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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

#111

Post by visarga »

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…

> Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions?

I think the solution to voter fatigue is sortition - you select a random group of, say, 1000 people, they come together, hear the issue, vote on it, and disband. For every issue you repeat the random selection.

It is a statistical law that a randomly selected group is representative of the whole. When you have a few thousand people, they are within a couple of percent precise compared to an actual election. So a random selection (just like jury duty) could be the cheapest way to go about solving the voter fatigue problem.

An advantage of sortition is that it does away with the need for elections and political campaigning, cutting off lobbying at both ends - can't lobby a random group that always changes, and the system doesn't need political campaigns or even parties in order to function, unlike representative democracy. And it's not a new invention - sortition was the original form of democracy in Athens.

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

#113

Post by derefr »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
joshuaheard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy.

> you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy Presumably based on the laws this direct democracy enacts? Observe California and imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum. The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups. Direct democracy is better used as a check on a small group of leaders, e.g. a ri…

> The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups.

The solution: don't group people who are uncompromisingly different from each-other into the same democracy. Group them into separate democracies, and then have them interact with one-another through their state (by treaty, trade, war, etc.) rather than by trying to all be part of one giant family.

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

#114

Post by hueving »

anigbrowl wrote: post #100
andrewla wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal identity seems like a generally intractable problem, despite the lofty goals stated in the introduction. And without it, the document is built on a foundation of sand. An argument that I find myself having quite frequently about Bitcoin and pseudonymity is that pseudonymity and concealing identity is not a feature of the system, but rather that defining two-way identity in any sort of useful way is such a di…

We know multiple ways to reliably identify someone using biological markers with near-perfect accuracy. Yes, that lack of perfection leaves open the possibility of subversion, but so what? You'll grow old and die waiting for the perfect solution.

And those are not subject to replay attacks?

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

#115

Post by hueving »

derefr wrote: post #113
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy Presumably based on the laws this direct democracy enacts? Observe California and imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum. The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups. Direct democracy is better used as a check on a small group of leaders, e.g. a ri…

> The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups. The solution: don't group people who are uncompromisingly different from each-other into the same democracy. Group them into separate democracies, and then have them interact with one-another through their state (by treaty, trade, war, etc.) rather than by trying to all be part of one giant family.

The problem is the same when with 1 million people in a small area. You can't break San Jose into separate democracies.

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

#116

Post by hueving »

vertex-four wrote: post #63
aaron-lebo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a github post that tries to pass itself off as a "paper" (because it sounds official, right), and ends with "And that can change the world". Wow that's academic and objective. Why are we upvoting delusional content that lacks a real understanding of behavior, politics, and law? Because if you want to change the world, a basic understanding of that might help. He could start with Plato and Xenophon and the Tri…

Primarily because HN is very libertarian-leaning, and has a lot of people who do not understand people or societies as a result.

What a thoughtless post. You can substitute 'libertarian' with 'conservative' or 'liberal' in your phrase and it doesn't even change meaning.

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

#117

Post by hueving »

vertex-four wrote: post #96
zo1 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must think us Libertarians get insanely promoted and upvoted on HN or something. The truth is no where near that.

I see a lot more libertarian ideology appear on the front page than anything else, politics-wise, even if there's reasonable arguments in the comments. From blockchains to direct democracy to universal income, and a while back, an incredible amount of writings on property rights for some reason.

Universal income is not a libertarian idea, it's socialist.

Block chains are a technology, nothing more, nothing less. Big banks are using them and they have nothing to do with libertarianism.

Direct democracy is orthogonal to libertarianism. Structure of government is independent of desired role of government. Calls for direct democracy have surged from liberals in the US after the second wrath of the electoral college.

The only thing that is libertarian is writing on property rights.

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

#118

Post by wyager »

anigbrowl wrote: post #100
andrewla wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal identity seems like a generally intractable problem, despite the lofty goals stated in the introduction. And without it, the document is built on a foundation of sand. An argument that I find myself having quite frequently about Bitcoin and pseudonymity is that pseudonymity and concealing identity is not a feature of the system, but rather that defining two-way identity in any sort of useful way is such a di…

We know multiple ways to reliably identify someone using biological markers with near-perfect accuracy. Yes, that lack of perfection leaves open the possibility of subversion, but so what? You'll grow old and die waiting for the perfect solution.

Human biometrics are subject to spoofing, replay, and birthday attacks. You can't extract enough entropy from any extant biometrics to be useful, secure, and free of collisions (without having an intolerably high false negative rate).

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

#120

Post by mirimir »

gasull wrote: post #119

Without a monopoly of violence you don't have a direct democracy, but an opinion survey. This system doesn't enforce whatever is voted and decided.

Well, decision makers in current governments can't personally enforce anything either. You need a hierarchy that respects their authority. It'd also work with this system.
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