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

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Philippe,

Thanks for your thought-provoking reply.   I get the impression you 
live in a slightly different world than I do, so I doubt we'll ever 
achieve a full understanding, but I wanted to touch on a few salient 
points.

> This is the good ol' classical way of viewing human being, but it is 
> quite simplistic. ... I don't even think that aligning our transient 
> moods with our convictions and principles is a way to mature..... In 
> some cases rationality canhelp, 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.

I probably should have been clearer about my position. I actually agree 
with you that rationality (as usually defined) is not very healthy.   
My view is of Reason, Intention & Emotion all feeding into Action, with 
a dynamic tension between Rationality, Sensitivity & Spirituality:

http://radicalcentrism.org/resources/rc-redemption.pdf

However, I still see personal choice and decision making -- 
"wavefunction collapse", if you will -  as being crucial to defining 
who we actually are.   It sounds like your model explicitly tries to 
avoid that kind of collapse of alternatives.

> 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.

Okay, I apologize for not reading/understanding your proposal.  It 
sounds like your fundamental premise is that -direct democracy- is the 
optimal situation, in the sense of leaders having clear access to the 
totality of the electorate's real-time mental state.  And that you have 
scaleable decision making built into the system, so there's no real 
concentration of power.  But you still have some professionalization 
and specialization, as  you would get with a representative democracy.  
Is that a fair summary?

It is an interesting model, and I agree it has a certain organic 
attractiveness.

I guess the one thing I am uncomfortable with is that this seems like a 
parliamentary model, where leadership is derived from the aggregate 
delegates at a given level.  One of the reasons the U.S. has an 
independent presidency is the belief that the "dynamic energy" of a 
separately empowered individual is needed to provide focus and 
direction.   Is that something that would be parallel to this kind of 
'neural legislator', or is it fundamentally incompatible with this 
model?  Or do you think that your top-level prime minister is 
equivalent to that?

-- Ernie P.

On Mar 6, 2004, at 4:31 PM, Philippe Errembault wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
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