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Game theory’s cure for corruption

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Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#61

Post by a_c_s »

javajosh wrote: post #36
Maultasche wrote: post #27

Have everyone empowered to dispense justice is an interesting proposition, but there's a big difference between insects and people. People aren't all logical, analytic creatures, especially when they operate in groups. They tend to act on emotion rather than logic and it often isn't clear which information is factual and which is rumor. People tend to be susceptible to groupthink, and often go with the crowd. Having…

>If we had a system where a mass of people decided via some sort of upvoting/downvoting, it would be a "tyranny of the majority", where minorities would be oppressed... Maybe. But isn't it an experiment worth trying? Does anyone really know what would happen in a modern, secular, money-driven society if you gave people more authority to enforce the law?

This happens in cyberspace all the time (just look at any HN discussion about airport security): what reason do we have to believe that in meatspace people would behave differently?

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#62

Post by Maultasche »

javajosh wrote: post #36
Maultasche wrote: post #27

Have everyone empowered to dispense justice is an interesting proposition, but there's a big difference between insects and people. People aren't all logical, analytic creatures, especially when they operate in groups. They tend to act on emotion rather than logic and it often isn't clear which information is factual and which is rumor. People tend to be susceptible to groupthink, and often go with the crowd. Having…

>If we had a system where a mass of people decided via some sort of upvoting/downvoting, it would be a "tyranny of the majority", where minorities would be oppressed... Maybe. But isn't it an experiment worth trying? Does anyone really know what would happen in a modern, secular, money-driven society if you gave people more authority to enforce the law?

I do think it's an experiment worth trying. My hypothesis would be that it wouldn't work, but it would be indeed interesting to see what happens. I think that we'd learn a lot even from failure.

I suspect it would have a greater chance of being successful on a small scale and then break down on a large scale. Like corruption, I think it's somewhat dependent on the culture shared by the people who are involved, much like with successful companies vs disfunctional companies.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#63

Post by wyager »

jobu wrote: post #20

It seems like the ubiquity of small recording devices that nearly anyone could own and use (like a cellphone) will have a larger impact on corruption than anything else we could do. You may not have any direct power over the cop that just shook you down for a few hundred, but discretely recording that interaction and posting it on YouTube is likely to end his career in any society.

It seems like many of the cops who are filmed brutalizing people end up on brief suspension, and then back at their jobs shortly after.

For filming police to be effective, we need more regularly enforced punishments (like actually being fired) for police brutality.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#64

Post by jessaustin »

spcoll wrote: post #50
coldtea wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In righteous societies, police were not a separate, elite order. They were everybody . Also in totalitarian dystopias. The thing is, before you get to who the police is (and it being everybody can be OK), it's more important to know what to police for and what is considered an offense.

Hunter-gatherer societies that did fit this model could be considered to be the ultimate totalitarian organizations. Extremely strict rules controlling every aspect of the life of the members, from birth to death, and no deviation ever tolerated, under pain of banishment or even death.

Over most of human hunter-gatherer prehistory, the population was not generally resource-constrained. (Rather, it was constrained over the long term by catastrophes, which could be related to resources, diseases, genetics, culture, or some combination.) Therefore, most of the time, banishment did not lead to starvation or even necessarily isolation. One just walked for some time, until one was alone or in more accepting company, and then started hunting and gathering wherever one found oneself. This actually leads me to wonder whether "banishment" could even have been an actual threat, before the advent of agriculture. What if the tribe "banished" some people, and then a year later found itself migrating into wherever they had settled? Would it "banish" them again, if it could?

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#65

Post by bayesianhorse »

Long story short: If you enable every member of a society to punish abuse, you get a righteous community.

But this has been known for quite some time: Transparency can fight corruption. That's why it may be a good Idea to put cameras on policemen, and that publishing public budgets is an inevitable step towards reducing corruption.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#66

Post by amalcon »

sliverstorm wrote: post #48
DennisP wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't want to legalize lynch mobs. But maybe there's a happy medium. Making it clear that citizens are allowed to take videos of cops might be a good start. For actual punishment, force isn't necessarily needed. A lot of societies manage it by social pressure, with "shunning" being an extreme version. Pressure for conformity already exists regarding things which are not illegal, so I'm not convinced that it ma…

It's rare but you can perform a citizen's arrest

It's also actively discouraged by the police for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons are even good: chain of custody concerns for any evidence on the suspect's person, danger to the untrained person making the arrest, danger to the suspect, and the possibility that the suspect will sue.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#67

Post by notahacker »

abecedarius wrote: post #37

We don't have to speculate about how widespread power of prosecution might work out; there's history. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/England_18thc./Englan... http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

TLDR: despite Friedman's best attempts to spin otherwise, not very well, unless you have a particular fondness for punishments being either extremely draconian or purely financial and think justice is improved if the likelihood of punishment is more closely related to the wealth and connections of the accuser.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#69

Post by bayesianhorse »

Maultasche wrote: post #27

Have everyone empowered to dispense justice is an interesting proposition, but there's a big difference between insects and people. People aren't all logical, analytic creatures, especially when they operate in groups. They tend to act on emotion rather than logic and it often isn't clear which information is factual and which is rumor. People tend to be susceptible to groupthink, and often go with the crowd. Having…

One of the key points is that abusive "punishing" is in itself punished.

To get the best of both worlds, it would be good enough to make sure citizens are empowered to investigate and persecute abuse. Both through strong "rat squads" and good systems for reporting abuse.

Re: Game theory’s cure for corruption

#70

Post by juliangregorian »

kps wrote: post #18

> In righteous societies, police were not a separate, elite order. > They were everybody. Attributed to John Peel in his establishment of London Metropolitan Police: “To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police , the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention…

Believe you mean Sir Robert Peel, John Peel is an entirely different guy.
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