriously, such an app could be written starting now for an election in four
>> years. It could be tested and verified by a trusted agency, like the NSA."
>>
>> While the preceding quote effectively gets at the idea, I will further spill
>> e-ink in the hopes of saying something practical, but first... Given the
>> power
>> to do so, I might try redirecting a hundred billion dollars from next year's
>> military budget towards collaboration between big tech and government. The
>> acceptance criteria would include public access to the code and the platform
>> would be subjected to a week-long national hack-a-thon, complete with
>> outrageous
>> prizes and awards. Since this fantasy risks getting to far-out, let me reel
>> things
>> back a bit.
>>
>> Let me begin with a mission statement: Our goal is to introduce a trusted,
>> reliable and secure digital voting option for U.S. elections. Determining a
>> metric for success will require identifying: the scale of the project (city,
>> state, nation)[1], collaborators with diverse skill sets and talents[2], the
>> strengths and weaknesses of the current voting options[3], the
>> state-of-the-art
>> for digital application design[4].
>>
>> [1] Selecting an appropriate scale for the project will be crucial to the
>> adoption of the application. A full-blown application backed by industry and
>> government organizations (with lobbyists in D.C.) could easily find adoption
>> at
>> the national level. Since the sole collaborators maybe just you and I, we
>> may
>> wish to start small, targeting the city level. Planning for this latter
>> case, let's
>> be prepared to scale if excitement around the program builds. Perhaps
>> borrowing
>> from or explicitly using a crowd-sourcing model would be good, 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Ah yeah, "He not busy being born is busy dying..."




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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Steve,

I felt that the analogy was attractive. Ah, CA... This week I made real
progress on a long backburnered CA project of my own. A little over a decade
ago, I ran across this blog post on realizing cellular automata as comonadic
evaluation[☱]. Since then, I have wanted to generalize the result to higher
dimensions. While presently only a toy, I have finally written a working
model[☳]. As a pleasant corollary, I managed to learn quite a bit more about
connections on fiber bundles.

Go is such a wonderful game and I very much miss meeting up at the Violet
Crown for a game and a pint on Tuesday nights, especially during the summer
when we sit outside on the benches. I know of a couple of other go players
on the list, it would be cool to hear some additional voices on the matter.
I am very thankful to the NKH for making their matches available on
youTube[☷], some with subtitles.

Jon

[☱] http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/12/evaluating-cellular-automata-is.html
[☳]
https://github.com/jonzingale/Haskell/blob/master/blinky/blinky_image/Comonad.hs
[☷]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MObfCxOYOTQ=PLx0y1YBuwgxYkkicujlT2E1AfMkArTvx0



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Jon-

I would find it fascinating (if possibly/assuredly misleading) for
someone well-schooled in Go Strategy/Tactics and history to establish a
running commentary on the specific moves afoot in our (national/global)
political (socioeconomic) go-board.  

My last foray into Go beyond trying to learn to play casually 10 years
ago was during the 1983 CA conference in Los Alamos when there was a lot
of discussion of using CA to construct Chess/Checkers/Go playing
programs.  

I don't remember (nor can find) any papers directly referencing the
subject at that time, and when I tried to follow up on the Go aspect
(in1983), I got sidetracked into Gosper's proto-Hashlife memoization CA
conception... which promised to support "seeding" such game-players with
middle-and end-game "gambits".   I don't even know if that is the right
term and bashing through GoogleSearches only leads me further astray
down a multiscale foam of white-rabbit warrens.

Some of the more interesting vestibules in the maze of rabbit-warrens:

  * Gambit Project: software tools for game theory

  * Hashlife, memoization and entropy

  * AlphaGo 
  * Go as Cellular Automata - xah lee

  * Hexaganol Go - xah lee

  * ...

I am left wondering if some of the recent FriAM maunderings are not
relevant.    First level Go strategy involves the tension between
"connection and separation" and literal vs virtual or potential versions
of both which rhymes slantly (I hear?) with the "cohesion/coupling"
discussion, as well as the "epiphenomenon" discussion and the more
background/constant consideration of "emergence".

I'm way over my TL;DR limit as usual, but I will tag on that my own
throwdown in CA is a (never realized) foray into an (k-1)^2
decomposition of space (vs k-d/quad-oct-tree partitioning)..   the key
to the concept is to maximize redundancy and coverage of pattern space
vs space-efficient decomposition.  I believe it has a play in the
generalization of Guerin's dual-field stuff, especially in the context
of the patch-turtle duality of Netlogo.    But I'm too busy wandering
through the self-similar foamy white-rabbit warrens to do more than make
short stepwise motion in that direction every few years. Which
triggers another diversion into Glen's "diachronic" vs "episodic"...  
trying to understand if there is a yet-more-general model of which this
distinction is a (useful but) degenerate form, explaining my (and
other's) propensity for rabbit-hole-diving, and (possibly) the long-term
or large-scale utility of same?

mumble/ramble

- Steve

On 8/19/20 11:07 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> The current administration enjoys making *big moves* both in rhetoric
> and action, all establishment without fortification. The 20th-century
> weiqi master, Go Seigen, is known for a remarkable strategy that may
> find an analog here. Go Seigen would often cede the biggest moves to his
> opponent while playing in such a way as to introduce *imperfections of
> shape* in the other's unsettled groups. Slowly, he would build thickness
> around the board with which to harass, overwhelm, and ultimately defeat
> his opponent.
>
>
>
> --
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

You are helping me to understand how Republicans win elections. They hire the
data scientists and we give them tenure.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Down, White Fang!

I only meant that for we "citizens", a ballot has not been "counted" until
It has been passed among the hands of three octogenarians in the Town Hall
Of New Braintree Mass, and one has said, "one Biden" and the other has said
"one Biden" and the third has written it down, all while the Town Constable
slumbers in the corner.  I know that horse got out of the barn years ago,
but still, that's transparency where I come from.  Open source, open smorsh.


n

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
thompnicks...@gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2020 10:33 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

*My worry was that a voting system should not be mysterious*

Again, and hopefully for the last time on this post: I _do_ think this is
possible and I _am_ suggesting ideas that could be used as a starting point
(given that higher level wizards are prone to navel-gazing and collecting
social security). The continued use of *mystery* as an impossibility proof
remains infuriatingly inept. What I continue to hear from that perspective
is, "Let's all commit to the impossibility of knowing and just be done with
the enlightenment project already". The idea, for those that bother to read,
is to have a transparent and open-source development process. That some will
forever be illiterate is sad, but many many many will be capable of reading
the code. We already have the app, it is the USPS, so stop with the
impossibility proofs already.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Agreed.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

*My worry was that a voting system should not be mysterious*

Again, and hopefully for the last time on this post: I _do_ think this is
possible and I _am_ suggesting ideas that could be used as a starting point
(given that higher level wizards are prone to navel-gazing and collecting
social security). The continued use of *mystery* as an impossibility proof
remains infuriatingly inept. What I continue to hear from that perspective
is, "Let's all commit to the impossibility of knowing and just be done with
the enlightenment project already". The idea, for those that bother to read,
is to have a transparent and open-source development process. That some will
forever be illiterate is sad, but many many many will be capable of reading
the code. We already have the app, it is the USPS, so stop with the
impossibility proofs already.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

Nick,

*THE* technical solution would be to create an AI that would have access to all 
your voting records, everything you ever wrote or said about politics and 
policies, all your FRIAM correspondence, any social media you may have been 
tricked into using, your amazon purchasing records, all the professional 
societies you have belonged to, etc. etc. — a_nd have it simply vote for you_.

davew

On Thu, Aug 20, 2020, at 10:03 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Jon, 
> 
> In my balmy way, I took you entirely seriously.  During the whole ACA 
> debacle, when it looked like programming ineptitude was going to bring 
> the whole health system down, You Wizards (and I use the word loosely 
> ... the word "You", that is) declared that you could have designed a 
> better system to allocate people to health insurers in a weekend.   So, 
> I thought, the Wizards are getting the jump on it, this time.  They are 
> going to get together for a weekend and design a national voting system 
> for 2024.  What a wonderful thing!  They will make a s-load of a lot of 
> money and the country will be the better for it.  Perfect!  I did have 
> one worry, of course.  My worry was that a voting system should not be 
> mysterious.  And since what Wizards do is always mysterious to the rest 
> of us (we "citizens",  as Owen used to say), that was definitely going 
> to be a "roll-out" problem.  
> 
> Nick 
> 
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2020 8:54 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!
> 
> Sure my tongue-was-in-cheek wrt redirecting 1/9 of the U.S military 
> budget to fund solving this problem, maybe it does detract from my main 
> point. Fixing the problem of wasteful decadence is also not on the 
> docket for me this pass through. I feel a lot can be said about what a 
> culture burns its resources on. Hell, if we must,  à la Ghostbusters, 
> choose the form of the destroyer I choose the societal engine described 
> in Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon"[£].
> 
> To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an 
> alternative voting technology option. While liberating elections from a 
> winner-takes-all modality is also something I want, it relates to a 
> mostly orthogonal problem. Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for 
> polling stations, phone apps, and snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the 
> technology I am advocating for will be here, what it will be when it 
> arrives is what I wish to direct concern toward. Witnessing an endless 
> procession of squandered opportunity is what I find so abhorrent. If 
> the first actionable steps are being taken, great, we now have the 
> opportunity to take others.
> 
> [£] https://web.itu.edu.tr/~inceogl4/modernism/lotteryofbabylon.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> --
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Jon, 

In my balmy way, I took you entirely seriously.  During the whole ACA debacle, 
when it looked like programming ineptitude was going to bring the whole health 
system down, You Wizards (and I use the word loosely ... the word "You", that 
is) declared that you could have designed a better system to allocate people to 
health insurers in a weekend.   So, I thought, the Wizards are getting the jump 
on it, this time.  They are going to get together for a weekend and design a 
national voting system for 2024.  What a wonderful thing!  They will make a 
s-load of a lot of money and the country will be the better for it.  Perfect!  
I did have one worry, of course.  My worry was that a voting system should not 
be mysterious.  And since what Wizards do is always mysterious to the rest of 
us (we "citizens",  as Owen used to say), that was definitely going to be a 
"roll-out" problem.  

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
thompnicks...@gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2020 8:54 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

Sure my tongue-was-in-cheek wrt redirecting 1/9 of the U.S military budget to 
fund solving this problem, maybe it does detract from my main point. Fixing the 
problem of wasteful decadence is also not on the docket for me this pass 
through. I feel a lot can be said about what a culture burns its resources on. 
Hell, if we must,  à la Ghostbusters, choose the form of the destroyer I choose 
the societal engine described in Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon"[£].

To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an alternative 
voting technology option. While liberating elections from a winner-takes-all 
modality is also something I want, it relates to a mostly orthogonal problem. 
Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for polling stations, phone apps, and 
snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the technology I am advocating for will be 
here, what it will be when it arrives is what I wish to direct concern toward. 
Witnessing an endless procession of squandered opportunity is what I find so 
abhorrent. If the first actionable steps are being taken, great, we now have 
the opportunity to take others.

[£] https://web.itu.edu.tr/~inceogl4/modernism/lotteryofbabylon.pdf



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Sure my tongue-was-in-cheek wrt redirecting 1/9 of the U.S military budget to
fund solving this problem, maybe it does detract from my main point. Fixing
the problem of wasteful decadence is also not on the docket for me this pass
through. I feel a lot can be said about what a culture burns its resources
on. Hell, if we must,  à la Ghostbusters, choose the form of the destroyer I
choose the societal engine described in Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon"[£].

To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an alternative
voting technology option. While liberating elections from a winner-takes-all
modality is also something I want, it relates to a mostly orthogonal
problem. Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for polling stations, phone
apps, and snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the technology I am advocating
for will be here, what it will be when it arrives is what I wish to direct
concern toward. Witnessing an endless procession of squandered opportunity
is what I find so abhorrent. If the first actionable steps are being taken,
great, we now have the opportunity to take others.

[£] https://web.itu.edu.tr/~inceogl4/modernism/lotteryofbabylon.pdf



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

The only plausible answer to this is the acceptance of a satisficing rule, a 
tolerance for error/uncertainty. That's what allows us to trust the USPS, which 
is simultaneously cursed by individuals on a regular basis, yet one of the most 
trusted institutions in place. All this election integrity hooha centers around 
quantitative confidence and perfection.

But our first past the post system consistently tightens up our *intolerance* 
for uncertainty/error. That's the change that needs to be made first. As long 
as our elections are winner-takes-all and based on 50/50 thresholds, technology 
can't help us. Technology will simply kick the can down the road, leaving the 
main problem unaddressed. I.e. your billion dollar projects will largely be a 
waste of money, perhaps resulting in a Star Wars quality spinoff machine, but 
not solving the targeted objective.

The first actionable steps are being taken. Ranked choice voting is steadily 
being adopted. It's also *not* a panacea. But at least it targets the disease, 
rather than the symptoms.

On 8/19/20 10:06 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> Eric,
> 
> Yes, what are the next actionable steps? In an upstream post I wrote:
> 
> "Maybe a little flippantly and without dragging this entire post into design
> details, the voting app needs little more than a Facebook like-button, a
> Redis
> server, authentication, and a light-weight rest API. If the idea were to be
> taken
> seriously, such an app could be written starting now for an election in four
> years. It could be tested and verified by a trusted agency, like the NSA."
> 
> While the preceding quote effectively gets at the idea, I will further spill
> e-ink in the hopes of saying something practical, but first... Given the
> power
> to do so, I might try redirecting a hundred billion dollars from next year's
> military budget towards collaboration between big tech and government. The
> acceptance criteria would include public access to the code and the platform
> would be subjected to a week-long national hack-a-thon, complete with
> outrageous
> prizes and awards. Since this fantasy risks getting to far-out, let me reel
> things
> back a bit.
> 
> Let me begin with a mission statement: Our goal is to introduce a trusted,
> reliable and secure digital voting option for U.S. elections. Determining a
> metric for success will require identifying: the scale of the project (city,
> state, nation)[1], collaborators with diverse skill sets and talents[2], the
> strengths and weaknesses of the current voting options[3], the
> state-of-the-art
> for digital application design[4].
> 
> [1] Selecting an appropriate scale for the project will be crucial to the
> adoption of the application. A full-blown application backed by industry and
> government organizations (with lobbyists in D.C.) could easily find adoption
> at
> the national level. Since the sole collaborators maybe just you and I, we
> may
> wish to start small, targeting the city level. Planning for this latter
> case, let's
> be prepared to scale if excitement around the program builds. Perhaps
> borrowing
> from or explicitly using a crowd-sourcing model would be good, extending to
> the
> state or national level manifesting as explicit *stretch goals*. Getting one
> or
> a few city contracts for our application may be just profitable enough to
> bootstrap the process.
> 
> [2] The program will benefit greatly from the help of a diverse talent pool.
> We will need to design, build, test, and maintain the application. I
> advocate
> for seeking out individuals versed in building scalable critical
> applications
> and encouraging a transparent open-source development process. I foresee a
> role
> for trolls and white-hat hackers as it will be important to stress test and
> subject the application to *our worst*. We will need philosophers, critics,
> and
> trouble-finders all along the development process. That said, impossibility
> *proofs* ought to be taken with a grain of salt. We will need to lobby,
> campaign,
> and rouse excitement for the adoption of our application. It would be good
> to
> inspire competition because another group may just do it better, and
> ultimately
> this is what we want. It will be good to attract individuals that have a
> history
> with and have succeeded in: affecting policy, building grassroots movements,
> and
> selling the moon. It might be good to work with a business incubator or
> apply for
> an SBIR grant.
> 
> [3] You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to
> run
> faster than the guy next to you. By studying the integrity of the voting
> systems
> presently in use, we can know where to set the bar for success. For
> instance,
> that the meaning of the postal service is being over-loaded in the 2020
> election
> strikes me as a notable risk and a potential point of failure. Our
> application
> should be expected to do *just one thing*, and ideally the projects future
> funding will be 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

The current administration enjoys making *big moves* both in rhetoric
and action, all establishment without fortification. The 20th-century
weiqi master, Go Seigen, is known for a remarkable strategy that may
find an analog here. Go Seigen would often cede the biggest moves to his
opponent while playing in such a way as to introduce *imperfections of
shape* in the other's unsettled groups. Slowly, he would build thickness
around the board with which to harass, overwhelm, and ultimately defeat
his opponent.



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Eric,

Yes, what are the next actionable steps? In an upstream post I wrote:

"Maybe a little flippantly and without dragging this entire post into design
details, the voting app needs little more than a Facebook like-button, a
Redis
server, authentication, and a light-weight rest API. If the idea were to be
taken
seriously, such an app could be written starting now for an election in four
years. It could be tested and verified by a trusted agency, like the NSA."

While the preceding quote effectively gets at the idea, I will further spill
e-ink in the hopes of saying something practical, but first... Given the
power
to do so, I might try redirecting a hundred billion dollars from next year's
military budget towards collaboration between big tech and government. The
acceptance criteria would include public access to the code and the platform
would be subjected to a week-long national hack-a-thon, complete with
outrageous
prizes and awards. Since this fantasy risks getting to far-out, let me reel
things
back a bit.

Let me begin with a mission statement: Our goal is to introduce a trusted,
reliable and secure digital voting option for U.S. elections. Determining a
metric for success will require identifying: the scale of the project (city,
state, nation)[1], collaborators with diverse skill sets and talents[2], the
strengths and weaknesses of the current voting options[3], the
state-of-the-art
for digital application design[4].

[1] Selecting an appropriate scale for the project will be crucial to the
adoption of the application. A full-blown application backed by industry and
government organizations (with lobbyists in D.C.) could easily find adoption
at
the national level. Since the sole collaborators maybe just you and I, we
may
wish to start small, targeting the city level. Planning for this latter
case, let's
be prepared to scale if excitement around the program builds. Perhaps
borrowing
from or explicitly using a crowd-sourcing model would be good, extending to
the
state or national level manifesting as explicit *stretch goals*. Getting one
or
a few city contracts for our application may be just profitable enough to
bootstrap the process.

[2] The program will benefit greatly from the help of a diverse talent pool.
We will need to design, build, test, and maintain the application. I
advocate
for seeking out individuals versed in building scalable critical
applications
and encouraging a transparent open-source development process. I foresee a
role
for trolls and white-hat hackers as it will be important to stress test and
subject the application to *our worst*. We will need philosophers, critics,
and
trouble-finders all along the development process. That said, impossibility
*proofs* ought to be taken with a grain of salt. We will need to lobby,
campaign,
and rouse excitement for the adoption of our application. It would be good
to
inspire competition because another group may just do it better, and
ultimately
this is what we want. It will be good to attract individuals that have a
history
with and have succeeded in: affecting policy, building grassroots movements,
and
selling the moon. It might be good to work with a business incubator or
apply for
an SBIR grant.

[3] You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to
run
faster than the guy next to you. By studying the integrity of the voting
systems
presently in use, we can know where to set the bar for success. For
instance,
that the meaning of the postal service is being over-loaded in the 2020
election
strikes me as a notable risk and a potential point of failure. Our
application
should be expected to do *just one thing*, and ideally the projects future
funding will be promised independent of political influence.

[4] As mentioned in the upstream posts, large scale web-based applications
are
here: the FBI-Apple encryption dispute, 20M concurrent Steam users, 1-click
shopping, etc... Our application doesn't need to be very fancy and it would
be
good to avoid failing like the Iowa caucus. We don't need a *big reveal* on
election night and then to impress the world as it flies along flawlessly.
The
opposite is needed. By the time the application is in production, it should
be
road-worn and rugged, the code probed and debated thoroughly on stack
overflow
and subreddits. This will not be the time or place for proprietary and
opaque
black boxes. The tech can be as impenetrable as an iPhone, as packet hungry
as
a Steam server and as intuitive as drunk shopping at 2 am on Amazon. The
time
period allowed the application should mimic mail-in voting rather than the
polls.
Votes could be validated slowly if need be. Perhaps, this may be one of the
only
reasonable applications for a block-chain protocol?

Jon



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[David Eric Smith]

This is both beautiful and just, Jon.

What’s the next action item, because surely you are right.

Eric


> On Aug 17, 2020, at 3:35 AM, jon zingale  wrote:
> 
> Please excuse the Cassandrafreude, but here we are nearly 7 months later and
> we now have the app, it is called the U.S Postal Service. Will the app
> manage to escape any of Dave's points of critique? It is beginning to occur
> to me that manifesting beside the rise of bad-faith science (bogus climate
> studies supporting denial, bogus pharmaceutical trials, and the like) comes
> a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction as the path of moral
> high-ground, in the face of incomplete knowledge. While some may believe
> this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make the big
> moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and confined to
> ivory towers. What remains of the republic is at risk and not just at the
> hands of those that seek to dismantle it, but also by those too paralyzed by
> the righteousness of certainty to protect it. Somehow, I would have much
> preferred to find myself complaining in November about the failures of a
> first-gen voting app than whining about losing another of our critical
> institutions as we cower in the post-democratic apocalypse.
> 
> 
> 
> --
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Gary Schiltz]

I too have some fear about Trump/Biden debates, but I don't think Biden
could get away with refusing to debate (I could be wrong). Regardless of
how much Trump lies, Biden needs to stick to the facts and avoid stooping
to Trump's level of personal attacks. That said, it wouldn't hurt to
practice his incredulous face.

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 2:08 PM  wrote:

> Jon
>
>
>
> This ...
>
>
>
> a reactionary position to increasingly *support inaction in the face of
> incomplete knowledge as the path of moral high-groun*. While some may
> believe this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make
> the big moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and
> confined to ivory towers.
>
>
>
> … is one of the most important thoughts to be dangled before me in a long
> time.
>
>
>
> I think it relates to my fears about the Trump/Biden debates.  How do you
> debate a person who is willing to confidently lie?  A debate cannot go
> forward in the absence of any concept of truth.  So, I think Biden should
> either refuse to debate or pick a fight with trump on the first whopper he
> tells,  bury him in facts, refuse to talk about anything else until the lie
> is revealed, and walk calmly off the stage if that conversation be carried
> to its end.
>
>
>
> N
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-----
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 12:36 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!
>
>
>
> Please excuse the Cassandrafreude, but here we are nearly 7 months later
> and we now have the app, it is called the U.S Postal Service. Will the app
> manage to escape any of Dave's points of critique? It is beginning to occur
> to me that manifesting beside the rise of bad-faith science (bogus climate
> studies supporting denial, bogus pharmaceutical trials, and the like) comes
> a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction as the path of
> moral high-ground, in the face of incomplete knowledge. While some may
> believe this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make
> the big moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and
> confined to ivory towers. What remains of the republic is at risk and not
> just at the hands of those that seek to dismantle it, but also by those too
> paralyzed by the righteousness of certainty to protect it. Somehow, I would
> have much preferred to find myself complaining in November about the
> failures of a first-gen voting app than whining about losing another of our
> critical institutions as we cower in the post-democratic apocalypse.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
>
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Frank Wimberly]

I think there's a new trend that comes into play.  Even Trump supporters
are getting sick of his cuteness (hydroxychloroquine, attacking USPS, FBI
and Justice) and his lies. His most committed supporters are exceptions.
But the election will be decided by the center. Biden and Harris just need
to embrace the truth and reasonableness.  If they do Biden can hold his own
in a debate with Trump and Harris will demolish Pence.

Frank

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 1:08 PM  wrote:

> Jon
>
>
>
> This ...
>
>
>
> a reactionary position to increasingly *support inaction in the face of
> incomplete knowledge as the path of moral high-groun*. While some may
> believe this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make
> the big moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and
> confined to ivory towers.
>
>
>
> … is one of the most important thoughts to be dangled before me in a long
> time.
>
>
>
> I think it relates to my fears about the Trump/Biden debates.  How do you
> debate a person who is willing to confidently lie?  A debate cannot go
> forward in the absence of any concept of truth.  So, I think Biden should
> either refuse to debate or pick a fight with trump on the first whopper he
> tells,  bury him in facts, refuse to talk about anything else until the lie
> is revealed, and walk calmly off the stage if that conversation be carried
> to its end.
>
>
>
> N
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-----
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 12:36 PM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!
>
>
>
> Please excuse the Cassandrafreude, but here we are nearly 7 months later
> and we now have the app, it is called the U.S Postal Service. Will the app
> manage to escape any of Dave's points of critique? It is beginning to occur
> to me that manifesting beside the rise of bad-faith science (bogus climate
> studies supporting denial, bogus pharmaceutical trials, and the like) comes
> a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction as the path of
> moral high-ground, in the face of incomplete knowledge. While some may
> believe this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make
> the big moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and
> confined to ivory towers. What remains of the republic is at risk and not
> just at the hands of those that seek to dismantle it, but also by those too
> paralyzed by the righteousness of certainty to protect it. Somehow, I would
> have much preferred to find myself complaining in November about the
> failures of a first-gen voting app than whining about losing another of our
> critical institutions as we cower in the post-democratic apocalypse.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
>
>
> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
>
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
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> -  . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-.  . .-. .
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> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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>


-- 
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Jon

 

This ...

 

a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction in the face of
incomplete knowledge as the path of moral high-groun. While some may believe
this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make the big
moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and confined to
ivory towers.

 

. is one of the most important thoughts to be dangled before me in a long
time.

 

I think it relates to my fears about the Trump/Biden debates.  How do you
debate a person who is willing to confidently lie?  A debate cannot go
forward in the absence of any concept of truth.  So, I think Biden should
either refuse to debate or pick a fight with trump on the first whopper he
tells,  bury him in facts, refuse to talk about anything else until the lie
is revealed, and walk calmly off the stage if that conversation be carried
to its end.  

 

N

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 12:36 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

 

Please excuse the Cassandrafreude, but here we are nearly 7 months later and
we now have the app, it is called the U.S Postal Service. Will the app
manage to escape any of Dave's points of critique? It is beginning to occur
to me that manifesting beside the rise of bad-faith science (bogus climate
studies supporting denial, bogus pharmaceutical trials, and the like) comes
a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction as the path of moral
high-ground, in the face of incomplete knowledge. While some may believe
this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make the big
moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and confined to
ivory towers. What remains of the republic is at risk and not just at the
hands of those that seek to dismantle it, but also by those too paralyzed by
the righteousness of certainty to protect it. Somehow, I would have much
preferred to find myself complaining in November about the failures of a
first-gen voting app than whining about losing another of our critical
institutions as we cower in the post-democratic apocalypse.

 

 

 

--

Sent from:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/>
http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

 

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Please excuse the Cassandrafreude, but here we are nearly 7 months later and
we now have the app, it is called the U.S Postal Service. Will the app
manage to escape any of Dave's points of critique? It is beginning to occur
to me that manifesting beside the rise of bad-faith science (bogus climate
studies supporting denial, bogus pharmaceutical trials, and the like) comes
a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction as the path of moral
high-ground, in the face of incomplete knowledge. While some may believe
this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make the big
moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and confined to
ivory towers. What remains of the republic is at risk and not just at the
hands of those that seek to dismantle it, but also by those too paralyzed by
the righteousness of certainty to protect it. Somehow, I would have much
preferred to find myself complaining in November about the failures of a
first-gen voting app than whining about losing another of our critical
institutions as we cower in the post-democratic apocalypse.



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Feb 09, 2020 at 02:00:30PM +0100, Prof David West wrote:
> Russel,
> 
> Software Engineering has indeed enabled the construction of 100MLoc+ software 
> constructs.
> 
> But why do we assume that such monstrosities need to be built?
> 

I don't. But SE does allow 10Kloc+ software to be built in a workable
fashion, and I do care about those.


-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
  http://www.hpcoders.com.au



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

Nick writes:

“Do you have a model in mind? “

Optimistically, the Democrats retake the executive branch and the Senate and 
extend the Supreme Court.

If that doesn’t happen, well, it could be time to make some decisions.  As of 
2017, the top 25 metropolitan areas in the US make up 50% of the US GDP 
compared to about 10% for non-metro areas. [1]  One way to bring Trump country 
to its knees, the 10%, is to do what Trump country people want, cut federal 
taxes.  With federal tax relief, local taxes could be raised to do the things 
that cities need to do.  In the Bay Area, for example, two needs among many are 
to build more affordable housing and to increase the safety of the energy 
distribution system.   Navigating potentially oppressive new federal employment 
law by sanctuary states might be accomplished with creative use of ITINs or 
state authority over death records.  The workforce is needed and it isn’t fair 
to not give people fair standing, including as voters.  Planning for the 
collapse of Social Security and Medicare will be hard, but honestly I’ve pretty 
much written off getting either.   In the near term scenario of fascists in 
charge in Washington, Democrats should still pour on the vitriol of 
entitlements to exacerbate the debt load, while at a state level creating other 
contingencies.   There will need to be real crisis to put an end to the 
electoral college.  I am confident Republican leadership can achieve a 
spectacular crisis, but it will be important to prepare for it.

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/18684/us-cities-by-gdp/
[2] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/06/immigration-wages-economics/530301/

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

Nick.

if you are talking about my paper, here is the link I posted to Gary that you 
might not have seen.

https://objectguild.com/papers/westProgrammingHard2019.pdf

davew


On Sat, Feb 8, 2020, at 6:02 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> Here! Here! The Paper, the Paper!!!

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> 

> 

> 


> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Gary Schiltz
> *Sent:* Saturday, February 8, 2020 6:41 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

> 

> Please post a link to your paper. I for one would love to read it. 

> 

> On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 3:45 AM Prof David West  wrote:

>> Jon,

>> 

>> As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my 
>> first job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the 
>> NATO conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here) 
>> state that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and 
>> all that we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and 
>> software engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of 
>> application level software.

>> 

>> The protocols that ensure cat photos are scattered into packets traversing 
>> vast segments of the Internet to be reassembled and presented on you phone 
>> in real time, is an example of the minority of software that can be 
>> engineered. The vote counting app _could not have been_.

>> 

>> The difference is that the first replicates, in software, a deterministic 
>> machine with limited variables, all of which can be known and quantified, 
>> limited relations among variables, all of which can be known and stated; and 
>> the second one is a complex system where variables and relations are highly 
>> dynamic, idiosyncratic, and, often, quite literally unknowable.

>> 

>> I just completed a sixty-page essay on this subject "Why Programming is Hard 
>> and Software Development is (Mostly) Impossible" that addresses this issue. 
>> If you would like to read, let me know and I will send you a link or the 
>> paper.

>> 

>> Making things worse is the superstructure around software development — all 
>> the methodologies, all the frameworks, all the management levels, all the 
>> practices that supposedly guide/govern the process of developing software.

>> 

>> Icing on the cake, is attitude. Those that contract for software EXPECT that 
>> the project will fail and/or that what they get will be a pale imitation of 
>> what they wanted, full of bugs and inconsistencies. The development team 
>> also EXPECTS the project to fail, for different reasons, but fail 
>> nevertheless.

>> 

>> And roughly 90-percent of the time both sides have their expectations 
>> realized. (60-65 % of projects started are abandoned without any delivery, 
>> the other 20-25 percent are those pale imitations over budget and taking 
>> twice the time.)

>> 

>> One more factor - the game is rigged. Those that might actually be able to 
>> deliver reasonable software applications are not allowed to play in the 
>> game. Acronym and Shadow came into existence because people in Hillary 
>> Clinton's campaign thought they saw a way to make money and used their 
>> connections to get established and make contracts. The "bid" process was 
>> laughable, the specs being written such that no one but Shadow could comply 
>> and in a time frame that Microsoft, et. al. were not able to respond 
>> adequately.

>> 

>> Half a billion dollars were spent on the Obamacare website and another 
>> half-billion to get it to work after the initial failure. A startup team of 
>> Web-developers built the site with full functionality, including calculating 
>> subsidies (supposedly the hard part) in a week. Their site was demoed on 
>> Sixty Minutes. But they would never have been allowed to bid on the original 
>> project because they did not meet Federal procurement guidelines which were 
>> rigged to very large companies most of whom have a remarkably long history 
>> of spectacular failures on past projects.

>> 

>> Frothing at the mouth so much, am at risk of dehydration.

>> 

>> dave

>> 

>> 

>> On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, at 8:54 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:

>>> My intention in drawing attention to critical application

>>> development is an attempt to deepen the discuss

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

Russel,

Software Engineering has indeed enabled the construction of 100MLoc+ software 
constructs.

But why do we assume that such monstrosities need to be built?

davew


On Sun, Feb 9, 2020, at 2:04 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 09:44:20AM +0100, Prof David West wrote:
> > Jon,
> > 
> > As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my 
> > first
> > job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the NATO
> > conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here) state
> > that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and all 
> > that
> > we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and software
> > engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of application level
> > software.
> 
> As someone who graduated from being a "programmer" to a "software
> engineer" somewhere around 2008, I can testify there is a world of
> difference between the two. A programmer will happily churn out
> programs up to 1000 lines of code, and maybe manage a 10,000 loc
> program by dint of extreme hoeroic effort. Using software engineering
> techiniques, including object orientation, extensive regression
> testing, continuous integration, source code management and so on, a
> single programmer can easily manage a 10 Kloc program, and up to
> 100Kloc loc by dint of heroic effort (ie an order of magnitude more
> complex). A small team of 5 coders can perhaps manage a 1Mloc codebase
> (albeit probably not 10x as complex as the 100Kloc codebase in my
> experience), but requires much more intrateam communication, via daily
> standups etc.
> 
> For larger projects eg the Linux kernel (ca 30Mloc), it is only
> feasible by being extremely modular, which cuts down on the amount of
> intrateam communicaton. Noone, not even Linus, has a clear picture of
> the whole.
> 
> But none of these larger projects would be possible without the
> discipline of "software engineering". Whether "software engineering"
> is actually "engineering" or not is a pub argument, but it clearly
> works when applied pragmatically and not idealogically. If not
> "engineering", we would still need a name to cover the set of
> techniques that help tame complexity, and manage software development
> at scale.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
>   http://www.hpcoders.com.au
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

Jon,

The "artifact" — a couple of hundred lines of code executing on a smartphone — 
can be engineered. No question.

The "app" however is the artifact deployed in a context; a context that 
includes human beings.

The app+context is a complex system and you cannot "engineer" that system. You 
will not be able to anticipate all, or even most, of the ways that things will 
go wrong once your quality engineered artifact is deployed. You will not be 
able to anticipate and account for how something as simple as a "Facebook-like 
button" will be perceived by different users of the app, many of whom have 
never seen Facebook or its buttons.

Moreover, since you are introducing your artifact into a complex system, it 
will change the system. For example: the app requires you to enter a number in 
a field. A paper form requires you to enter a number in a field. Same thing 
—right? No!
Paper provides all kinds of affordances that the app will not: erasures, 
modifications with initials, etc. You cannot know what many of these 
affordances are and you certainly cannot engineer them into your artifact.

Even more interesting and perplexing, the app embodied a system change that was 
never evaluated: how voters will behave when they know that their sequence of 
actions are being reported, not just their final act. Will the behavior change" 
Yes! Did Shadow have any concept of how or why, or did the DNC when it created 
the specs for the app? No!

And did the design of the app take into account intentional bad actors? Sure, 
it had two-factor authentication (which more than half the users did not 
understand how to make work), but would the same trolls that jammed the phone 
lines to headquarters have affect the ability of the app to submit results? 
Probably not literally, but a DNS attack probably would have; not to mention 
all kinds of spoofing possibilities.)

Arguing that a *"critical application voting app belongs to the class of 
impossible tasks" *the way that I am supports the heart, I think, of your 
concern about the rhetoric of failure, but at a different level.

Rhetoric about a data breach at Target does not legitimize Target — it 
legitimizes the institution of "credit" and institutions like credit reporting 
agencies. Beyond that, the institution of social security numbers.

Rhetoric about Boeing 737 legitimizes, not an institution but a conviction — 
that artificial intelligence is superior to human, that autopilots are more 
trustworthy than human pilots.

I completely agree with you that, as a culture and society, we are totally in 
thrall, Stockholm Syndrome-like, to the "newly minted" and the impossibility of 
doing anything different.

I suspect that my perspective with regard the rhetoric, its use, and its 
targets are far more expansive that the concern you have articulated in this 
instance.

davew



On Sun, Feb 9, 2020, at 12:52 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> Dave,
> 
> While I agree that there are likely to be many systemic reasons
> for this electoral failure, I am unwilling to go so far as to claim
> that the design of a critical application voting app belongs to the
> class of impossible tasks.
> 
> Maybe a little flippantly and without dragging this entire post
> into design details, the voting app needs little more than a
> Facebook like-button, a Redis server, authentication and
> a light-weight rest api. If the idea were to be taken seriously,
> such an app could be written starting now for an election in
> four years. It could be tested and verified by a trusted agency,
> like the NSA. The process of building a voting app could be
> taken seriously and accomplished.
> 
> A pressing issue for me remains. There appears to be forming
> a public rhetoric around failure. A rhetoric which can be
> summarized as: *failure legitimizes institutions*. Through our
> grieving and eulogizing over a data breach at Target corp, 
> we legitimize Target as a critical institution. After two
> Boeing 737 jet crashes, the collective expressions of
> helplessness and loss legitimize Boeing as a critical institution.
> Now, and possibly most controversially, we have the failure
> of electoral and democratic process. This possibly-emergent
> coping strategy additionally appears to mirror strategies
> outlined by Baudrillard in his analysis of Watergate 
> .
> 
> With respect to these newly minted critical institutions,
> the public participates in a type of Stockholm syndrome.
> We continue to support and rely on them. We continue to
> form rhetoric about the impossibility of doing otherwise,
> rather than calling these institutions out for what they
> are, namely failing to adequately serve their functions.
> 
> Jon
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Hi, Marcus, 

 

Do you have a model in mind?  A place where they do it better?  

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 6:08 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

 

Nick writes:

 

< “More perfect” than what? >

 

Historically, more than a federal government that acts indirectly upon states.  
A government that can ensure more rights of citizens rather than less.  

 

Marcus


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

Nick writes:

< “More perfect” than what? >

Historically, more than a federal government that acts indirectly upon states.  
A government that can ensure more rights of citizens rather than less.

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 09:44:20AM +0100, Prof David West wrote:
> Jon,
> 
> As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my first
> job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the NATO
> conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here) state
> that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and all that
> we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and software
> engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of application level
> software.

As someone who graduated from being a "programmer" to a "software
engineer" somewhere around 2008, I can testify there is a world of
difference between the two. A programmer will happily churn out
programs up to 1000 lines of code, and maybe manage a 10,000 loc
program by dint of extreme hoeroic effort. Using software engineering
techiniques, including object orientation, extensive regression
testing, continuous integration, source code management and so on, a
single programmer can easily manage a 10 Kloc program, and up to
100Kloc loc by dint of heroic effort (ie an order of magnitude more
complex). A small team of 5 coders can perhaps manage a 1Mloc codebase
(albeit probably not 10x as complex as the 100Kloc codebase in my
experience), but requires much more intrateam communication, via daily
standups etc.

For larger projects eg the Linux kernel (ca 30Mloc), it is only
feasible by being extremely modular, which cuts down on the amount of
intrateam communicaton. Noone, not even Linus, has a clear picture of
the whole.

But none of these larger projects would be possible without the
discipline of "software engineering". Whether "software engineering"
is actually "engineering" or not is a pub argument, but it clearly
works when applied pragmatically and not idealogically. If not
"engineering", we would still need a name to cover the set of
techniques that help tame complexity, and manage software development
at scale.


-- 


Dr Russell StandishPhone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
  http://www.hpcoders.com.au



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Well, hang on there, Marcus!  “More perfect” than what?

 

All species succumb to extinction, but that doesn’t make extinction our goal, 
does it? 

 

Nick 

 

 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 5:13 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group ; S. 
A. Johnson 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

 

Jon writes:

 

“A rhetoric which can be summarized as: failure legitimizes institutions.”

 

“We continue to form rhetoric about the impossibility of doing otherwise,

rather than calling these institutions out for what they

are, namely failing to adequately serve their functions.”

 

And one does what when the institution is both major political parties in the 
U.S. or the U.S. government itself?  One can choose to not shop at Target, or 
similar organizations that are careless about security.  But the other 
institutions might be disbanded as well.  We simply recognize there can be no 
more perfect union, and the experiment has failed.

 

Marcus

 

 

 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

Jon writes:

“A rhetoric which can be summarized as: failure legitimizes institutions.”

“We continue to form rhetoric about the impossibility of doing otherwise,
rather than calling these institutions out for what they
are, namely failing to adequately serve their functions.”

And one does what when the institution is both major political parties in the 
U.S. or the U.S. government itself?  One can choose to not shop at Target, or 
similar organizations that are careless about security.  But the other 
institutions might be disbanded as well.  We simply recognize there can be no 
more perfect union, and the experiment has failed.

Marcus





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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Jon Zingale]

Dave,

While I agree that there are likely to be many systemic reasons
for this electoral failure, I am unwilling to go so far as to claim
that the design of a critical application voting app belongs to the
class of impossible tasks.

Maybe a little flippantly and without dragging this entire post
into design details, the voting app needs little more than a
Facebook like-button, a Redis server, authentication and
a light-weight rest api. If the idea were to be taken seriously,
such an app could be written starting now for an election in
four years. It could be tested and verified by a trusted agency,
like the NSA. The process of building a voting app could be
taken seriously and accomplished.

A pressing issue for me remains. There appears to be forming
a public rhetoric around failure. A rhetoric which can be
summarized as: *failure legitimizes institutions*. Through our
grieving and eulogizing over a data breach at Target corp,
we legitimize Target as a critical institution. After two
Boeing 737 jet crashes, the collective expressions of
helplessness and loss legitimize Boeing as a critical institution.
Now, and possibly most controversially, we have the failure
of electoral and democratic process. This possibly-emergent
coping strategy additionally appears to mirror strategies
outlined by Baudrillard in his analysis of Watergate

.

With respect to these newly minted critical institutions,
the public participates in a type of Stockholm syndrome.
We continue to support and rely on them. We continue to
form rhetoric about the impossibility of doing otherwise,
rather than calling these institutions out for what they
are, namely failing to adequately serve their functions.

Jon

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Here!  Here!  The Paper, the Paper!!!

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2020 6:41 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

 

Please post a link to your paper. I for one would love to read it. 

 

On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 3:45 AM Prof David West mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm> > wrote:

Jon,

 

As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my first 
job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the NATO 
conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here) state 
that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and all that 
we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and software 
engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of application level 
software.

 

The protocols that ensure cat photos are scattered into packets traversing vast 
segments of the Internet to be reassembled and presented on you phone in real 
time, is an example of the minority of software that can be engineered. The 
vote counting app could not have been.

 

The difference is that the first replicates, in software, a deterministic 
machine with limited variables, all of which can be known and quantified, 
limited relations among variables, all of which can be known and stated; and 
the second one is a complex system where variables and relations are highly 
dynamic, idiosyncratic, and, often, quite literally unknowable.

 

I just completed a sixty-page essay on this subject "Why Programming is Hard 
and Software Development is (Mostly) Impossible" that addresses this issue. If 
you would like to read, let me know and I will send you a link or the paper.

 

Making things worse is the superstructure around software development — all the 
methodologies, all the frameworks, all the management levels, all the practices 
that supposedly guide/govern the process of developing software.

 

Icing on the cake, is attitude. Those that contract for software EXPECT that 
the project will fail and/or that what they get will be a pale imitation of 
what they wanted, full of bugs and inconsistencies. The development team also 
EXPECTS the project to fail, for different reasons, but fail nevertheless.

 

And roughly 90-percent of the time both sides have their expectations realized. 
(60-65 % of projects started are abandoned without any delivery, the other 
20-25 percent are those pale imitations over budget and taking twice the time.)

 

One more factor - the game is rigged. Those that might actually be able to 
deliver reasonable software applications are not allowed to play in the game. 
Acronym and Shadow came into existence because people in Hillary Clinton's 
campaign thought they saw a way to make money and used their connections to get 
established and make contracts. The "bid" process was laughable, the specs 
being written such that no one but Shadow could comply and in a time frame that 
Microsoft, et. al. were not able to respond adequately.

 

Half a billion dollars were spent on the Obamacare website and another 
half-billion to get it to work after the initial failure. A startup team of 
Web-developers built the site with full functionality, including calculating 
subsidies (supposedly the hard part) in a week. Their site was demoed on Sixty 
Minutes. But they would never have been allowed to bid on the original project 
because they did not meet Federal procurement guidelines which were rigged to 
very large companies  most of whom have a remarkably long history of 
spectacular failures on past projects.

 

Frothing at the mouth so much, am at risk of dehydration.

 

dave

 

 

On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, at 8:54 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:

My intention in drawing attention to critical application

development is an attempt to deepen the discussion

around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around

app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears

to be the vulnerability which exists today because

programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who

never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church

meeting passes without a discussion of the precision

engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.

 

Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame

are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute>  
encryption dispute

and the Target corp data breach <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.04940.pdf>  of 
2013. In the first case,

the federal government is confronted by the reality that a

phone manufacturer can in fact make cryptographically

chal

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

Gary, others interested


https://objectguild.com/papers/westProgrammingHard2019.pdf

davew

On Sat, Feb 8, 2020, at 2:40 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Please post a link to your paper. I for one would love to read it. 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 3:45 AM Prof David West  wrote:
>> __
>> Jon,
>> 
>> As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my 
>> first job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the 
>> NATO conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here) 
>> state that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and 
>> all that we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and 
>> software engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of 
>> application level software.
>> 
>> The protocols that ensure cat photos are scattered into packets traversing 
>> vast segments of the Internet to be reassembled and presented on you phone 
>> in real time, is an example of the minority of software that can be 
>> engineered. The vote counting app _could not have been_.
>> 
>> The difference is that the first replicates, in software, a deterministic 
>> machine with limited variables, all of which can be known and quantified, 
>> limited relations among variables, all of which can be known and stated; and 
>> the second one is a complex system where variables and relations are highly 
>> dynamic, idiosyncratic, and, often, quite literally unknowable.
>> 
>> I just completed a sixty-page essay on this subject "Why Programming is Hard 
>> and Software Development is (Mostly) Impossible" that addresses this issue. 
>> If you would like to read, let me know and I will send you a link or the 
>> paper.
>> 
>> Making things worse is the superstructure around software development — all 
>> the methodologies, all the frameworks, all the management levels, all the 
>> practices that supposedly guide/govern the process of developing software.
>> 
>> Icing on the cake, is attitude. Those that contract for software EXPECT that 
>> the project will fail and/or that what they get will be a pale imitation of 
>> what they wanted, full of bugs and inconsistencies. The development team 
>> also EXPECTS the project to fail, for different reasons, but fail 
>> nevertheless.
>> 
>> And roughly 90-percent of the time both sides have their expectations 
>> realized. (60-65 % of projects started are abandoned without any delivery, 
>> the other 20-25 percent are those pale imitations over budget and taking 
>> twice the time.)
>> 
>> One more factor - the game is rigged. Those that might actually be able to 
>> deliver reasonable software applications are not allowed to play in the 
>> game. Acronym and Shadow came into existence because people in Hillary 
>> Clinton's campaign thought they saw a way to make money and used their 
>> connections to get established and make contracts. The "bid" process was 
>> laughable, the specs being written such that no one but Shadow could comply 
>> and in a time frame that Microsoft, et. al. were not able to respond 
>> adequately.
>> 
>> Half a billion dollars were spent on the Obamacare website and another 
>> half-billion to get it to work after the initial failure. A startup team of 
>> Web-developers built the site with full functionality, including calculating 
>> subsidies (supposedly the hard part) in a week. Their site was demoed on 
>> Sixty Minutes. But they would never have been allowed to bid on the original 
>> project because they did not meet Federal procurement guidelines which were 
>> rigged to very large companies most of whom have a remarkably long history 
>> of spectacular failures on past projects.
>> 
>> Frothing at the mouth so much, am at risk of dehydration.
>> 
>> dave
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, at 8:54 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>>> My intention in drawing attention to critical application
>>> development is an attempt to deepen the discussion
>>> around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around
>>> app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears
>>> to be the vulnerability which exists today because
>>> programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who
>>> never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church
>>> meeting passes without a discussion of the precision
>>> engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.
>>> 
>>> Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame
>>> are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple encryption dispute 
>>> 
>>> and the Target corp data breach  of 
>>> 2013. In the first case,
>>> the federal government is confronted by the reality that a
>>> phone manufacturer *can* in fact make cryptographically
>>> challenging hand held devices. Further we can use this
>>> powerful technology for sending our family cat pictures
>>> which arrive at their target destinations almost without
>>> 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Frank Wimberly]

I won't mention 5ESS again since I already described that software
development accomplishment.

My elder daughter's husband has a job that puts him in an interesting
position.  He is working on a large IT project where the customer is the US
Department of Labor.  His employer is a subcontractor which has been hired
by the contractor.  The subcontractor is a team which specializes in agile
development.  The contractor has to ensure compliance with Government
standards.  SIL's job is to provide the interface between the two.  He
enjoys this because it requires people skills.  The contractor recently
requested that the subcontractor give him a 40% raise.  He already made a
lot by my standards.  I sent him one of your essays a few months ago,
Dave.  He thought it was interesting.

---
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Sat, Feb 8, 2020, 1:44 AM Prof David West  wrote:

> Jon,
>
> As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my
> first job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the
> NATO conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here)
> state that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and
> all that we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and
> software engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of
> application level software.
>
> The protocols that ensure cat photos are scattered into packets traversing
> vast segments of the Internet to be reassembled and presented on you phone
> in real time, is an example of the minority of software that can be
> engineered. The vote counting app *could not have been*.
>
> The difference is that the first replicates, in software, a deterministic
> machine with limited variables, all of which can be known and quantified,
> limited relations among variables, all of which can be known and stated;
> and the second one is a complex system where variables and relations are
> highly dynamic, idiosyncratic, and, often, quite literally unknowable.
>
> I just completed a sixty-page essay on this subject "Why Programming is
> Hard and Software Development is (Mostly) Impossible" that addresses this
> issue. If you would like to read, let me know and I will send you a link or
> the paper.
>
> Making things worse is the superstructure around software development —
> all the methodologies, all the frameworks, all the management levels, all
> the practices that supposedly guide/govern the process of developing
> software.
>
> Icing on the cake, is attitude. Those that contract for software EXPECT
> that the project will fail and/or that what they get will be a pale
> imitation of what they wanted, full of bugs and inconsistencies. The
> development team also EXPECTS the project to fail, for different reasons,
> but fail nevertheless.
>
> And roughly 90-percent of the time both sides have their expectations
> realized. (60-65 % of projects started are abandoned without any delivery,
> the other 20-25 percent are those pale imitations over budget and taking
> twice the time.)
>
> One more factor - the game is rigged. Those that might actually be able to
> deliver reasonable software applications are not allowed to play in the
> game. Acronym and Shadow came into existence because people in Hillary
> Clinton's campaign thought they saw a way to make money and used their
> connections to get established and make contracts. The "bid" process was
> laughable, the specs being written such that no one but Shadow could comply
> and in a time frame that Microsoft, et. al. were not able to respond
> adequately.
>
> Half a billion dollars were spent on the Obamacare website and another
> half-billion to get it to work after the initial failure. A startup team of
> Web-developers built the site with full functionality, including
> calculating subsidies (supposedly the hard part) in a week. Their site was
> demoed on Sixty Minutes. But they would never have been allowed to bid on
> the original project because they did not meet Federal procurement
> guidelines which were rigged to very large companies  most of whom have a
> remarkably long history of spectacular failures on past projects.
>
> Frothing at the mouth so much, am at risk of dehydration.
>
> dave
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, at 8:54 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>
> My intention in drawing attention to critical application
> development is an attempt to deepen the discussion
> around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around
> app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears
> to be the vulnerability which exists today because
> programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who
> never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church
> meeting passes without a discussion of the precision
> engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Gary Schiltz]

Please post a link to your paper. I for one would love to read it.

On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 3:45 AM Prof David West  wrote:

> Jon,
>
> As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my
> first job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the
> NATO conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here)
> state that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and
> all that we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and
> software engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of
> application level software.
>
> The protocols that ensure cat photos are scattered into packets traversing
> vast segments of the Internet to be reassembled and presented on you phone
> in real time, is an example of the minority of software that can be
> engineered. The vote counting app *could not have been*.
>
> The difference is that the first replicates, in software, a deterministic
> machine with limited variables, all of which can be known and quantified,
> limited relations among variables, all of which can be known and stated;
> and the second one is a complex system where variables and relations are
> highly dynamic, idiosyncratic, and, often, quite literally unknowable.
>
> I just completed a sixty-page essay on this subject "Why Programming is
> Hard and Software Development is (Mostly) Impossible" that addresses this
> issue. If you would like to read, let me know and I will send you a link or
> the paper.
>
> Making things worse is the superstructure around software development —
> all the methodologies, all the frameworks, all the management levels, all
> the practices that supposedly guide/govern the process of developing
> software.
>
> Icing on the cake, is attitude. Those that contract for software EXPECT
> that the project will fail and/or that what they get will be a pale
> imitation of what they wanted, full of bugs and inconsistencies. The
> development team also EXPECTS the project to fail, for different reasons,
> but fail nevertheless.
>
> And roughly 90-percent of the time both sides have their expectations
> realized. (60-65 % of projects started are abandoned without any delivery,
> the other 20-25 percent are those pale imitations over budget and taking
> twice the time.)
>
> One more factor - the game is rigged. Those that might actually be able to
> deliver reasonable software applications are not allowed to play in the
> game. Acronym and Shadow came into existence because people in Hillary
> Clinton's campaign thought they saw a way to make money and used their
> connections to get established and make contracts. The "bid" process was
> laughable, the specs being written such that no one but Shadow could comply
> and in a time frame that Microsoft, et. al. were not able to respond
> adequately.
>
> Half a billion dollars were spent on the Obamacare website and another
> half-billion to get it to work after the initial failure. A startup team of
> Web-developers built the site with full functionality, including
> calculating subsidies (supposedly the hard part) in a week. Their site was
> demoed on Sixty Minutes. But they would never have been allowed to bid on
> the original project because they did not meet Federal procurement
> guidelines which were rigged to very large companies  most of whom have a
> remarkably long history of spectacular failures on past projects.
>
> Frothing at the mouth so much, am at risk of dehydration.
>
> dave
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, at 8:54 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
>
> My intention in drawing attention to critical application
> development is an attempt to deepen the discussion
> around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around
> app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears
> to be the vulnerability which exists today because
> programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who
> never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church
> meeting passes without a discussion of the precision
> engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.
>
> Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame
> are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple encryption dispute
> 
> and the Target corp data breach  of
> 2013. In the first case,
> the federal government is confronted by the reality that a
> phone manufacturer *can* in fact make cryptographically
> challenging hand held devices. Further we can use this
> powerful technology for sending our family cat pictures
> which arrive at their target destinations almost without
> fail and near instantaneously. There is a sense of *justified*
> *indignation* when the cat photo takes more than a second
> to be delivered. The state-of-the-art is such that we *can*
> have nice things.
>
> In the second case, a data breach is exploited in the POS system
> of big box corporation which sells mostly 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

Jon,

As an observer of software "engineering" since its inception in 1968 (my first 
job as a programmer was that fall, and that spring/summer is when the NATO 
conference first coined the phrase), I can and will (braggadocio here) state 
that most software CANNOT be engineered, precision or otherwise, and all that 
we have learned in the past 52 years in both computer science and software 
engineering is essentially irrelevant to the production of application level 
software.

The protocols that ensure cat photos are scattered into packets traversing vast 
segments of the Internet to be reassembled and presented on you phone in real 
time, is an example of the minority of software that can be engineered. The 
vote counting app _could not have been_.

The difference is that the first replicates, in software, a deterministic 
machine with limited variables, all of which can be known and quantified, 
limited relations among variables, all of which can be known and stated; and 
the second one is a complex system where variables and relations are highly 
dynamic, idiosyncratic, and, often, quite literally unknowable.

I just completed a sixty-page essay on this subject "Why Programming is Hard 
and Software Development is (Mostly) Impossible" that addresses this issue. If 
you would like to read, let me know and I will send you a link or the paper.

Making things worse is the superstructure around software development — all the 
methodologies, all the frameworks, all the management levels, all the practices 
that supposedly guide/govern the process of developing software.

Icing on the cake, is attitude. Those that contract for software EXPECT that 
the project will fail and/or that what they get will be a pale imitation of 
what they wanted, full of bugs and inconsistencies. The development team also 
EXPECTS the project to fail, for different reasons, but fail nevertheless.

And roughly 90-percent of the time both sides have their expectations realized. 
(60-65 % of projects started are abandoned without any delivery, the other 
20-25 percent are those pale imitations over budget and taking twice the time.)

One more factor - the game is rigged. Those that might actually be able to 
deliver reasonable software applications are not allowed to play in the game. 
Acronym and Shadow came into existence because people in Hillary Clinton's 
campaign thought they saw a way to make money and used their connections to get 
established and make contracts. The "bid" process was laughable, the specs 
being written such that no one but Shadow could comply and in a time frame that 
Microsoft, et. al. were not able to respond adequately.

Half a billion dollars were spent on the Obamacare website and another 
half-billion to get it to work after the initial failure. A startup team of 
Web-developers built the site with full functionality, including calculating 
subsidies (supposedly the hard part) in a week. Their site was demoed on Sixty 
Minutes. But they would never have been allowed to bid on the original project 
because they did not meet Federal procurement guidelines which were rigged to 
very large companies most of whom have a remarkably long history of spectacular 
failures on past projects.

Frothing at the mouth so much, am at risk of dehydration.

dave


On Fri, Feb 7, 2020, at 8:54 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> My intention in drawing attention to critical application
> development is an attempt to deepen the discussion
> around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around
> app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears
> to be the vulnerability which exists today because
> programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who
> never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church
> meeting passes without a discussion of the precision
> engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.
> 
> Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame
> are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple encryption dispute 
> 
> and the Target corp data breach  of 
> 2013. In the first case,
> the federal government is confronted by the reality that a
> phone manufacturer *can* in fact make cryptographically
> challenging hand held devices. Further we can use this
> powerful technology for sending our family cat pictures
> which arrive at their target destinations almost without
> fail and near instantaneously. There is a sense of *justified*
> *indignation* when the cat photo takes more than a second
> to be delivered. The state-of-the-art is such that we *can*
> have nice things.
> 
> In the second case, a data breach is exploited in the POS system
> of big box corporation which sells mostly useless things. Next,
> a public rhetoric emerges similar to the rhetoric I am witnessing
> here with the democratic primaries. Instead of pointing out that
> Target corp doesn't consider our privacy a 

Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2]

Jon, 

 

Two things: 

 

I really LIKE what you are doing, here. 

 

..but.I don’t quite get it, yet.  I think it’s closely related to my take on 
the IOWA thing, which was that the phenomenon of interest was our out rage that 
the democratic process hadn’t been so rigged that we could have the results 
before we put out the dog and brung in the cat (or was it put out the cat, and 
brung in the dog; even when I had cats and dogs, I never knew which), and gave 
the babies one more tuck before we ourselves went to bed.  The funniest thing I 
ever heard was the 538 blog trying to use up the half hour they had booked with 
their audience.  Instead of saying, “Sorry, folks, we got nothing; go to bed 
early and get a good night’s sleep, for once,” they tried to turn the fact that 
they had nothing into a political event warranting their prescribed time slot.  
I was almost as humiliating as when Rachel Maddow tried to turn a fragment of 
one of Trump’s tax returns into a 43 minute saga.  If ever there were a case of 
the media tail wagging the political dog, this would be it.  

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love these people.  Am addicted to them.  But it’s when 
your friends do stupid things that it REALLY hurts. 

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Friday, February 7, 2020 12:55 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

 

My intention in drawing attention to critical application

development is an attempt to deepen the discussion

around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around

app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears

to be the vulnerability which exists today because

programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who

never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church

meeting passes without a discussion of the precision

engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.

 

Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame

are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute>  
encryption dispute

and the Target corp data breach <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.04940.pdf>  of 
2013. In the first case,

the federal government is confronted by the reality that a

phone manufacturer can in fact make cryptographically

challenging hand held devices. Further we can use this

powerful technology for sending our family cat pictures

which arrive at their target destinations almost without

fail and near instantaneously. There is a sense of justified

indignation when the cat photo takes more than a second

to be delivered. The state-of-the-art is such that we can

have nice things.

 

In the second case, a data breach is exploited in the POS system

of big box corporation which sells mostly useless things. Next,

a public rhetoric emerges similar to the rhetoric I am witnessing

here with the democratic primaries. Instead of pointing out that

Target corp doesn't consider our privacy a critical concern, we

speak of how impossible it is to have privacy and how vulnerable

we feel because Target corp is a critical institution.

 

Jon

 

 


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/western-society-decadence.html

From: Friam  on behalf of Jon Zingale 

Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Date: Friday, February 7, 2020 at 11:55 AM
To: "friam@redfish.com" 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

My intention in drawing attention to critical application
development is an attempt to deepen the discussion
around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around
app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears
to be the vulnerability which exists today because
programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who
never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church
meeting passes without a discussion of the precision
engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.

Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame
are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple encryption 
dispute<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute>
and the Target corp data breach<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.04940.pdf> of 2013. 
In the first case,
the federal government is confronted by the reality that a
phone manufacturer can in fact make cryptographically
challenging hand held devices. Further we can use this
powerful technology for sending our family cat pictures
which arrive at their target destinations almost without
fail and near instantaneously. There is a sense of justified
indignation when the cat photo takes more than a second
to be delivered. The state-of-the-art is such that we can
have nice things.

In the second case, a data breach is exploited in the POS system
of big box corporation which sells mostly useless things. Next,
a public rhetoric emerges similar to the rhetoric I am witnessing
here with the democratic primaries. Instead of pointing out that
Target corp doesn't consider our privacy a critical concern, we
speak of how impossible it is to have privacy and how vulnerable
we feel because Target corp is a critical institution.

Jon



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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Jon Zingale]

My intention in drawing attention to critical application
development is an attempt to deepen the discussion
around 'apps' and rhetoric. In the discussions around
app usage in the democratic primaries, the target appears
to be the vulnerability which exists today because
programmers today are a bunch of python hacks who
never read Knuth. Yet, not a single Friam mother-church
meeting passes without a discussion of the precision
engineering embodied in our Porches, Teslas, or iphones.

Of particular interest to me in directing this rhetorical frame
are the so-called-on-wikipedia FBI-Apple encryption dispute

and the Target corp data breach  of
2013. In the first case,
the federal government is confronted by the reality that a
phone manufacturer *can* in fact make cryptographically
challenging hand held devices. Further we can use this
powerful technology for sending our family cat pictures
which arrive at their target destinations almost without
fail and near instantaneously. There is a sense of *justified*
*indignation* when the cat photo takes more than a second
to be delivered. The state-of-the-art is such that we *can*
have nice things.

In the second case, a data breach is exploited in the POS system
of big box corporation which sells mostly useless things. Next,
a public rhetoric emerges similar to the rhetoric I am witnessing
here with the democratic primaries. Instead of pointing out that
Target corp doesn't consider our privacy a critical concern, we
speak of how impossible it is to have privacy and how vulnerable
we feel because Target corp is a critical institution.

Jon

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

Jon writes:

“However, I would like to draw attention to the idea of critical
application software and its place in our culture since
the Apollo missions. Applications with respect to
military drones, nuclear power plants, hospital equipment,
telecommunications, and the like. Perhaps, we as our own
special breed of democratic society do not hold elections
to be of the same criticality. Perhaps, we as a culture do
not hold sanctity in elections to be necessary. Is this possible?”

People seem to have high expectations of hospital equipment but at the same 
time often become obese or alcoholic.  When a health crisis occurs, why should 
a lack of planning constitute an emergency for others?   Our special breed of 
democratic society seems to suffer a collective case of obesity.  Probably 
nothing will happen until there is heart attack.

Marcus

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[FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Jon Zingale]

It is unfair perhaps for me to comment. I don't
imagine having a horse in the race. However,
I would like to draw attention to the idea of critical
application software and its place in our culture since
the Apollo missions. Applications with respect to
military drones, nuclear power plants, hospital equipment,
telecommunications, and the like. Perhaps, we as our own
special breed of democratic society do not hold elections
to be of the same criticality. Perhaps, we as a culture do
not hold sanctity in elections to be necessary. Is this possible?

Jonathan Zingale

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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

I mean at some point party officials wanted or were willing to try an app.  
Rather than tightly describing each aspect of its behavior and carefully 
testing each one, they trusted someone else.As if you could insulate 
oneself from liability so easily.I must really getting to be a cranky old 
man, but back when I was a kid I used assembly language!   Hardware devices did 
specific things and nothing else.  Now kids just spew dorkage at Python and 
hope for the best.   Gah.

On 2/6/20, 12:35 PM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣"  wrote:

I almost agree. But there are limits to one's understanding of any given 
thing. E.g. I probably understand more about the Banking App an employee of my 
new credit union told me to install on my Android than that employee 
understands. ... I rejected their suggestion and told them that I'm confused 
why so many people keep banking info on notoriously insecure things like smart 
phones. But I have to admit that there's a limit to the extent to which I 
understand Android phones ... and I'm almost completely ignorant of their 
Banking App. How secure is secure enough for me to *delegate* that 
trustability? If they tell me some yahoo at "VeriSign" or wherever evaluated 
it? If I use both a PIN and a pattern to unlock my phone? Etc.

You have to take leaps of faith at some point. When/where to do it is the 
question.

On 2/6/20 9:21 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It is necessary to be involved in how a thing works and have some skin in 
the game.   Management doesn't work.  Delegation doesn't work.   Technology 
that people use but don't understand just makes people stupid.


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I almost agree. But there are limits to one's understanding of any given thing. 
E.g. I probably understand more about the Banking App an employee of my new 
credit union told me to install on my Android than that employee understands. 
... I rejected their suggestion and told them that I'm confused why so many 
people keep banking info on notoriously insecure things like smart phones. But 
I have to admit that there's a limit to the extent to which I understand 
Android phones ... and I'm almost completely ignorant of their Banking App. How 
secure is secure enough for me to *delegate* that trustability? If they tell me 
some yahoo at "VeriSign" or wherever evaluated it? If I use both a PIN and a 
pattern to unlock my phone? Etc.

You have to take leaps of faith at some point. When/where to do it is the 
question.

On 2/6/20 9:21 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It is necessary to be involved in how a thing works and have some skin in the 
> game.   Management doesn't work.  Delegation doesn't work.   Technology that 
> people use but don't understand just makes people stupid.


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Prof David West]

the full story of ACRONYM, SHADOW, the App, the (lack of) expertise of those 
developing the app, the motives of those contracting for the app, the need for 
the app in the first place (attempt at transparency based on complaints from 
Sanders in 2016 when he thought he was cheated by Hillary) -- on and on, 
perfect poster child for the sad state of software engineering and a concept 
and approach for software development.

davew

On Thu, Feb 6, 2020, at 6:21 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> < We say the app failed because the systems failed – humans failed. 
> Humans built a system too complex to handle simple tasks. We often fool 
> ourselves into thinking that speed and convenience are paramount 
> values. So we maximized speed over reliability, data over truth, 
> attention over depth. >
> 
> It is necessary to be involved in how a thing works and have some skin 
> in the game.   Management doesn't work.  Delegation doesn't work.   
> Technology that people use but don't understand just makes people 
> stupid.
> 
> Marcus
>  
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>


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Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Marcus Daniels]

< We say the app failed because the systems failed – humans failed. Humans 
built a system too complex to handle simple tasks. We often fool ourselves into 
thinking that speed and convenience are paramount values. So we maximized speed 
over reliability, data over truth, attention over depth. >

It is necessary to be involved in how a thing works and have some skin in the 
game.   Management doesn't work.  Delegation doesn't work.   Technology that 
people use but don't understand just makes people stupid.

Marcus
 


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[FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[uǝlƃ ☣]

  Silicon Valley sells snake oil 'solutions'. The Democratic party fell for them
  
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/06/democrats-iowa-lessons-apps

> If the Democrats take one lesson from Iowa, it should be that simple, 
> dependable technology is better than flimsy, new technology. That technology 
> includes paper, an ancient technology that still works best for recording and 
> counting votes.
> 
> Here is a bigger lesson: it’s not about the app. Just as we fool ourselves by 
> thinking that an app will fix things, we fool ourselves by blaming an app. 
> All technologies are embedded in webs of human relations. We say the app 
> failed because the systems failed – humans failed. Humans built a system too 
> complex to handle simple tasks. We often fool ourselves into thinking that 
> speed and convenience are paramount values. So we maximized speed over 
> reliability, data over truth, attention over depth.
> 
> Maybe the Iowa glitch, one caused because caucuses are poorly designed 
> rituals and retrofitting custom software to them only widens their flaws, 
> will show us a better way forward. There is no reason to deploy gizmos and 
> magic spells when simple, steady, slow work can win – as always. Democracy is 
> not for the impatient. Democracy is too important to be trusted to the 
> “innovators”.



-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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