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Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

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Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#81

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people. Actually, you may just have to bribe 100 or so, enough to tilt partisan things in your favor. 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addicti…

> Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people It's also much easier to force individual accountability on 500 people than 300 million. That sense of accountability is what drives compromise. Consider how often the electoral base drives compromise versus it occurring as a top-down necessity.

Where is the compromise?

Both parties are spending to please base as much as they want.

Put it to people if they want military or healthcare.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#82

Post by acd »

The underlying decision mechanism of distributed democracy is Wisdom of the crowd which means that together as a group we are much smarter than a single individual.

"The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds.[8] This has contributed to the insight in cognitive science that a crowd's individual judgments can be modeled as a probability distribution of responses with the median centered near the true value of the quantity to be estimated."

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

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#83

Post by splintercell »

acd wrote: post #82

The underlying decision mechanism of distributed democracy is Wisdom of the crowd which means that together as a group we are much smarter than a single individual. "The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton obse…

Ah, the wisdom of the crowd which accurately predicted in 2016 the Brexit and election of Donald Trump.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#85

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

erispoe wrote: post #12

Governments take thousands of decisions. Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions? We risk ending up with a "democracy" where the power is really in the end of people having enough time and / or skin in the game to actually vote. Voter fatigue is already a known effect where places that vote the most are also the ones with the lowest turnout. California and Switzerlan…

I used to think I'd like direct democracy, but after living in California for a few years I realized it wasn't at all what I'd expected. Intelligently voting on an issue requires you to invest a lot of time in understanding the topic, its pros and cons, and any far-reaching effects. It's almost like a full-time job, which is why we elect representatives!

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#86

Post by losteric »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #21
losteric wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct democracy works IF we have an educated electorate. Which America does not have, and will not have for at least a generation... all the same, it can work. An educated electorate does not imply subject matter expertise, it means ubiquitous critical thinking abilities... the ability to debate, ask good questions, analyze the credibility and argument of a subject matter expert, and having the humbleness to be pers…

Which will never ever happen. Who has time to critically evaluate every single decision that needs to be made by an effective government? That is assuming of course you could make everyone rational.

Who says they would have to? Direct democracy = direct voting, not intimate involvement with every stage of policy.

Representatives would still exist as subject matter experts that develop policy within their domain and act to convince the public. Ubiquitous critical thinking is sufficient to protect the public from demagogues and conmen - and that is an achievable goal (albeit politically challenging today)

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#87

Post by Spivak »

manigandham wrote: post #74
Spivak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would. So long as your the Average Joe makes the correct decision 51% of the time in the long run we'll turn out fine.

That makes no sense. What's the correct decision? All the people voting completely against their interests now think they're making the correct decision. Not all decisions or votes are equal and the outcome of an election can change what can even be voted on and by whom for the next round.

I'm responding to the point that voters need to be rational and educated for a direct democracy to function. It only requires that voters have a bias, however slight, to making the 'right' decision.

Don't think too much about how to define 'right' because you'll drive yourself mad. All that matters is the belief that in the long run people tend to make 'right' choices slightly more often than wrong ones.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#88

Post by MadcapJake »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

Legislators aren't ignorant, they just vote according to their corporate sponsors.

Direct democracy incentivizes the citizen to learn the issues.

My opinions aside, TFA details a system to relieve "voter fatigue" and knowledge domain issues (delegating a committee of experts to craft votable resolutions)

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