[EM] language/framing quibble

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> Good Evening, Kristofer
> 
> Before responding to your most recent letter, I'd like to revisit a 
> topic mentioned in your letter of Fri, 26 Sep.  In discussing the way a 
> group of three people might resolve a traffic question involving three 
> alternatives, each championed by a member of the group, you mentioned 
> the possibility of a fourth, unrepresented, alternative.  I found your 
> suggestion stimulating.
> 
> It stimulated more than I expected because, in reflecting on it, I 
> recalled an aspect of human relations that influenced adoption of the 
> triad concept in the first place ... the tendency of small groups of 
> problem solvers to experience intuitive leaps.
> 
> In the hypothetical case we're discussing, the goal of the group is to 
> solve the problem.  It is not uncommon for such efforts to produce 
> unanticipated results.  Indeed, some enterprises seek such results with 
> 'brainstorming' sessions.  The chances of such mental leaps are severely 
> restricted (if even possible) when the decision-making group is 
> ideologically bound.  The mind is a wonderful thing.  We mustn't chain it.

That is true, and after reading, I think I've given the wrong 
impression. What I want is not so much to reproduce partisanship 
accurately as to reproduce the entire range of ideas accurately. This 
is, I think, the real idea of PR, at least as I see it: that the groups 
are accurate not just by party, but by idea distribution. In the context 
of brainstorming, such a group distributed in a good way would have more 
points of view to draw upon; in your example, they would know about the 
fourth option, so they could take that into account when deciding if, 
perhaps, there is a solution that goes beyond all these yet get 
reasonably close to the goal of the four options that were proposed.

I'll try to refine this, although I may sound a bit like I'm talking 
about cardboard persons or stickmen again. Part of this is because I 
don't really know how people are going to act, so I'm making a first 
degree approximation, to use such a term.

> And, now, to work ...
> 
> 
> re: "... why are your web log entries timestamped 2010?"
> 
> Because the site puts the most recent posts at the point where they are 
> the first encountered by visitors.  I asked the site how I could put the 
> material in 'book order', and they told me I'd have to reverse the 
> dates.  I chose a future date, and made subsequent posts at earlier 
> dates to put the material in a logical order for the visitor.

Alright. I haven't seen that kind of format elsewhere - presumably they 
list the most recent entries first so that people who come back know if 
anything's new.

> With regard to focusing on the job our representatives do ...
> 
>   "I can see the point you're making, but I think you should be
>    careful not to go to the other extreme, too.  Opinions may
>    shift, but at the bottom of things, they're the people's
>    priorities of in what direction to take society. The vagaries
>    you speak of could be considered noise, and that noise is
>    being artificially increased by the two main parties, since if
>    they can convince their wing voters they represent their
>    opinion (or change their opinion), then those voters are more
>    likely to vote for them instead of not voting at all. That
>    doesn't mean that there's no signal, though, and where that
>    signal does exist, it should not be averaged out of existence
>    or amplified in some areas and attenuated in others (as could
>    happen if the majority of the majority is not equally much a
>    majority of the whole)."
> 
> re: "That doesn't mean that there's no signal, though, and where
>      that signal does exist, it should not be averaged out of
>      existence or amplified in some areas and attenuated in
>      others ..."
> 
> I agree, but believe the signal is strongest during the selection phase. 
>  That is when people focus their attention on their "priorities of in 
> what direction to take society" and select the people they believe will 
> lead them in that direction.

Here I'll refer to what I saw in my simulations. They show that, at 
least for simple opinion models, those ideas held by a majority turns 
into a near consensus. Something has to go, and that is the ideas by the 
minority. As far as I understand, your response to that is that people 
are not static: the ostensible "majority" learns from the "minority" as 
we progress up the stages. That may be the case, and if so, that is 
good; but if not, then the method significantly limits the ideas that 
are not common to all.

I'll restate that what I'm talking about is not simple partisanship. 
Maybe a picture would work better. Consider the candidates' reaction to 
certain ideas as a plain. In some areas, you have mountains (where they 
agree very much on the corresponding idea), and in others, you have only 
small hills (where they're indifferent). Proportional representation 
would ideally construct a good replica of the combined landscape of the 
entire population.

Parties happen when those who, say, have a mountain (or a through) to 
the left (or to the north, for that matter group together to combine 
their power. If you then mix in a bit of us versus them, and of self 
interest of the mechanism itself (that is a party), you get the unwanted 
results of rigid partisanship.

What ways might a selection process fail to reproduce the combined 
landscape? It can focus too much on the mountains and deep valleys 
(common agreement and disagreement), turning the rest into simple 
unrepresented plain. That's a majoritarian distortion. Or it could 
exaggerate the small hills; that's a minority distortion. Finally, it 
could fail without pattern, but that's unlikely for voting methods, 
though it could happen in Plurality with too many candidates. In any 
event, when it does so, it reduces the council's (be it a triad or 
larger, since we're talking about council democracy in general) ability 
to properly govern; to know the people.

If the signal is strong enough during the selection phase, as you say, 
then we'll retain the shape of the map, since those selected at each 
level will have to change his own in order to be given the approval of 
the others. If not, I think the mode of failure would be to 
overemphasize that which has a majority support (in my analogy, tall 
features - mountains and deep valleys), as the simulation shows.

I'll also say that, yes, this is a very static image. Maybe the exact 
composition of the landscape isn't that important, and it's the 
reactions with time that is. But I would say that even a dynamic process 
has to start from *somewhere*, and if it starts closer to the people's 
wishes, then that is good. We should approximate direct democracy, so 
that the representatives can make the right decisions: not just when 
they refer to the preferences of the people, but when they make 
compromises based on the right data, hopefully knowing what compromises 
the people would have made.

> re: "I think you should be careful not to go to the other
>      extreme, too."
> 
> That must always be a concern.  However, the method incorporates the 
> safeguard of careful scrutiny during repetitive elections and a simple 
> means for adding other safeguards such as mandatory consultation and 
> recall.

Yes. I think recall and the likes would be important. I'm not sure how 
you would include other options - other than recall - and not slow down 
the council, but we'll see.

> re: (regarding types of bias) "... the bias I'm talking about is
>     a distortion of the wishes of the people. A method that fails
>     mutual majority might pick a candidate where a majority
>     prefers one of a set that candidate isn't in, for instance;
>     and more concretely, Plurality squeezes out the center and
>     provides incentives for two-party rule."
> 
> We agree in our opposition to two-party rule.  The method we are 
> discussing operates independent of parties.  I'm not sure you agree it 
> does so in a satisfactory manner but, if not, I can't pinpoint how you 
> feel partisanship will retain dominance.

Ignore party labels. Consider a case where some people agree with ideas 
clustered to the left, and others agree with ideas clustered to to the 
right, but many in the middle. Plurality, through vote splitting, would 
give power to one of the wings in the short term. That has nothing to do 
with whether people are organized or not, it's just Plurality's bias. 
When I say that this encourages two-party rule, it's that the left and 
right groups would find it useful to form parties so they have more 
power and not split their own vote. At least the party candidates 
migrate towards the center, but if there's a primary, that counters the 
effect (and it really doesn't work if there's two axes - left-right and 
up-down).

To be more simple, I'm working on the level of aggregation of ideas. I 
call those opinion because they say whether people agree with certain 
ideas or not, but they do not themselves imply the grouping of those 
that agree with some ideas into factions. Since I refer to aggregation 
of ideas, a partisan system can show bias, but so can a nonpartisan 
system. A nominally nonpartisan system can encourage the formation of 
parties if its biases go in just the right directions.


> re: "That means that your system acts less quickly to change."
> 
> Yes, I think that's true.  The question is whether or not that's a good 
> thing.  I believe it is.
> 
> In the first place, our lives should be governed by what most of us 
> want, not the wishes of a raucous minority.  In the second place, 
> nothing in the process impedes the normal functioning of partisanship. 
> Groups of like-minded people can still persuade the majority to accept 
> their view.
> 
> The two vital parts of the process are the guarantee that holders of 
> every view have an opportunity to persuade their peers of the wisdom of 
> their perceptions and the critical evaluations that take place at each 
> level.  These features enhance the probability that beneficial changes 
> will be adopted.

I think that's a good idea, as well, as long as it doesn't turn too 
slow. There's probably a sweet spot in this matter: if it goes too fast, 
it's prone to being guided by mindless populism. If it goes too slow, 
you can get a group who grumble about everything that's wrong and say 
"we would change it all if we could just gain power", and that group 
would grow simply because it has no challenge.

Things are going very fast currently, so having something slower might 
work well. Since parliaments and the likes don't make any direct mention 
to the sweet spot, yet still work, I'm going to assume it's not very 
sensitive to it; that is, that methods can work even if they err 
somewhat in this respect.

> re: "What I meant was that even if the majority were (by some
>      miracle) nonpartisan, parties would form out of necessity.
>      Plurality simply can't support a horde of independents. As
>      such, Plurality encourages the formation of parties, and of
>      parties to coalesce until there are two main blocks -- even
>      in the best case (where near-nobody is partisan), the nature
>      of Plurality, the method itself, shapes the results, meaning
>      that it definitely does so under less ideal conditions, such
>      as in the world today.
> 
> Whoops!  I think I just grasped what you're saying.  You're not talking 
> about the method by which candidates are selected. You're talking about 
> the way they are elected after they are selected.  There are several 
> aspects to my response.

Not directly. I meant that even though Plurality doesn't know about 
parties, its particular biases encourage parties to appear. The parties 
themselves may have any selection process (such as a primary), but even 
if people were not particularly interested in forming parties, they 
would have to do so just to patch Plurality itself. If your method 
somehow split votes (though I don't think it would), then it too would 
encourage parties to form, even if no description of the method 
mentioned parties.

> 1) The dichotomy arises because the original draft was a method of 
> selecting representatives, not candidates.  My associate in the U. K. 
> who plans to petition his Council to adopt the method, asked that we 
> change the proposal to be a nominating method rather than an electoral 
> method because that is the most he feels can be accomplished at present. 
>  The proposal, as amended to suit the needs of the Sefton petition, is 
> what I posted on this site.  In spite of that, I've continued to think 
> of and discuss the process as I originally drafted it; as an election 
> method.  There is a profound difference between seeking an office and 
> holding an office and my remarks have failed to note the distinction.

This makes me think of the ideas I've been talking about earlier on this 
list, of pseudoparties who really just select candidates for election 
and don't have much of an infrastructure beyond that. A pseudoparty may 
work as a way of introducing a better election method, though not all 
were sure whether it was a good idea. In any case, one has to start 
somewhere: you would start locally (with Sefton), he would start within 
a party.

> 2) The process, as described in the Sefton petition, will produce two 
> candidates from one ward, for election to a 66-member Council.  The idea 
> is that the people of the Church ward will choose one of the two 
> candidates to represent them.  However, the issue is clouded because 
> there will almost certainly be other candidates nominated by the present 
> establishment.  The following comments are based on the (invalid) 
> assumption that the only candidates are those nominated by the process.

Okay. I also reply as if this method used direct election, not 
nomination; in other words, that the entire council is elected by your 
method. I may refer to examples from the current state of things (with 
two parties, and so on) as I did when trying to explain how a voting 
method influence the conditions like Plurality does with regards to 
two-party rule, but those are examples, used to show the point or 
meaning more clearly.

> Since the process is not carried to election, partisans and vested 
> interests will certainly try to 'capture' the candidates.  After the 
> candidates are selected, interested organizations will support one or 
> the other of the candidates as in line with their goals and influence 
> others to elect that candidate.  Although the candidates, as selected, 
> are beholden to no-one, it is likely they will, in the natural pursuit 
> of their own interest, seek the endorsement of partisan groups in order 
> to insure their election.  In doing so, they will undoubtedly promise to 
> support the goals of their supporters without regard to the public 
> interest.
> 
> If this is the prognosis (and I believe it is), I agree with you.  The 
> results will be unacceptable.  What that tells me is that the process 
> must be carried on through election.

It's not quite what I meant, but I can see how this influence would 
degrade the method as well. I've thought of something similar when 
considering sortition methods (although I don't think they're very good 
methods now, since they break the link between the people and the 
representatives). If you pick candidates by a lottery, ahead of time, 
then the vested interests would try to capture those as well. The 
advantage of sortition in that nobody can tell who gets elected and thus 
nobody knows who to corrupt would be lost. It would not be as serious 
with non-random methods (since the candidates would resist corruption as 
they could have been corrupted earlier), but it's the same dynamic.

> 3) If the process is carried on through election, candidate's have no 
> need for the support of vested interests or partisans.  Indeed, they 
> need to be seen as free of such influences.  Thus, their self-interest 
> dictates that they maintain their integrity.  After election, they will 
> be beholden to no-one, they will have attained their seats on their own 
> merit.  That is a powerful stimulant for rectitude.

Most likely. As I think about this, I find there's a particular 
advantage, between terms at least, to your method. The random seeding 
means that it's unlikely (at least compared to other methods) that the 
same members end up in the top council each time. Thus, it's hard for 
others to corrupt the members ahead of time. I think that if one were to 
corrupt your system, it would be through the observation that the levels 
are only indirectly connected to the people, so, again, we need some 
countering method there (like recall, as mentioned earlier).

> 4) Partisanship will continue to function.  Our representatives will, as 
> we all do, align themselves with other representatives who have similar 
> views.  The huge difference is that they are not 'owned' by their 
> supporters.  They will choose their associates freely rather than under 
> compulsion.  They achieve their position on their merits and that gives 
> them the confidence to stand on the principles that raised them to office.
> 
> Vested interests and partisan groups will attempt to suborn them after 
> they are elected.  That is an eventuality we can not ignore and must, at 
> some point, discuss in detail.  For now, though, we can assert that our 
> representatives are not 'bought and paid for' before they are elected.

There would also be traditional forms of degradation: negotiations where 
  members from one district pay members from another (often indirectly, 
through allocation) to gain their support on some legislation. I don't 
know whether this would grow more scarce; if your method picks good 
members (in the ability/statesmanship sense, not the reproduction of 
ideas sense), it would perhaps diminish such things as well.

> re: "My fixes to the system would be to have a somewhat larger
>      council size and use a PR method to pick more than one
>      representative/delegate to the next level."
> 
> Regarding the PR method you mention, can you give me something specific 
> on this point so I can consider it?  The suggested method has three 
> people selecting one of their number to advance.  Can you describe how 
> you would alter this?

Have a council of seven. Use a PR method like STV to pick four or five. 
These go to the next level. That may exclude opinions held by fewer than 
two of the seven, but it's better than 50%-1. If you can handle a larger 
council, have one of size 12 that picks 9; if seven is too many, a group 
of five that elects two.

For small groups like this, it might be possible to make a simpler PR 
method than STV, but I'm not sure how.

Further refinement might include rounds, after each of which there is a 
preliminary vote; or one where, after each round of discussion, there's 
a vote and then if it's accepted by a supermajority (one or two less 
than the group size), it passes, otherwise there's a new round.

A simple PR method might be to simply propose a set of those who go to 
the next level. If a supermajority agrees, okay, otherwise continue, and 
if that goes to timeout, then the council was unable to decide.

> re: "This weakens your aim, which is to retain the experienced
>      who can convince others ..."
> 
> I'm sorry, but that is not my aim.  My aim is to improve the quality of 
> the individuals we elect to represent us in our government.  The party 
> system elevates unprincipled people, by design.  The prime requisite for 
> a party politician is the willingness and ability to 'sell his soul' for 
> election.  There is not a single flaw in our government that can't be 
> traced directly to the corruption of the people we elect to represent us.
> 
> My goal is to change that.  My aim is for people to evaluate each other 
> with regard to their views on matters of public interest.  That is the 
> reason for making odinances and budgets available to the triads.  We can 
> not guarantee they will discuss these matters ... they might spend their 
> time playing cards ... but it provides a focus and improves the 
> likelihood that they will.  In fact, those who don't wish to discuss 
> these matters can be seen to be poor prospects for public office.
> 
> In the later stages, candidates have three and four weeks to evaluate 
> each other (I recommend they be given facilities for associating with 
> each other ... offices in which to meet and recreational facilities ... 
> so they can evaluate each other in various settings and circumstances.) 
>  Ultimately, when they are required to select one of their number to 
> advance, they will not be making their decision based on propaganda, 
> innuendo or hearsay.  They will make their decision based on the best 
> judgment they've been able to form about the people they have been 
> associating with for several weeks.

Okay. Let me call that objective quality "statesmanship", as I have 
earlier. Using a PR method would decrease the statesmanship quality 
simply because you have to sample more thinly - that is, if the PR 
method is less likely to choose centrists than the ordinary method, then 
it must be less discerning about which centrist it does pick, when it is 
to pick a centrist (same for those that have other idea maps or 
landscapes). At this point you run into a tradeoff. At one end you have 
absolute proportionality. At the other end you have something like a 
good, nonpartisan judge. Or again, to be more simple, we would want to 
find people who "act in their decisions like the people would, in all 
respects but skill". The former pulls against the latter; using a PR 
method moves it closer to the former than the latter. Hopefully, it 
doesn't degrade the latter too much - maybe there's a point of 
diminishing returns, so we don't really lose much by trying to make it 
more proportional, as long as we don't go to the proportionality extreme.

> re: "... the problem, that legitimate shades of the people's idea
>      of how society should be run would otherwise be excluded ..."
> 
> This runs up against the everlasting question of "Who decides which are 
> 'legitimate shades of the people's idea of how society should be run'?" 
>  I submit the people others have decided are the best spokespeople for 
> their views are the most logical people to make such decisions.  The 
> repetitive nature of elections insures that the topic is constantly 
> re-visited.  Personally, I'd favor annual election cycles, but every two 
> years wouldn't be bad.

The voters decide. That's why it's important that the landscape of the 
council doesn't differ too much from that of the people, because each 
such instance is one where the council's decisions may differ from that 
of the people. In practicality, one has to weight the various concerns 
(as I explained in the previous paragraph).

As for election cycles, ideally the concept of what is legitimate shades 
of the people's idea should be updated continuously. This is obviously 
not possible. Again there's a decision to be made: if you have long 
cycles, you can keep the system from being too sensitive (and 
short-sighted), and also the overhead is reduced. But if they're too 
long, the system reacts too slowly, and more importantly, the candidates 
may start to drift from the positions they were elected to keep, towards 
self interest instead. The extreme of a long cycle would be where 
there's no cycle at all. Kings and other unelected rulers have no 
feedback at all (except the threat of revolution), so they do what they 
please.

Perhaps one could have a gradually changing system. This would be more 
appropriate for large areas, but the legislature could be set up so that 
different districts are re-elected at different dates, with the ultimate 
  result that the entire legislature (or parliament, or whatnot) is 
changed in a year, or two years. This could also reduce the surrounding 
circus: if there are elections throughout the year, elections aren't 
that special and so wouldn't be intensely covered.

> re: "The exact size of the council would have to be found out by
>      either trying, or by reasoning. I understand the reason for
>      picking three, as you gave in your earlier post, so it's
>      likely that inreasing the council size would make it less of
>      a discussion and more formal, which we don't want."
> 
> I'm not certain of this, but I believe you are using the word 'council' 
> to mean what I refer to when I say 'triad'.  Changing the term stems 
> from the desire for a larger group size, so 'triad' would be 
> inappropriate.  If I'm wrong in this, what follows is invalid.
> 
> As you note, I've explained the rationale for settling on a group size 
> of three.  In addition, I think the size should be an odd number to 
> reduce the chance of deadlock and it should be appropriate in any 
> electoral jurisdiction, whether district, municipality, county, parish, 
> precinct, state, nation, township, or ward.  You do not feel three is an 
> optimum size, but I'm not clear on why you feel that way.  Can you 
> describe the purpose of increasing the size?

Yes, I use council in a general term for what you call triad, as triad 
wouldn't make sense if it turned out to be larger than three.

The purpose of increasing the size is so that ideas that are evenly 
distributed get their fair share. I feel three is not an optimum 
because, even though smaller group sizes are better because they lead to 
discussion instead of meeting-like prepared speeches, some areas of the 
idea "space" can go unnoticed simply because less than a third hold 
them, or because the member elected can't represent more widely (as all 
people have limits to their ability).

So I give up some of the simplicity, but hope to gain more accuracy.

> re: "What we'd need would be to understand how quickly the
>      council degrades as its size increases, in comparison to the
>      gains elsewhere (in accuracy and in agreement)."
> 
> This is an area where you appear to have some expertise.  Do you think 
> it's possible to build a simulation which incorporates the reticence of 
> many people to speak up in the face of multiple people?  These are the 
> very people who may have insight into the 'legitimate shades of the 
> people's idea of how society should be run'.  If they are to be heard, 
> they must have an environment in which they can speak freely.  There's a 
> better than even chance they will gain courage when they find their 
> views acceptable, even applauded, in small groups.

I don't know, because I don't know the degree to which people are 
influenced in this way. It may be possible to do so, but I think the 
simulation would become more complex. At least, much has been written 
about how groups have their own dynamics (about groupthink and similar 
effects), and how people adjust their own views to fit that of others 
(e.g Asch's line-drawing experiments).

> May I also note my conviction that increased size will not result in 
> gains in accuracy and in agreement.  I am not convinced that one person 
> can reflect the views of eight people from a group of nine (for example) 
> people any better than, and perhaps not as well as, one person can 
> reflect the views of two people.  I think your point is that, at a 
> subsequent level, one person is, indeed, selected to reflect the views 
> of eight people, but four of those people did not express their views to 
> the person selected.

Yes. Also note that, for a PR algorithm, the one person out of nine 
reflect some of the views of that group. Another reflect other views. 
Which do what depends on the voting order, which again are given by how 
the nine judge the others to represent their views.

> Diagramatically,
> 
>           a
>     a     b     c
>    ade   bfg   chi
> 
> where 'd' and 'e' select 'a', 'f' and 'g' select 'b', 'h' and 'i' select 
> 'c', and at the next level, 'b' and 'c' select 'a', 'a' represents the 
> eight people, 'bcdefghi'.  I believe you are suggesting it might be 
> better if the nine people selected their representative directly.
> 
>        a
>    abcdefghi
> 
> In my tentative opinion (pending your analysis), I think a minority 
> opinion held by 'g' (for example) has a greater chance of influencing 
> the selection ... and the opinions ... of 'a' by 'g's influence on 'b' 
> than 'g' has of influencing 'a' directly, when 'g' must compete with 
> 'bcdef' and 'hi'.  One reason I think so is that 'b' is a better 
> spokesperson than 'g'.  That's why 'b' is selected to speak for 'f' and 
> 'g'.
> 
> Stated another way, it appears to me the competition of ideas faces 
> greater obstacles in larger groups.  When 'g' is one of nine people, the 
> minority view must be offered in the face of greater opposition.  Not 
> only is 'g' less likely to speak, but 'g's voice is more apt to be 
> stifled by the disagreeing majority.
> 
> Note also that, although I've shown 'b' as the selection of the group 
> 'bfg', if 'g's presentation of the minority view is compelling, and 'g's 
> personality is not averse to advancement, 'g' may be selected to 
> advance, and, at the next level, 'g's presentation faces less 
> competition (in terms of voices) and a greater chance of acceptance.

It's more like (if we elect three out of nine and it's always the second 
who wins -- to make the diagram easier)

             e  n  w            Level 2
            behknqtwz           Level 1

   b  e  h   k  n  q   t  w  z  Level 1
  abcdefghi jklmnopqr stuvwxyzA Level 0

The horizon for all the subsequent members (behknqtwz) is wider than 
would be the case if they were split up into groups of three. In this 
example, each person at a level "represents" three below him, just like 
what would be the case if you had groups of two, but, and this is the 
important part, they have input from the entire group of eight instead 
of just three. Thus some may represent all the views of less than three, 
while others represent some of the views of more than three. The latter 
type would be excluded, or at least heavily attenuated, in the triad case.

> re: "... there is still a limit to how wide a span a single
>      representative can hold - how many different solutions he
>      can contemplate and argue in favor of - so the method (and
>      any method) will still exhibit a quantization of the ideas
>      of the people, and the same question returns; is it worse or
>      better than other methods?"
> 
> An extremely inportant factor in determining the "span a single 
> representative can hold" is the openness of the representative's mind. 
> Representatives selected ideologically are, by definition, 
> narrow-minded.  If our method produces representatives with more open 
> minds (as it is specifically designed to do) the span of concepts they 
> can entertain is much broader, naturally.

That's true, and this may be a factor I haven't thought about. If we go 
too much towards representation, we might get some members who 
represents a single minority very loudly. However, if the council 
mechanism contains a supermajority agreement for the next level, I think 
that would be diminished, since that loud "ideologue" would have to 
compromise in order to be accepted.

> re: "(And also, is the quantization biased so that the method may
>      give feedback like the two-party entrenchment of Plurality?)"
> 
> So far, I've seen no reason to imagine that it will.  The process does 
> not deny the existence of partisanship but avoids it by focusing on 
> issues facing the community.  That one's ideological bent affects one's 
> view of those issues is a given, but the issue won't be decided on 
> ideological grounds but on the practicality and persuasiveness of the 
> proponent's arguments.

You're probably right here, since I can't quite see how parties would 
work. Unless they can somehow produce people who are much more skilled 
or much more clever at winning over others, they would have little means 
to bias the first level. They might work by framing the argument outside 
the decision process - e.g by influencing people to think "what really 
matters is left versus right, you can't let a communist in there", or 
similar. But then, they would look more like interest organizations than 
parties. People of the same views could also organize and try to hone or 
polish their position, but again, that wouldn't quite be a party either.

> re: "... if the councilmembers can hold many opinions, or a range
>      of opinions, and deliberate among those, the effect of
>      exclusion is significantly reduced, but it'll still be
>      there, and it may or may not still exhibit the "shaving off
>      significant, but thinly spread, areas of opinion" effect,
>      only with ranges of opinion taking the place of stick-man
>      type "either you're with us or without us" opinions. I don't
>      know whether it would, since it'd depend not only on the
>      system, but also on the integrity of the councilmembers."
> 
> It is not practical, possible or desirable to represent all the opinions 
> extant.  Whether a suggestion is significant depends on the views of 
> those who hear it as well as the persuasiveness with which it is 
> presented.  Furthermore, its significance varies with its practicality 
> at the time it is offered.  That which is impractical during one 
> election may be practical during the next.
> 
> The point is that significant opinions can (and will) be offered in 
> every election and the random selection of group members insures the 
> view will be presented to a wide sprectrum of the electorate.  The fact 
> that the opinions are offered and discussed will influence the outcome, 
> depending on the multitude of factors surrounding it.  We can not 
> guarantee that all opinions will be accepted.  All we can do is provide 
> an environment in which all opinions will be heard.

We know that it's not possible to represent all opinions, short of a 
direct democracy where all participate. Some opinions, views or ideas 
will be lost - but if we're going to lose some of them, lose as little 
as possible (while being consistent with the other goals). An 
environment where the opinions that will be heard, or will be easily 
suggested, correspond with those the people would have suggested, is a 
good one; for suggestion and for finding acceptable compromises.

> The integrity issue is paramount.  To quote something I once heard:
> 
>     "... in looking for people to hire, you look for three
>      qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they
>      don't have the first, the other two will kill you."
> 
> Several considerations led me to the method I've described, but assuring 
> the integrity of our representatives was foremost among them.
> 
> The question of integrity is subjective.  We can never truly know what's 
> in another person's heart.  Neither can we know how they will act in the 
> face of various challenges.  All we can do is give ourselves a way to 
> evaluate each candidate's qualities over a sufficiently long period of 
> time to make a reasonably accurate judgment.  Doing so repeatedly, with 
> ever more interested people, may not guarantee that we'll never select 
> an unprincipled individual, but the chances are incomparably better than 
> letting oligarchic party leaders make the selection for us.

What do you think of ordinary rank ballot multiwinner systems, where 
anybody (or nearly, probably with some threshold so the ballot isn't 
swamped) can run? Then it's not the oligarchy that determines who we 
will choose, since the voters can rank independents or rank party 
members in another order than what the party elite wanted.

That may be a bit off-topic, and this is getting long, but I just 
wondered, since you're talking about oligarchic party leaders.

> re: "The councilmember could lie his way to the top. This could
>      be softened by recall; in some proposed council democracies,
>      the councils are permanent and a majority at level (n-1) can
>      recall a council at level n, but even with only the
>      population to have recall at the end of the process, it
>      would weaken the incentive to lie."
> 
> The councilmember that achieves selection (election) by duplicity 
> becomes (except for offices such as mayor, governor, president, or other 
> singularity) a member of a parliament, a town council, a diet, a 
> congress, or some such body.  I submit their effect on the body will be 
> small, but that is only conjecture.  The point is that such individuals 
> can be the spoiled apples that rot the barrel.  That may be true, but it 
> takes time.  It has taken over 200 years for our existing barrel to 
> reach its present stench.  A fresh barrel will give us time to devise an 
> even better method.

For offices like mayor, governor, etc, it might make sense to either be 
parliamentarian (the parliament decides) or to have a second round, 
consisting of a single-winner election among those who got to the final 
level. The latter would permit some influence by the sort of powers we'd 
not want (as mentioned above, regarding the difference between election 
and selection), but considerably less than if they were all 
party-nominated.

> I am not competent to offer an opinion on the Commission of the European 
> Union.  The electoral method(s) you describe do suggest that 
> accountability would be a problem.  As we've discussed here, it would be 
> trivial to add a recall capability to the Practical Democracy process. I 
> think it also worth noting that there are alternatives short of recall.  
> Even though my personal preference is to allow our representatives use 
> their judgment, the inherent bi-directionality of the process allows 
> direct transmission of questions on specific issues to and from the 
> electors.  It gives us the means of guiding our representatives.

The accountability problem, I think, lies in the number of levels one 
has to traverse. Our options is to either compensate for it in the 
determination process (where candidates travel upwards through the 
layers), or by having more tools on hand after they've been chosen. I'm 
not really sure how one would anchor the layers to the people in the 
first process, though each councilmember will be so to some extent 
already by the other members of the council of that layer. So that 
leaves the second. We've already discussed recall. What other "tools" do 
you think could be used? One could also fix it indirectly, by 
strengthening the people's power, such as by initiative and referendum, 
automatic sunset laws, and the likes.

> re: (with regard to the bi-directional nature of the process) "To
>      briefly repeat what I've said, I think bidirectionality is
>      going to be particularly important here, simply because the
>      method contains multiple elections (one for each level), not
>      just one, so the bidirectionality is not just from the final
>      to the people, but to all the other levels as well. Thus, if
>      there's a dilution of responsibility that must be
>      compensated for by bidirectionality, that dilution happens
>      multiple times, and so the compensation has to be all the
>      stronger."
> 
> I believe we agree on the importance of bi-directionality.  Can I take 
> it that you mean by the latter part of your comment that the elected 
> official must be responsible to all those whose choices resulted in his 
> ultimate selection ... the entire chain of people from the first level 
> to the last?  That is my view, and I believe it to be yours as well.

Yes. I'll amend that slightly so I don't exclude my own PR versions: The 
official should be responsible to those who elected him to the degree 
that their vote contributed to his election.

The councilmember on the next level down would in turn be responsible to 
those the next level down from that, and so on, all the way down to the 
first level, which is the people.

> re: (with regard to the diagrammatic depiction of a single-axis
>      division of the electorate) "The relevance of this problem
>      as regards the council democracy / triad system is that the
>      "l" and "r" voters are majorities, but neither L (the
>      majority choice of the l-majority) nor R (the majority
>      choice of the r-majority) is a good candidate. This shows
>      how the true center may be eliminated for opinion ranges
>      (not binary opinions) in a kind of real-valued variant of
>      vote-splitting.
> 
>      If the council deliberation works similar to Condorcet, the
>      effect will be weakened, since a Condorcet election with a
>      middle candidate inserted above (at 0.5) would elect the
>      middle candidate:
>        40: L > M > R    (left-wing group)
>        10: M > R > L    (middle group)
>        40: R > M > L    (right-wing group)
>      and M is the Condorcet Winner.
> 
>      The effect might happen between councils, though, even if
>      they don't happen (or happen only weakly) inside councils."
> 
> I'm sorry, but I do not understand the comment.  My lack of 
> understanding may flow from my inability to envision the political 
> aspirations of humans as a single-axis phenomenon.  Indeed, that was the 
> reason for my intial comment to Brian Olsen, on this thread.  As well as 
> I can understand the description, it presumes the most important 
> question in an election is whether the left-wing group, the middle 
> group, or the right-wing group will triumph.  From my perspective, the 
> only important question is whether or not the people triumph.

I used the single axis as a simplification. My point was that if people 
act like in primaries, then you can get a division into left and right 
that are more extreme than would really be desired. However, if they act 
like Condorcet voters, the chance of that is significantly reduced. 
There's a problem with the latter, in that at level n, you don't know 
how many at level n-1 supported the candidate, and how many did it just 
because it was a compromise, so the distribution is lost.

If you want to get really complex, you could use a PR method with larger 
councils and count how much above quota each elected member is. Then 
weight their votes by this. That would reduce the "minority of 
minorities" problem, but, eh... it feels a bit too complex to me, and 
majority flips are rare anyhow.

> re: "Confidence in their position is a good thing, as long as
>      that projection does not lead from confidence to
>      overconfidence and detachment from those groups of the
>      people that do not share the councils' positions. Since a
>      majority is transformed into near-consensus as the
>      candidates/councilmembers bubble up through the levels, the
>      effect would probably be more severe the further up the
>      levels you got, and the more levels there are in general."
> 
> Detachment from the will of the people will invoke, at the very least, 
> rejection during the next candidate selection process.  Clearly, limits 
> on terms of office are important, so officials are obliged to stay in 
> touch with their constituents.
> 
> This raises a side issue that should be considered at some time, 
> although probably not right now:  Re-election is by no means assured 
> and, possibly, uncommon.  I anticipate a high turnover rate because the 
> process is extremely sensitive to changing conditions.  That's a good 
> thing for the people.  However, if that's the case, we must provide 
> something similar to the G. I. Bill of Rights (used in the U. S. to help 
> military people rebuild their civilian lives after discharge) for public 
> officials who are not returned to office.

I think that's a good idea. The metaphorical blow of the term ending 
without chance of re-election could be softened by the idea I gave 
earlier, of having a body (legislature) that replaces old members with 
new ones gradually. Apart from that, I won't get into it now, since, as 
you say, we should probably not consider it right now.

> re: "... I've been considering similar ideas, myself; such as
>      laws having a sunset that depends on how great a majority
>      passed it, or on a president having a variable-time term
>      depending on his victory margin."
> 
> I enjoyed your suggestions for improving governance.  Several of them 
> hadn't occurred to me and are worthy of careful thought.

Some of the probabilistic ones or those predicated on diminishing 
approval have to be considered very carefully, since the opposition may 
challenge, challenge, challenge, and challenge again, hoping they'll get 
lucky once. That's the kind of thing that earned Canada's Quebec 
sovereignty referenda the nickname "neverendum".

> There are, in my view. three fundamental things wrong with our political 
> system:  The way we maintain our laws, the way we tax, and the way we 
> select those who represent us in our government.  Unfortunately, it will 
> be impossible to improve the first two until we change the last.
> 
> 
> 
> I've been wondering ... do you think it would be possible to build a 
> table of points with some kind of 'rate of acceptance' for each of us, 
> and carry it forward from post to post?  If we can find a way to do it, 
> it will help us identify our areas of disagreement and allow focus on 
> the most thorny parts.

Perhaps. If it could be done, I think it would be good, since these 
posts are getting quite long. I'm not sure how you'd quantify rate of 
acceptance, but it's worth a try.