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

91–100 of 144 posts

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#91

Post by gwern »

paganel wrote: post #36
wisty wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've edited in a link now. The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes. Also, systematic slavery, misogyny, the…

> The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. I was just reading this morning on the way to work a note made by Voltaire to Montesquieu's "De l'esprit des lois" that the decision in Socrate's trial was in fact a pretty close one, so things were not that bad (he still died, I know). I don't want to turn this into /r/politics, but look what's happening to Bradley Manning. I'm pretty sure t…

It's been argued in the past that Socrates quite deliberately provoked the jury into killing him - it's hard not to read it, see that far from being humble or defending himself he instead told them they should vote him a pension for his services to Athens, and think that this was just a case of suicide by cop.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#93

Post by Jun8 »

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…

Interesting. Somewhat akin to dithering, i.e. deliberately inserting noise in quantized signals to increase their perceived quality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither).

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#94

Post by stretchwithme »

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…

We should at least be able to select who represents us. Think proportional representation.

I think its crazy that we can hire a lawyer or auto mechanic that must do what we ask, but we cannot be represented by someone that shares our perspective.

I don't think direct voting on every issue is the answer. Having the ability to pick our own delegate and change our selection any time is better. I really don't have the time to read every bill. But we can read people and share information with others that share our perspective.

Right now we must accept representation by whoever gets the most votes. And it doesn't even have to be a majority of the votes.

We also have a big cost shifting problem. People and states seek to shift costs to the larger country. That destroys any ability to weigh costs and benefits. Pushing such assessments down to as local a level as possible improves decision making.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#95

Post by usedtolurk »

dagw wrote: post #88
usedtolurk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree with you, but as online "voting" systems become ubiquitous (likes, karma, +1's etc.) I can imagine a future where a public voting record would seem normal or even desirable.

That would require a future in which all people, despite radically different political views, can agree to disagree in a civil manner. A world in which people will never fear retribution or discrimination from those who disagree with them. A world in which the very idea of threatening or coercing people to get them to vote as you wish is simply abhorrent. As much as I'd love to live in such a world, I cannot see it h…

Sadly, I can't see such a system working either.

But I can imagine it being put into place and then being abused.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#96

Post by Jun8 »

Very interesting post!

However, I got hooked on thinking about the childhood game that he mentions briefly in the introduction. Asking more and more questions about an object and wanting all of them to be consistent is a good description of mathematics. According to Godel, both teams are bound to lose, because you cannot create a system of descriptions/properties about a system that are self-consistent (as their number increases), there will always be questions to a team whose answer will be inconsistent with the previous set of questions. The game is then to see which team can push the inevitable further.

IDEABOLT: It would be interesting to develop a program that plays this game. Each answer could be stored as an RDF statement in database.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#97

Post by pixcavator »

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…

>>Randomization means that the last percent is just not worth chasing...

True, but only in the case of complete randomization. In the case of randomization kicking in only when the election is close, one side will be chasing the last percent to get to randomization and the other to avoid it. Same thing...

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#98

Post by wiredfool »

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…

Well, we in Washington State have some experience on these things, as does California with the initiative process.

Who will write the bills? Tim Eyman, Industry Groups, Costco, and other Lobbying Groups.

Who will get sponsors? Probably the same. They'll probably pay for it. The same forces that pay for lobbyists will pour into the direct democracy process, like they've taken the initiatives.

What will we get from it? A bunch of bills, all looking for no taxes, no gay marriage, and a pony. Meanwhile, the important stuff will quietly get looted by People With Lawyers who now have no more oversight.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#99

Post by tomas »

tsycho wrote: post #90
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…

Very interesting comment, hadn't heard of Sortition before. However, I see a few practical problems with this. First, it makes it harder to fix any errors/cheating. You can ask for a reevaluation of exam papers or a recount of the ballot if you felt that something shady happened, but then what about the randomization phase. In the admissions example for instance, if after a re-eval, the composition of students in the…

The reevaluation issue could be solved if all students in the >95 percentile is assigned a random number (e.g between 0.0 and 1.0) and then the students with the highest numbers are selected.

If a re-eval happens, all students that were already assigned a random number since before will keep it, and new random numbers will only be given to the students that previously were below the threshold.

This will have the effect that the list of selected students will not change much even after a re-evaluation. Only the few with lowest numbers risk losing their place.

Re: The "overlearning the game" problem

#100

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

wisty wrote: post #18
tolmasky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any links on this? I hadn't heard of it before and am quite interested in it now, but could not come up with anything after a quick Google search for "sortation". Thanks for sharing this!

I've edited in a link now. The main disadvantage with sortation seems to be that it killed Socrates. Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes. Also, systematic slavery, misogyny, the…

> Randomly selected jurors did quite a few nasty and arbitrary things. But an elected tyrant (especially one who was willing to do anything to stay popular) might be worse. It's hard to say that sortation is bad because it allowed mistakes - every political system allows mistakes.

Exactly. The point of voting is not, repeat not to execute the will of "the people" as faithfully as possible. "The people" can be just as powerful and arbitrary as a single ruler, when it comes to that. The point of voting is to randomize so that no single entity stays in power indefinitely. (No executive, legislature, or even set of ideals can win elections indefinitely, no matter how popular they are when they start out.) In exchange for mediocre performance in the average case, you get to eliminate the almost unboundedly terrible performance of the worst case.

Post reply on HN