Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#141

Post by JonnieCache » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 1:48 AM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #139

JonnieCache wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is. The only argument against this is a statistical one, akin to how entropy works: One should engage in revolution only when the set of likely worse systems is larger than the set of likely better systems. (I could probably state this better if I…

You don't really need matrix terminology - just a bit of economic theory and an understanding of basic statistics. Essentially, you want to measure the 'quality' of each outcome (utility), and the likelihood of each outcome. Then, you calculate the expected utility (which is different from the utility of the expected value - you apply the function before taking the dot product, not afterwards). I'm blanking on the Te…

Thank you for that. I cannot upvote enough. This subthread, with its heady blend of mathematics, philosophy and violent uprising is why I keep coming back to hacker news.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#142

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 1:56 AM UTC

LeafStorm wrote: post #136

nitrogen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with. Let us vote from our civic centers (e.g. the net) and we'll do so in much higher numbers. Increasing the barrier to political participation has the effect of excluding all but the highly motivated, thus pushing politics toward extremes.

> One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with. You didn't go to high school or the library growing up?

Sure, but they were far from being a place I'd like to revisit, especially not on election day. The Internet is the community commons of today just as much as a library or city building was 30-40 years ago.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#143

Post by chernevik » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 2:17 AM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #11

American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice: Force your legislature to start using version control. * No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing. * Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses d…

This already exists, it's called legislative history, it's in the Congressional Record. It's a document of all submitted bills and their admendments, floor discussion, hearings, etc.

If we presume that Congressmen are actually trying to get away with something, even parsing all that stuff won't help. B/C they'll take the real discussions some where else, they'll "amend" the first bill to completely replace it just before the vote, etc. And when we consider the enormous dollars at stake -- these guys are managing 25% of the US economy -- there will be so much going on that it's just not possible to follow what they're doing.

If you want transparency, you have to build for transparency. You may have to sacrifice some things to get it. If complexity is generating opacity, you need more simplicity. If _size_ generates complexity, and / or diversity of purposes, you have to scale and or scope down. If that means government "does less", that's a tradeoff for transparency.

Me, I think transparency is a pretty high priority in a democracy, I'm not sure how you have reasoned debate without transparency. That fits happily with my opinion that free people generally do a pretty good job of taking care of themselves, but there are other opinions of our current situation. But if we _must_ have a big government to do this that and the other, we are going to sacrifice some degree of accountability and reasoned discussion to have it, because we are clearly at the point where it's just about impossible to tell who's doing what in our government.

That is, unless you believe the rhetoric of whomever it is marketing some viewpoint seemingly closest to your own, and prefer to blame the other guys for the whole mess. There is, of course, no transparency problem with making such assessments.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#144

Post by noahth » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 3:21 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #142

LeafStorm wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with. You didn't go to high school or the library growing up?

Sure, but they were far from being a place I'd like to revisit, especially not on election day. The Internet is the community commons of today just as much as a library or city building was 30-40 years ago.

Are you really saying that high school was so bad you'd rather not vote than go back there for an hour or 3?

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#145

Post by CWuestefeld » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 3:46 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #124

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will never happen because too few of the Reddit generation are willing and/or capable of pulling out their checkbook (err, PayPal account) to cover the cost of that. In fact, too few of them are even willing to show up at the polls (40ish% compared to over 70% for age 55+[1]). Until those change, nobody is getting kicked out by the Reddit generation. [1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications…

One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with. Let us vote from our civic centers (e.g. the net) and we'll do so in much higher numbers. Increasing the barrier to political participation has the effect of excluding all but the highly motivated, thus pushing politics toward extremes.

The important barrier to (effective) participation is not the drive to an inconvenient polling location. The barrier is learning about the candidates and the issues, and enough background to fit all the pieces together.

That is, making an optimal choice for your vote is an extremely expensive undertaking. Thus, relatively few people do it well.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#146

Post by jimmyjazz14 » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 3:49 AM UTC

mdemare wrote: post #92

Hear hear! Finally an article placing the blame where it belongs - on our shoulders. It is naive to expect Congress to figure out what laws are best for the nation. Instead we should be forcing the laws we want down their throats. All that the MPAA/RIAA can offer to congress is money, but we have something they want much more: votes. When the NRA or the AARP cough, congressmen sit up and listen. The reason? They have…

I was about to pipe up and say the EFF until I saw the link at the end of your comment. Seriously though everyone who works with or cares about tech should donate (or better yet join) the EFF.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#147

Post by lucian303 » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 3:55 AM UTC

Congress doesn't work. That's what the Internet doesn't know.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#148

Post by drivingmenuts » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 4:06 AM UTC

noahth wrote: post #144

nitrogen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but they were far from being a place I'd like to revisit, especially not on election day. The Internet is the community commons of today just as much as a library or city building was 30-40 years ago.

Are you really saying that high school was so bad you'd rather not vote than go back there for an hour or 3?

High school, for me, is 3+ hours away. And yes, I'd rather never revisit that place again.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#149

Post by vectorpush » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 4:16 AM UTC

pillbug88 wrote: post #140

JonnieCache wrote: post #11

American geeks: if you want to fix your congress using your preexisting l33t hacker skillz rather than getting directly involved in politics (and who could blame you,) then here is my best advice: Force your legislature to start using version control. * No more sneaking revisions through in the middle of the night without anyone noticing. * Being able to do `git blame` style operations to resolve individual clauses d…

It's funny cos before Obama was elected I told my friends that under this administration the internet would become regulated. This is in stark contrast to the laissez-faire approach the Bush administration took towards the internet. You can argue whatever else you want about him, but it is undeniable that more legislation regarding the internet has passed under the current administration than under Bush -- he even fo…

I have few kind words for Obama, but SOPA clearly transcends party lines. You're deluding yourself if you think things would have been any different under Bush.

The truth is, we don't know if Obama will sign SOPA. This bill is universally reviled among Obama's base (probably more than any other individual issue since the start of his presidency), and that same wave of enthusiasm that put him in office threatens to become a tempest of rage as anti-Obama as the tea party. We'll see.

Re: Dear Internet: It's no Longer OK Not to Know How Congress Works

#150

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:16 AM UTC

CWuestefeld wrote: post #145

nitrogen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that the 55+ demographic is able to vote in the civic centers they grew up with. Let us vote from our civic centers (e.g. the net) and we'll do so in much higher numbers. Increasing the barrier to political participation has the effect of excluding all but the highly motivated, thus pushing politics toward extremes.

The important barrier to (effective) participation is not the drive to an inconvenient polling location. The barrier is learning about the candidates and the issues, and enough background to fit all the pieces together. That is, making an optimal choice for your vote is an extremely expensive undertaking. Thus, relatively few people do it well.

Clearly people don't agree with my original comment. I'll see if I can figure out where I've strayed, and make my original idea clearer.

If I may, I'd like to squish the content of your comment into the single word "motivation." At present, it takes a high enough amount of motivation to either take time off work to vote early, vote by mail, or wait in excessively long lines after work, that far fewer than a majority of people participate. The arguments I've typically heard suggest that highly-motivated voters are more likely to make correct choices, and well-informed voters are more likely to be motivated.

My (untested) conjecture is that, rather than trying to increase motivation, we should decrease the level of motivation required by making it ridiculously easy to vote. Allowing larger numbers of less-motivated voters may lead to an improved "wisdom of the crowd" effect[0][1], counterbalancing the vocal minorities that we often see controlling local and national politics.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/in-group-decisio...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd