The "overlearning the game" problem • Hacker News Board

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#51

Post by Prisen » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 8:55 AM UTC

drewcrawford wrote: post #12

If you pay a man by the hour, he'll work a lot of hours. If you pay him by the brick, he'll lay a lot of bricks. These "games" are basically the equivalent of counting lines of code or checkins. We're measuring poor proxies instead of the things we're actually interested in. The solution isn't an arms race to build bigger and better proxies, the solution is to measure real things instead of artificial ones. Here's ju…

The problem with this is that all issues regarding taxation/government spending are non-orthogonal, and can't be uncoupled easily (or at all).

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#52

Post by ThomPete » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 8:58 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #41

david927 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proxies are what we have today with Congress: elected representatives. It's my understanding that the reason it was created is because technically it was too difficult to allow everyone to vote on every law. I'm saying: eliminate Congress. Allow people to vote directly on all bills. They can read various opinions online (no advertising allowed).

Pedantically, what we have in a Congress or a Parliament is trustees . They exercise but do not own the power. > It's my understanding that the reason it was created is because technically it was too difficult to allow everyone to vote on every law. It was created that way to prevent the tyranny of the majority. "A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be fel…

I think you are right to object right now, but with time mindsets will change. Each new generation moving closer and closer to direct democracy.

Technologically it's already possible.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#53

Post by wisty » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:00 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #34

david927 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fantastic response. I'm shocked at how many people have unsubstantiated fears of simply eliminating an unnecessary proxy. The reason we didn't have direct democracy before is because it wasn't practical before -- not because those elected are superior and can ignore what the people wish for. It is now practical to have a direct democracy: If we can bank online, we can vote online. In contrast, there are 26 l…

My point is, and it remains, that the problem is not technological. Is it possible now to instantly poll all citizens, at any moment, on a question of law? Absolutely. Indeed we've had that technology for decades -- since the 50s at least with tabulators and telephones. The point I am making, and which I was originally being downvoted for making, is that technology is not the point . Social dynamics are the point. An…

OK, the Roman system was better, because it had checks and balances.

You could do the same with direct representation. Have a constitution, wich can only be modified by a 2/3rds majority. Require a 2/3rds majority to execute philosophers, start wars, and murder the male population of subject states.

And Socrates was not just a kindly old Zen master, preaching peace and understanding. He was a bright guy, but as he developed philosophy he also preached against democracy in favor of some kind of military dictatorship run by philosopher kings. Some of his students led bloody revolts, overthrew the democracy, and executed hundreds of democrats before they were eventually toppled. He wasn't quite the Osama Bin Ladin of Athens, but he was responsible (in a sense) for a lot of deaths. But he couldn't be executed for that, because there was an amnesty; so they got him on some trumped up charge related to his religious skepticism.

Of course, his more philosophical (and less political) followers (i.e. Plato) painted his execution as a great miscarriage of justice.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#54

Post by david927 » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:02 AM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #47

jacques_chester wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantically, what we have in a Congress or a Parliament is trustees . They exercise but do not own the power. > It's my understanding that the reason it was created is because technically it was too difficult to allow everyone to vote on every law. It was created that way to prevent the tyranny of the majority. "A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be fel…

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, because you give realistic objections to the simplistic 'solutions' being proposed. It's easy to be 'contra' something, but it's juvenile to be against something without have a better alternative.

I'm saddened to see he's being down-voted. His arguments are rational and sophisticated. I think people are just disagreeing and that's not a good reason to down-vote.

That said, I down-voted you. Don't reduce this argument to name calling. People are voting up my arguments; you seem to be in the minority in not finding the alternative I'm suggesting to be better. That's fine. I wouldn't belittle you for it.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#55

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:06 AM UTC

jorleif wrote: post #43

loup-vaillant wrote: post #37

I think "overlearning" is not a good term (edit: it is quite accurate, though), because it tend to suggest the worst solution of all: that we refrain from learning. I prefer "lost purposes"[1]. The primary purpose of a game is generally to Have Fun. This purpose is lost if you have "solved" the game. The stated purpose of patents is to foster innovation. However it doesn't work[2]. The purpose of schools is learning.…

Overlearning/Overfitting is a term from machine learning/statistics that means that a learning system fits its learning data so well that it does not generalize to new data. The examples given in the article seem like perfect examples of this, e.g. elected officials fit the election process very well, but do not "generalize" to leading a country.

Ah. I didn't see it as jargon. I recognize the term is accurate, but my main point still stands: the connotation is still there, and still does suggest we should learn less about those systems if we want to preserve their original purpose.

Worse, the end of the post suggest we have to preserve things like schools, markets and elections, even though we learned enough to spoil them. Therefore, the only thing left to sacrifice is learning itself.

That would really really sucks: I'm curious, and I always want to learn more. There are many things I would sacrifice before I accept to put hard limits on what I am allowed to learn.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#56

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:06 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #53

jacques_chester wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is, and it remains, that the problem is not technological. Is it possible now to instantly poll all citizens, at any moment, on a question of law? Absolutely. Indeed we've had that technology for decades -- since the 50s at least with tabulators and telephones. The point I am making, and which I was originally being downvoted for making, is that technology is not the point . Social dynamics are the point. An…

OK, the Roman system was better, because it had checks and balances. You could do the same with direct representation. Have a constitution, wich can only be modified by a 2/3rds majority. Require a 2/3rds majority to execute philosophers, start wars, and murder the male population of subject states. And Socrates was not just a kindly old Zen master, preaching peace and understanding. He was a bright guy, but as he de…

Oh yeah, The Republic is a scary book. An alternative title could be Brave Ancient World.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#57

Post by utoku » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:07 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #10

It's related to Goodhart's Law: Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. This is often the result of attempting to overoptimize a system. You can optimize a race car to a huge degree, because you know exactly what you want it to do. You can't optimize a schooling system, because you don't know exactly what you want it to do. A little noise is a go…

I think the problem might be a deeper problem.

The writer of the article is asking generally about how a system's rules can be exploited to the point that the original intention of the system is no longer achievable. The sortition is also a system with rules, therefore it can be exploited. As soon as I saw the rock-paper-scissors, I remembered a competition some time ago where different bots played rock-paper-scissors against each other. Now the best bot exploited the reality of the seed number generators, compiled a database of sequences to find which seed the opponent was using, and so on.

So even sortition might be exploitable.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#58

Post by david927 » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:09 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #42

david927 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does: laws are held to be constitutional by the judicial branch. Such laws as killed Socrates are not constitutional.

You're still missing the point. Unpopular people would be made subject to laws meant to get them. This already happens in representative democracies, it would get much worse. Socrates might not be executed (depending on the constitution in question), but he might still find himself prisoner for life because the law had mandatory sentencing provisions.

And I think you're missing the point: representational government has been gamed. It's not about them being smarter and understanding the laws better (they often don't even read them, but use assistants for that); it's a bottleneck, ripe for corruption. Billions are at stake and only 535 people stand in the way; with lobbying(bribing) being perfectly legal. It's broken.

You may not like it, but it's not really up to you (or me) to decide. The people can choose to eliminate that ineffective, rotten layer.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#59

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:10 AM UTC

david927 wrote: post #54

roel_v wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, because you give realistic objections to the simplistic 'solutions' being proposed. It's easy to be 'contra' something, but it's juvenile to be against something without have a better alternative.

I'm saddened to see he's being down-voted. His arguments are rational and sophisticated. I think people are just disagreeing and that's not a good reason to down-vote. That said, I down-voted you . Don't reduce this argument to name calling. People are voting up my arguments; you seem to be in the minority in not finding the alternative I'm suggesting to be better. That's fine. I wouldn't belittle you for it.

No need to cry for me, the tide of votes seems to be turning.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#60

Post by jacques_chester » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 9:18 AM UTC

david927 wrote: post #58

jacques_chester wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still missing the point. Unpopular people would be made subject to laws meant to get them. This already happens in representative democracies, it would get much worse. Socrates might not be executed (depending on the constitution in question), but he might still find himself prisoner for life because the law had mandatory sentencing provisions.

And I think you're missing the point: representational government has been gamed . It's not about them being smarter and understanding the laws better (they often don't even read them, but use assistants for that); it's a bottleneck, ripe for corruption. Billions are at stake and only 535 people stand in the way; with lobbying(bribing) being perfectly legal. It's broken. You may not like it, but it's not really up to…

> And I think you're missing the point: representational government has been gamed. It's not about them being smarter and understanding the laws better (they often don't even read them, but use assistants for that); it's a bottleneck, ripe for corruption.

Right.

If you look elsewhere, you'll see my notes on the particulars of the US system. We have rent-seeking here in Australia, but nothing like the scale of the US.

The difference is that US Members of Congress are basically independent agents. No party discipline, and no executive constraints, prevent them from that kind of deal-making. It's down to the peculiarities of the US system, not representative democracy in general.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(Plus there's the standard libertarian argument that reducing the power of Congress reduces incentives to fiddle; but that doesn't do away with merely petty corruption).