[EM] proxy ideas: continual consideration, and proxy committees

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 02:51 AM 4/8/2010, Thomas von der Elbe wrote:
>But what is most fascinating to me: it seems to give the system an 
>implicite tendency towards consensus, because it rewards synthesis 
>with a competitor since this gives you (and your former competitor) 
>more influence over the other competitors ... .
>
>A picture is often better than thousend words: 
>http://u.zelea.com/w/User:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Communicative_Delegation
>
>I'm very curious about your opinion.

My work is with FA/DP organizations, which are "Free Associations" 
that use delegable proxy to communicate and negotiate consensus (or, 
alternatively, to clarify disagreements). FAs don't collect and 
control power (except for communication power, which is, with DP, 
very difficult to corrupt, at least in theory). The *only* power 
developed is the real power of real consensus, which can then operate 
outside the FA.

So, right-on, Thomas. I think that FAs in general facilitate 
consensus (look at the Alcoholics Anonymous model), DP could, in 
theory, make it function on a large scale.

>And one short note: You write about "deleting" the votes after a 
>certain time to avoid having e.g. 40-year old votes.
>There is also the idea of having votes "rust", i.e. they loose 
>weight over time until they are completely gone. Another aspect: 
>Since all votes will have a timestamp, they can be filtered by age. 
>As well as by age of the voters (if they give this information) or 
>by their gender, nationality, ... .

Yeah. Vote analysis is how factions would use DP expansions to 
estimate real consensus. Age of vote, or other characteristics of the 
voter, and if the voter is a proxy, of the client and proxy/client 
relationship, would be part of how analysts would judge that the time 
was ripe for effective and powerful outside-world action. If you try 
to act in a way that doesn't have consensus, you could end up wasting 
all your time and energy getting nothing done.

Automatic expiration isn't needed and is, in fact, only a possible 
damage. FA's aren't making binding decisions at all! If it's done 
right, the FA itself remains rigorously neutral, even if everyone but 
one supports some position. The exception is with regard to its own 
process and identity. It will make decisions about operating rules, 
ownership of web sites and other trustee positions, etc.

If a debate was held five years ago on a topic, any new consideration 
of the topic should be built on the old debate, so that it doesn't 
have to be repeated. Remember, with DP, *everybody* could effectively 
review the decision and decide if it was worth revisiting, with only 
a very few trusted members actually looking at it. Efficiency is essential.

But the "new consideration" would be a new process that simply 
referred to the old. Proxy analysis can handle just about any 
problem, I expect.

Generally, in an FA, if two people want to discuss something, to 
reconsider something, they can and do. However, unless the idea is 
picked up, for without representation, this discussion won't get to 
"high-level meetings," which are meetings of highly trusted members 
(whatever level of trust works to keep the meeting size down to 
manageable levels), that are public, i.e., anyone can watch them and 
can submit comments through whoever represents them there, or through 
anybody else who might think it wise to add the comment, and who 
could submit them through their representative there, through a proxy 
chain if necessary. Thus the real FA activity is communication 
dispersed through the whole community, but with only those elements 
that are interested participating. FA/DP distributes communication 
and filtering burden, spreading it out so that nobody is overwhelmed. 
(Unless they bite off more than they can chew!)

Note that voting in "high level meetings" in an FA is open to any FA 
member. It is just deliberation (which takes up everyone's time and 
generates traffic) that is restricted.

Libertarians tend to love this when they realize the implications, 
but, note: this is not a libetarian "government," it is not a 
government at all, except over something quite narrow: a group of 
people who decide to connect themselves to a voluntary method of 
generating good advice from maximally informed representation and negotiation.

Lots of people immediately think of trying to get this going in 
governmental structures. My response is: "Hold your horses! First of 
all, this is not proven to work. Get it to work first! Second, if it 
works, and if it grows to the necessary scale, it will be trivial to 
change governmental structures, and, paradoxically, it might not be 
necessary! Almost all structures work if everyone is on the same 
page! -- except for ones which put all control in the hands of a few, 
and those are very unstable when the many oppose them and figure this 
out -- that they are many!"