Great post. I face this everyday in my job at an "old media" company. There are policies, rules and constraints in place which served some purpose at some point in time, and haven't been challenged for years. Unlearning the rules of established games is almost as important as evolving them. Everything should be questioned and challenged to find the root of the point of the rule/law/restriction and if it doesn't make sense any longer, throw it out.
The "overlearning the game" problem
111–120 of 144 posts
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#112Earlier 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…
Online banking does not require customers to read 875 pages of legalese in order to have a chance of noticing and understanding the line that grants a $200,000,000 tax break to Exxon.
I think that the claim that it is now practical to have a direct democracy needs some support. Can you point to a smaller group which is governed in this manner? To a working prototype of transitive voting code? I am prepared to be persuaded, but the practicality seems far from obvious.
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#113Earlier 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…
I don't want to turn this into /r/politics, but look what's happening to Bradley Manning. I'm pretty sure that even if he were to be put to trial in front of a civilian court the call won't be as close as in the case of Socrates, for a lot of different reasons which I'm not going into details now.
Despite being a cause celebre, the fact remains that Manning's alleged actions were, in fact, illegal. Not that jury nullification doesn't happen, but it's actively discouraged.
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#114Earlier 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…
I'm late to the table and you might not read this, but something conspicuously absent from this conversation is a discussion of the representative nature of the US government by _state_. The higher legislative branch gives more weight to states as individual entities for very precisely balanced reasons. In a very real sense it is not representatives that act, but states themselves. This has been incredibly important,…
In other words, the popular vote is disregarded because different 'types' of people shouldn't have too much power: the density of cities should not grant that population dominion over the agrarian folk.
In practice, the system grants sparse populations dominion over the majority. There's no well-thought-out philosophical reason for this, by the way, this was just a compromise states like Virginia had to make to get states like Rhode Island to agree to the Constitution.
Philosophically, people are people. Why should they be effectively disenfranchised for choosing to live in cities rather than in the mountains?
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#115Earlier 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…
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.
It seems like you're attributing the ideas in The Republic to Socrates. Of the Socratic dialogues written by Plato, some of them were fairly faithful representations of conversations Socrates actually had and others used Socrates as a fictional character to argue for Plato's ideas. The Republic falls firmly in the latter category.
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#116Earlier 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…
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?…
Anyone who lives in Washington and California knows the contradictory results you get from this. If you ask the people "hey, do you want stuff?" they vote "yes, we want stuff". If you ask people "hey, do you want to pay for it" they vote "no, we don't want to pay for it".
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#117It'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...
Maybe the randomization could be weighted by the individual percentages. For example, randomize if the candidates are within 1%, but give the higher-voted candidate an increased chance of winning weighted by how far apart they are. That way the difference kicks in slowly, reducing the incremental value of additional votes in a reasonably smooth fashion.
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it is a good idea at all. If the political power boiled down to picking paper over scissors, the loosing side may very well ascribed no legitimacy to the outcome. That is almost certainly going to end far worse than actually counting all the votes (i am looking at you, supreme court). The same problem happens with your exam example. Why is it fair that someone less competent than you got in? A better so…
It would just be recognizing the jitter that exists inherently in the system. You will always get a different number when counting the votes, so you can end up with a "50% voted for both" situation. Why is flipping a coin worse than pretending the next count will be more correct? You kind of contradict your own point by implying the supreme court didn't supply legitimacy to the election. Nobody can blame a quarter fo…
The trouble is that getting people to recognize that is really hard, and just changing how the system works probably won't do it. If you want to politically antagonize nearly any American with a strong political affiliation, regardless of what that affiliation is, just tell them that the margin of error in the 2000 presidential elections was far larger than the difference in votes, and therefore both candidates were about equally legitimate winners.
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#119Less Wrong talks about this a lot; their term for one variant of it is "superstimuli". What's the difference between your "overlearning" and "hacking"? They sound like the same thing. This phenomenon is the reason for the Wikipedia rule, "Ignore All Rules".
Ironically, if you actually do ignore all rules on Wikipedia the process and policy wonks will crucify you. In fact, WP process and policy is another great example--the original purpose was to write an encyclopedia, but now it's just used as a forum to bicker over the internet.
Re: The "overlearning the game" problem
#120It'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…
Over-optimization of race cars can be bad too. Take the recent popularity of vintage racing. People don't want to watch 50 similar-looking, generic, computer-designed, air-tunnel-tested, same-engine cars going around a round track.
What they want to see is unique and historical body styles for every company in the race, powerful cars vs. nimble cars, finicky engines, twisty turns and long straightaways, etc.
Could be an example in the original post, really. Over-optimization leads to a worse sport.