Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The "overlearning the game" problem

andrewoneverything.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 144 posts

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#71

Post by roel_v »

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.

You're not suggesting an alternative, well maybe in the most abstract sense, but in your post several levels up from here there is not even a hint at how to address even just the most obvious flaws in letting people vote for each bill. There's no 'argument' made, just a cry for revolution - of the type that is very common amongst high school and undergraduate students; rising from a simplistic world view that fails to recognize that there is a reason why we've some to the situation where we are now, and that radical, sudden changes very seldom lead to the outcomes that they were designed to lead to. 'Juvenile' was not name calling; it's an (albeit unqualified and broad-stroked) description, or maybe rather 'characterization', of the argument and the context that lead to it.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#72

Post by krschultz »

david927 wrote: post #29
drewcrawford wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US founders specifically rejected that system because it leads to majoritarianism. It would be wonderful if you could cite a few primary sources discussing a direct vs indirect legislative branch as leading to majoritarianism, whether a longitudinal study or quotation of the appropriate historical person. You can still have separation of powers, judicial oversight, bills of rights, local governments, federalism…

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…

"The reason we didn't have direct democracy before is because it wasn't practical before "

Is simply not true. Why did we (and by we I mean land owning white men) vote for congressmen directly but not senators or the president? Obviously the mechanism for voting was in place, but they did not use it for 2 of the 3 federal offices. They were specifically trying to distance the choice of president and senators from the poeple. It was only later that the voting base was expanded, people started voting directly for senators and the president (and technically, it's still a little indirect to the president).

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#73

Post by danmaz74 »

erikb wrote: post #62
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…

It is just very hard to measuer real things. One program is not like the other. How do you want to measure success in a software project, where the result is actually not even clear to the customer?

The real problem with measuring real things is that real things have infinite dimensions. You can only measure along a limited number of dimensions, and if you want to make a ranking you can only directly compare one (scalar) dimension at a time.

So in the end you will always get overoptimization over those dimensions you are measuring, to the detriment of the other dimensions. I don't think there is a better solution than continuously changing the dimensions of measurement.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#74

Post by DanielBMarkham »

We run into this situation in programming quite a bit. The answer is refactoring: taking the principles and patterns that work, streamlining them, ditching the cruft that works for a few edge cases but mostly gets in the way, simplifying the underlying metaphor of the system, and re-asssembling.

The only way to do this with much larger systems, such as systems of governance, is revolution or exploring new lands. Personally I'm a bit concerned about revolution -- the assumption with refactoring is that the people refactoring understand what the "good" parts are and what the "bad" parts are. They also need to be able to generalize and simplify in order to keep the system cognitively approachable. In my experience, it's very easy to be angry-tear-down-the-system guy, very difficult to actually refactor. As the author points out, it's not that these systems are entirely useless. The hell of the thing is that the reasons for creating these systems are still very valid.

I remain convinced that programmers (hackers) have a lot to add to the discussion when talking about complex, brittle systems. After all, we spend a lot of time both working with them and fixing them. To me, programming and systems architecture is applied philosophy. Very cool stuff.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#75

Post by pyrhho »

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…

> Today it is feasible to directly poll everybody about every issue, so we no longer need the proxy. If you say everyone cannot be educated about every issue, fine, I can "follow" PG's votes on wall street reform and grellas's votes on IP tort reform [...]

You'd love Hyperarchy (http://blog.hyperarchy.com/2011/07/19/hyperarchy-democracy-f...)

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#76

Post by dagw »

david927 wrote: post #29
drewcrawford wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US founders specifically rejected that system because it leads to majoritarianism. It would be wonderful if you could cite a few primary sources discussing a direct vs indirect legislative branch as leading to majoritarianism, whether a longitudinal study or quotation of the appropriate historical person. You can still have separation of powers, judicial oversight, bills of rights, local governments, federalism…

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…

If we can bank online, we can vote online.

Only if you ignore that pesky anonymous voting problem. I want my bank to know exactly what transactions I made when, and keep detailed logs of those transactions. I don't want some government body have detailed logs of exactly how I voted.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#77

Post by aconbere »

There was a book written in the 80's that covered the overarching philosophical discussion on this kind of thinking about games. The author broke games into two categories: finite and infinite.

Finite games like the one invented by the children described by the OP have end states, they have winners, and the goal within them are always framed from that perspective. While infinite games have no winners, have no end, and the goals are often framed around ensuring that the game never ends.

It's easy to think of finite games in our lives, they are everywhere in our society, and the OP does a good job of pointing out some of the less obvious cases. Infinite games are less obvious, the one that I found most illuminating was "language", a game where people actively collude to extend the game to the end of time, and has no winner.

Anyay, it's an interesting read, but a little bit mumbo-jumbo by the middle of the book. I would recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-Vision-Possibili...

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#78

Post by adrianN »

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…

This would not work in practice at all because it assumes that most people are sufficiently well educated, informed and interested to make a sound decision.

I for one would not want to spend much time on reading new law proposals and thinking about their exact meaning and implications, that's the job of a politician who is actually paid to do that.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#79

Post by redthrowaway »

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…

As you allude to, the problem with direct democracy is that people are stupid. Not all people about all things, but most people about most things. The realm of human knowledge is simply too vast for anyone to have a broad command of, so we specialize. This means that, for any given issue, the vast majority of people are ignorant about its specifics. Thus we cannot expect the masses to make wise decisions about most issues. The obvious counter-argument to this is education, that educating the public on the issues at hand would lead to better decisions. However, that would fall victim to the same demagoguery and corruption that we see infecting politics today.

By way of illustration, think of an issue that you care deeply about and are well-informed on. Now ask yourself if you would trust the public at large to make policy on it. For every pg, grellas, or Schneier, you'll have far more popular Becks, Palins, and Bachmanns. Direct democracy would be inherently susceptible to such demagogues, and as such cannot be seen to be any more reliable, or likely to produce wise policy, than the current system.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#80

Post by jacques_chester »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #74

We run into this situation in programming quite a bit. The answer is refactoring: taking the principles and patterns that work, streamlining them, ditching the cruft that works for a few edge cases but mostly gets in the way, simplifying the underlying metaphor of the system, and re-asssembling. The only way to do this with much larger systems, such as systems of governance, is revolution or exploring new lands. Pers…

Refactoring is what political types call 'reform'. Reformations are safer than Revolutions, because revolutions dissolve all civil structure. They allow the ruthless sociopath to prosper.

What programming has taught me is humility in the face of complexity. Refactoring only works because we can, at a stroke, reverse our changes; because we can place those changes in isolation and test the heck out of them.

But society, constitutions, laws: they are not software systems. A revolution can't be rolled back. A constitutional change is a hotfix applied to a running system. It's important to be careful.

You might find reading Burke on the French Revolution interesting; also Oakeshott on conservatism (the intellectual kind, not the god-n-guns kind).

Post reply on HN