[EM] Arrow's axioms & an alternative to elections

[Philippe Errembault]

Hello Ernie, (please forget my previous mail/ I forgot to redirect it to the list, and I forgot to end one paragraph)



> My point is that if you want to rank multi-dimensional information,
> you will have to project your space to a one-dimensional space. This
> will be done using a function that, especially for human beings, will
> depends on your mood, on context, on... I do not know what else... the
> fact is that this will not be stable data.

* That's partly true, but I would argue that's a fundamental part of
* being human: the tension between our rationality and our emotionality.
*  In fact, I think that's one of the ways we mature, by learning to
* align our transient moods with our integral convictions and principles.
*  To try to avoid that seems to me like an abdication of  responsibility.

I don't think so. This is the good ol' classical way of viewing human being,

but it is quite simplistic. No one has ever found the seat of emotionality

and the seat of rationality. Human being is not rational. We can construct

rationality with our intelligence, but rationality is clearly not a basic structure

of human intelligence. Just see how people take decisions to convince yourself.

mostly they take decisions for emotional reasons and they try to give themselves

a rational explanation... which sounds wrong. I don't even think that aligning our

transient moods with our convictions and principles is a way to mature. I think,

this only the best way to get unhappy, or even crazy (sometimes). you should

preferably see human intelligence as the combination of contradictory tendencies,

and for me, maturity, is when you're conscious and listen most of those. ideally

when you manage to solve most of the conflicts. In some cases rationality can

help, but most often, people use rationality to hide what they do not want to

see. in those cases rationality is quite much of a handicap. I would give as example

that the most rational people are quite often not the healthiest ones.

> Even more: the space of this information could even be non Euclidian,
> because it's probably easy to determine preferences between two
> things, but if you try to establish the graph of all your
> preferences, I'm not sure you will easily obtain an acyclic graph.
> Just try to rank all your friends on the basis: which you prefer
> most... not quite easy, isn't it !?

* That's where I think I disagree with your model. Elections are not an
* abstract ranking.  They are a specific question.   For example, if the
* question is "Which friend would I want to stand by me in a dark alley?"
* or "Who do I think should organize our next party," its pretty easy to
* come up with a non-cyclic ranking.  I think elections are more like
* those questions, than an arbitrary ranking of friends.

yes, by doing that, you make the problem simpler and probably slightly

farther from reality, and then you re-complexify it by asking opinion of

many people. What I'm trying to say, is that I don't think it is appropriate

to ask a deterministic solution to a community, since you know that people

do not work that way. Human brain is the most intelligent device we know.

The society, being a group of people (all having one brain) should be able

to be something really intelligent (but we know that our best example of that

kind of intelligence is not be deterministic). I think that an election method

is removing all intelligence out of the system. That's why I tried to imagine a

way to replace the election process, while keeping democracy, and if possible

make the system smarter. Finally, the only interest of an election method is that

we can control that we can have the impression that there is no dictature (not

quite efficiently if I see the Belgian situation)

> So, what I suggest, is to have people chose one, let's say: "level
> one" representative, which will eventually be themselves, the
> obligation they have is to give this representative, proxy to vote for
> them. "Level one" representatives and only them will have to vote (and
> be obliged to) when there is something to vote for. Let us put
> restrictions on this: 1/It is strictly forbidden to chose as
> representative, someone that could have a power on you. 2/ a
> representative can only represent, let us say, at most (e.g.) 19
> persons. To be a representative, you at least need to represent
> yourself.
>
> One of the most important advantages of such a process, is that having
> more intermediate levels, gives more hindsight (not sure about the use
> of this word...) to the decision process, which could make it smarter.
> We could also compare this principle to a multi layer neural network.

* So, I think there's an interesting aspect of the value of hindsight.
* But, this idea of indirect democracy seems pretty close to what we in
* the U.S. used to have for an electoral college; its not much different
* from having state legislators elect federal representatives.  In
* practice, the actual effect seemed to be actually to *decouple* the
* interests of representatives from the low-level electorate.

There are VERY BIG difference, in the facts that
    - each representative has exactly the weight of the amount of citizens he represents.
    - And as he is directly representing a quite small number of representative from the level n-1, so, if one of them decide to
change his representation, it has quite an impact
    - And it is forbidden by law to have any relation between those two, that could make the representative of level n have the
power to influence the representative of level n-1
By the way, may I remind you that in my step three, I suggest to have various decisions paths according to the topic. which cause
quite a dilution of personal power.


* In the U.S., I would argue the purpose of democracy is not so much to
* choose the best leader (since that's not well-defined), but to hold
* leaders accountable for their actions.  Direct elections at least have
* the advantage of motivating leaders to at least appear to be serving
* the needs of their constituency (the whole population).  It may be a
* small advantage, but I suspect it is a crucial one.

I'm not sure about this but my first impression is that just holding

leader accountable for their actions is not real democracy. for the

rest, I would add that different topics should have different delays

of reaction from population to politicians. e.g. a long term program

like some economic tuning should be allowed to show it's effects

before be obliged to be abandoned, while foreign politic could have

much shorter reactions time. so different topic could be processed

at different "levels of indirection".

* Direct elections further require the electorate to be the ultimate
* arbiters of whether leaders are acting in the population's best
* interest.   One of the tenets of American democracy is that this is a
* fundamental right -- and a fundamental obligation -- that nobody should
* or can delegate.  Even if people choose to follow someone else (e.g., a
* party leader) I believe democracy is healthiest when such delegation is
* *not* managed or enforced by the state.   I think things like
* rank-order voting are a better solution to the split-vote/runoff
* problems like what you describe in France.

I don't think that system with multiple levels of representation should be

seen as delegation. It's just deciding for what you know. This is not even

forced by the state, since if you know a specific subject, you always have

right to defend it by yourself.



In my proposition, you can designate people you personally knows. In

the current voting systems, yes, you take direct decision, but on subject

or people you probably do not know. So a direct system is much more

subject to influence or corruption, and therefore, it is *not* healthier.

Philippe